Ex-San Diego Officer Gets 56-Year Term : Crime: The former policeman was sentenced for a series of rapes and robberies that terrorized young beach-goers last summer.

One of the most chilling episodes in local police history ended Monday when former San Diego officer Henry Hubbard Jr. was sentenced to 56 years in prison for a series of rapes and robberies that terrorized young beach-goers last summer from La Jolla to Solana Beach.

The 30-year-old man--who before sentencing asked forgiveness from the court, his victims and their families--said he still did not fully comprehend what drove him to commit the crimes.

“I am only now beginning to understand the complexity of flaws in my personality that led up to the horrendous acts last summer,” he said. “I have no excuses to give you as the acts are inexcusable.”

Six of Hubbard’s victims, including one he shot and one he raped, were among the spectators who packed the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Herbert J. Exarhos. Arthur Gracia, shot by Hubbard hours before the officer’s arrest, urged Exarhos to let Hubbard “rot in prison.” The rape victim sobbed silently from the front row and did not address the court.

For each of eight violent sexual assaults, Hubbard was given six years, or 48 years total. He received eight years more for one of the two murder attempts that led to his arrest. The time for all other crimes of his 38-count indictment are to be served concurrently.

Giving Hubbard three years more than the minimum sentence, Exarhos said Hubbard’s agreement to plead guilty showed a “willingness to spare his victims” from testifying at trial.

Kerry Steigerwalt, Hubbard’s attorney, said he was “pleasantly surprised by the sentence, although 56 years is an awfully long time.”

Prosecutor Stephen Anear, who called Hubbard a “clever and dangerous predator,” called the sentence fair.

A Del Mar psychologist portrayed Hubbard as the product of a dysfunctional family in which his father, a respected educator in Lancaster, S.C., drank too much on weekends and beat Hubbard’s mother. Often, Hubbard’s father openly demanded sex of his wife, the psychologist testified Monday.

Unable to hate his father but humiliated and determined to be different, Hubbard withdrew into the shell of a gentle, passive young man who numbed himself from internal pain by excelling in sports and school, the psychologist testified. His father, meanwhile, repeatedly called him a sissy and urged him to be more aggressive, according to the testimony.

The rapes grew out of Hubbard’s anger over this, said clinical psychologist Richard Levak.

Hubbard’s sentence came five days shy of the anniversary of his arrest, which Police Chief Bob Burgreen called the department’s “worst nightmare come true.”

The two-month series of seven rapes, plus rape attempts, robberies and robbery attempts, occurred between June 15 and Aug. 15 of last year. Prosecutors later added an eighth rape from September, 1990, to the list.

In most of the cases, Hubbard searched for couples along the beach, and forced the women to bind the men’s hands with masking tape before he raped the women.