CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Washington D.C.-area attorney sentenced to three years in prison in January for sexually abusing a Fairview Park boy three times could be released after serving six months behind bars.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Daniel Gaul is set to hold a Thursday hearing to decide whether to grant early release to Justin Torres, whose lawyer described him in a late-July court filing as a “self-made person” who is “committed to slowly rebuilding his life.”
Prosecutor Michael O’Malley’s office argued in its own court filing that releasing Torres, who has served the minimum time behind bars after pleading guilty late last year to three felony counts of gross sexual imposition, would be “a miscarriage of justice.”
Torres, a former senior counsel at two D.C.-based international law firms and an ex-Department of Justice lawyer, sexually abused an 11-year-old boy while he and his wife visited family in Fairview Park for the holidays on three separate occasions from November 2016 and to November 2017. As part of his plea, Torres will be required to register as a sex offender every six months for 25 years after he is released from prison.
Gaul indicated at Torres’ Jan. 10 sentencing hearing that a six-month sentence would be appropriate for Torres. There was no reason to impose a lengthy prison sentence on Torres, the most remorseful defendant he had seen in his 28 years on the bench, Gaul said. But he also said “public policy considerations” would not let him release Torres without spending some time behind bars.
By sentencing him to three years, Torres would become eligible to apply for early release after 180 days -- something Gaul encouraged the 43-year-old former Justice Department lawyer to do.
“I think what serves the community is for this event in your life to end, and for a new journey to begin today,” Gaul said.
Gaul said if he were to release Torres, he would place him on five years of court supervision and order him into treatment.
Torres’ lawyer Steven Bradley cited Gaul’s comments at sentencing in motion for judicial release, and reiterated what he and Torres said at his sentencing: that Torres emerged from a childhood fraught with physical and sexual abuse and poverty to become a “high achiever in nearly every aspect of his life.”
Torres worked as a political appointee in the Bush Administration, serving as an aide to the director of the agency that runs the AmeriCorps program, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2005. He later graduated from law school at the University of Virginia and went on in 2015 to join the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.
Bradley wrote that Torres suppressed his the effects of his childhood instead of seeking help and turned from abused to abuser. He caused serious trauma to the boy, destroyed his career and fractured his family, Bradley wrote.
Bradley’s three-page motion makes no mention of the charges to which Torres pleaded guilty, or that the abuse he inflicted on the child was sexual abuse.
In a motion opposing Torres’ release, Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Steven Szelagiewicz wrote that Torres’ childhood abuse and high-achieving career make his conduct all the more inexcusable.
Torres knew the damage that he was inflicting on the boy when he sexually assaulted him, and still turned to sexual assault, Szelagiewicz wrote. Torres, who a pre-sentence investigation after his November 2018 guilty found he earned more than $350,000 salary at his job at the time, had the means to get help, but only did so when it was evident that he was about to get caught, Szelagiewicz said.
“To release [Torres] after serving only six months in prison for three separate sexual assaults against a young child would demean the seriousness of Defendant’s crimes.”
To comment on this story, please visit Tuesday’s crime and courts comments page.