United States: Baptist pastor sentenced to 32 years for abusing two congregant girls
Request a correction or replyDisposition and response
Material that narrows or disputes the record
Appellate history
2009
One count reversed; judgment otherwise affirmed.
Record class
Core record
Evidence status
Convicted
Authority role
pastor of a Spanish-language Baptist congregation
Organization
Iglesia Bautista Reformada, Sunland
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
Both victims were girls of the congregation the defendant pastored.
- Pastoral or clerical authority
Evidence structure
Proceedings
2008-08-07 · conviction on 11 counts; appeal largely affirmed
Los Angeles County Superior Court; California Court of Appeal. Joseph Gary Torres, pastor of the Iglesia Bautista Reformada in Sunland, was convicted on eleven counts of sexually abusing two girls who were congregants of his church between 2000 and 2006, and sentenced to 32 years and 4 months. The appellate court reversed one count but affirmed the judgment, remanding only for resentencing.
Documented coercion mechanisms
- pastoral authority over girls of his congregation across multi-year periods
Cited record
Sources
- official police release verdict and sentencing report LAPD newsroom release, with Contra Costa Times court reporting of the 2008 sentence.
Police release and press reporting of the arrest, conviction and sentence.
Source provenance
Source access and integrity log
This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.
- Source and tier basis
- https://www.lapdonline.org/newsroom/pastor-and-son-arrested-on-charges-of-child-molestation/ Corpus classification: official-police-release; evidentiary role: verdict-and-sentencing-report.
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-27 · Retrieval failed
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
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Related record
Related cases · Christian institutions & contexts
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- 2021 · Paris, France CIASE/Sauvé Report: est. 216,000 abused by French clergy since 1950
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- 2012 · London, UK Kristy Bamu: kindoki 'deliverance' murder convictions (30/25-yr minimums)