SAN JOSE — A judge has denied bail for Omar Torres, the disgraced former city councilmember who left office earlier this month under the cloud of two sexual misconduct investigations, including one alleging past serial abuse of an underage relative that led to his arrest and jailing last week.
Omar Torres is shown in a police booking photo following his Nov. 5, 2024 arrest in San Jose. The former city councilmember, who submitted his resignation letter hours before he was taken into custody, has been charged with sexually abusing an underage relative in the 1990s. His accuser came forward after the surfacing of an unrelated police investigation into Torres alleging he sent text messages demonstrating sexual interest in minors. (San Jose Police Dept.)
Judge Hector Ramon issued the ruling in a San Jose courtroom Thursday, citing in his explanation a reported confession that Torres made in a police-monitored phone call between him and his accuser.
“The court is going to find by clear and convincing evidence … the substantial likelihood that if Mr. Torres is released, a boy under 18 years of age will suffer great bodily harm,” Ramon said.
Torres was arrested and charged Nov. 5, and was arraigned the next day on three felony counts of child molestation encompassing sodomy and oral copulation by force and lewd and lascivious acts with a minor under the age of 14.
His resignation, handed in just hours before his arrest, has touched off a political firestorm at City Hall as the mayor and council jostle over how to fill Torres’ seat — with the power balance between the City Council’s business- and labor-minded forces at stake — when his resignation becomes effective Nov. 27.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office opposed bail, but a motion filing containing prosecutors’ formal arguments was sealed by Ramon on the grounds that its public release would jeopardize the ongoing investigation into Torres, according to court records.
But the office said after Torres’ first court appearance that given the multiple police investigations into his alleged sexual interest in children, prosecutors were taking the position that he poses “a current and ongoing threat to the community.”
The criminal charges against Torres involve alleged acts from Nov. 25, 1999, about a month after Torres turned 18 years old. An accompanying San Jose Police Department report outlines allegations that Torres abused the reported victim for several years prior to that, starting when the victim was 4 years old, but when Torres was also a minor.
The reported victim contacted police on Nov. 4 of this year in the wake of a scandal tied to a separate department investigation looking into other allegations of Torres’ sexual interest in minors. That probe, which has not yielded an arrest or charges, surfaced publicly Oct. 3 when Torres was detained and questioned by San Jose detectives.
According to detectives, on the same day the allegations were reported, the victim conducted a phone call with Torres — monitored by police — in which Torres admitted to abusing the victim and at least one other underage relative.
Former San Jose City Councilmember Omar Torres stands behind a doorway during his arraignment on three felony counts of child molestation, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, at the Hall of Justice in San Jose, Calif. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
“I’m so sorry that I hurt you,” Torres is quoted telling his accuser in the police report. “I’m in intense therapy right now to, you know to work on myself and I haven’t stopped thinking about the harm that I caused you.”
Torres also reportedly said on the phone call that he was the victim of sexual abuse as a child and suggested that the alleged assaults were a consequence of his own trauma.
The police report also suggests that the abuse alleged against Torres had been known within his family for years, and that the reported victim came forward to police after seeing news reports about the separate sexual misconduct investigation.
Judge Ramon has issued a no-contact order for Torres to stay away from his accuser, who was referred to in court as John Doe.
A search warrant affidavit from the earlier investigation states that Torres asked police to look into a Chicago man allegedly extorting him to keep a sexual tryst secret from his partner and colleagues. But the investigation turned up evidence of Torres’ own illicit acts.
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Those included sexually explicit text exchanges from 2022 with the man, who is from Chicago, in which they share sexual fantasies that included Torres describing the genitalia of an autistic 11-year-old boy with whom he has a family-type relationship. He also claimed in the texts that he performed oral sex on a 17-year-old boy while working at an unspecified college.
One of the most salacious messages was in the midst of planning a multi-partner sexual encounter, with Torres asking the Chicago man if “U got any homies under 18.”
The man, Torres told police, had threatened to release nude photos and videos from their sexual messages. Torres said that he initially complied with the man’s demands, paying more than $22,000 over time.
After news of the October interrogation got out, Torres defended himself by claiming the Chicago man facilitated the extortion by goading him into discussing “damaging” topics “under the guise of eroticism.” Torres also asserted that the texts “do not reflect any real-world actions or intentions and were entirely fictitious.”
This is a developing report. Check back for updates.