SAN JOSE — The younger cousin of disgraced former San Jose city councilmember Omar Torres has been honored for his courage in revealing his sexual abuse as a child at the hands of Torres, who was convicted and imprisoned last year for his crimes.
Adrian Betancourt, 39, was given the Courage Award by Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen during his office’s annual recognition ceremony held Tuesday at the Board of Supervisors chambers.
“I am a man who, just like many of you, just can’t stand by and allow injustices to happen, especially toward kids,” Betancourt said in an acceptance speech. “I am standing up here today to give a voice to the most vulnerable, the children, the victims, the survivors, of sexual assault. The boys and young men and adult men that stay silent and hold it all in. You don’t need to.”
Rosen said Betancourt reclaimed his identity from “John Doe” — as he was referenced in court filings and through the adjudication of the case — and emerged from decades of trauma to become “a story of triumphant resurrection.”
Betancourt is a “person who somehow found the strength to face his worst nightmare,” Rosen said, “and dispel it by thinking of how to help others, how to help the next victim.
“Today I would like to announce that Adrian is taking back his last name, taking off the fragile mask of a victim and showing his true face,” the district attorney added.
Torres, 44, has been incarcerated at California State Prison, Los Angeles County, where he is serving a maximum-term 18-year sentence and will be eligible for parole in 2037, according to state records. He was sentenced in August after earlier pleading no contest to three sexual assault felonies involving a minor.
At the sentencing hearing, Betancourt graphically recounted the serial sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of Torres from school age until his early teen years. He recounted a host of resulting behavioral issues, and descending into substance abuse, ill physical health and homelessness — which he traced back to Torres’ abuse — well into adulthood.
He said at the same hearing that it took decades for him to shed Torres’ threat that he would not be believed if he reported the abuse, a mental cage that was only fortified as Torres ascended in public life, culminating in his milestone 2022 election as the first openly gay Latino on the San Jose City Council.
Within two years, Torres’ political career was crashing down amid a scandal that surfaced publicly in October 2024 when he was detained and questioned by San Jose detectives. Police were initially investigating Torres’ claim that a Chicago man was extorting him under a threat to reveal a sexual tryst to his partner and colleagues.
But the investigation uncovered sexually explicit text exchanges from 2022 between Torres and the man in which they shared sexual fantasies that included Torres describing the genitalia of an autistic 11-year-old boy with whom he has a family-type relationship, and a message in which Torres asked the man, in a sexual context, if “U got any homies under 18.”
Betancourt said Tuesday that when he saw news reports about the investigation, he couldn’t stand by any longer, and on Nov, 4, 2024, he reported his experiences to San Jose police. The then-councilman was arrested the next day, and in the ensuing days gave up his council seat after he was criminally charged. Torres had earlier tried to play off the troubling texts as “fantasy role play,” an explanation to which the survivor bristled.
“When the allegations came out, came to life, I instantly regretted my silence,” he said. “I knew the hidden truth that I can no longer let live inside me. Despite his lies that were spreading … of his fantasies and role plays, I knew he was ready to hurt someone else.”
While Betancourt told investigators that his abuse started when he was 4 years old, the crimes for which Torres was convicted occurred in 1999, when Torres was 18 and Betancourt was 13. Torres has since said that his actions were a consequence of sexual abuse he suffered as a child.
“Coming forward was not easy. I wish it could have gone any other way than it did,” Betancourt continued, before saying that the “positivity that came out of it was nothing like I never imagined. Seeing how many strangers believed in doing the right thing has restored my faith in humanity, and it reminds me daily that I did the right thing.”
“I accept this award not because I want to be up here, not to feel special, but to show all the hard-working people that support victims like myself through this whole process, that your work is recognized.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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