Warrant: New Britain sex assaults happened during church services

Dec. 18--The 47-year-old New Britain man accused of sexually assaulting children had preyed on a 7-year-old girl in a back pew during services at a small Spanish-language church on the East Side, according to police.

A decade earlier, another young girl accused Pedro Torres of similar behavior in the same church, but that girl's family did not go to police, according to an arrest warrant affidavit for his arrest.

Investigators also learned of a young man who said he'd been molested by Torres as a child, the affidavit said.

The victim in the most recent case "is within the same age group of the others who've claimed sexual abuse by Torres," Detective Brian Shea wrote.

Torres, of 29 Stanwood Drive, has been jailed in lieu of $1.5 million bond since Dec. 11, when he was arrested on multiple sexual assault charges.

Police and prosecutors did not release information about the victims' families to protect their identities. But on Monday the court system released a redacted version of Shea's arrest warrant affidavit that lays out much of the case against Torres.

In July, the 7-year-old girl told her mother that Torres had touched her during a service at Christiana Porque De Dios Es El Poder on Stanley Street.

The girl said she had been sitting with her father in the back pew. When he walked to the front to help with the service, a man moved alongside her and "put his hand under my dress and touched me," the girl said. The mother contacted police, who brought in a clinical child interviewer. The girl told her that the man had slid his hands under her tights and underwear, and that he had touched her that way before but always over her clothes, according to the affidavit.

She identified Torres as the man. Police have charged him with first-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor in that case.

Pastor Orlando Alejandro told police that Torres had been accused 11 years earlier of touching a young girl inappropriately in a church bathroom. Alejandro said he let that child's family decide whether to contact police. They did not.

While investigating, Shea learned of a possible male victim who is now an adult. The man went to police headquarters in August and told detectives of long-term sexual abuse by Torres starting then the victim was about 7 or 8. Police have charged him with first-degree sexual assault, three counts of fourth-degree sexual assault and four counts of risk of injury to a minor as a result of the boy's case.

Torres is scheduled to appear before a New Britain Superior Court judge on Dec. 26.

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