MONROE, Wash. — A former North Sound police officer will spend 14 months in prison for child sex crimes.
Police said for years he groomed a 10-year-old girl to have a sexual relationship with him, but he wasn’t sentenced for child rape.
The rape and molestation charges were dismissed on the eve of the trial because prosecutors said Carlos Alberto Martinez’s victim -- now 26 -- couldn’t provide a consistent timeline of her sexual relationship with Martinez, which went on for more than a decade.
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So what started with a half dozen felonies boiled down to a sentencing on just one.
“The facts of this case are really disturbing,” Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Michael Downes said to Martinez before he handed down his sentence.
Those facts include the veteran former Monroe police officer targeting a fourth grade girl from an elementary school drug prevention class he taught in 2000.
She eventually became his babysitter and later, when she was an adult, his girlfriend.
Police said Martinez starting having sex with the girl when she was just 14.
“She was under Mr. Martinez’s influence for years and years; he had a pretty significant role in how she developed and he used her. He really used this young woman,” the judge explained in court.
But only one charge held up in court -- possessing sexually explicit material of a minor.
Martinez admittedly secretly videotaped the girl at 15 while she showered at his Monroe home.
A KIRO 7 reporter confronted Martinez there when he was originally charged in 2014.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I swear,” he told us in June 2013.
At the time he was part of a child abuse prevention group and made a video warning parents to teach their kids to avoid predators.
“Are you the predator you told other parent(s) to watch out for?” the reporter asked Martinez.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he reiterated.
Thursday the judge could only say Martinez groomed the girl -- and could only sentence him to 14 months.
“Your behavior, Mr. Martinez, based on this evidence, is deserving of condemnation in the strongest possible term(s), the strongest possible term,” Judge Downes explained.
Martinez left the Monroe Police Department in 2009 after allegations he was abusing his now ex-wife.
He has until Monday to post bond, and if he does so, he will be out of custody while his attorney works through the appeals process.
KIRO
