RICHMOND — A former El Sobrante church youth group leader has been sentenced to eight years and eight months in state prison through a plea deal that came just as his trial was getting ready to start.
Ayden Pacheco, 20, pleaded no contest to nine charges, including false imprisonment, sexual battery, oral copulation of a minor, unlawful sexual intercourse and sexual penetration of a person under 18, court records show. In exchange, Contra Costa prosecutors dropped more serious charges of forcible rape and assault likely to produce great bodily injury.
Pacheco was sentenced on Thursday. He gets credit for the year he spent behind bars while his case was pending. He has not yet been transferred from county jail to prison, records show.
The case was initiated not by a police tip, but rather an act of vigilantism. In September 2022, Pacheco was lured to a Rodeo park by friends of the victims and assaulted, prompting him to call police. Sheriff’s deputies responded but ended up investigating Pacheco when they learned why he’d been attacked. He was later charged with sexually abusing two victims, a young woman and a girl who was younger than 16 at the time.
The woman, known as Jane Doe 1, reportedly told police Pacheco had offered to give her and another teen girl a ride home, but then sexually assaulted her when they were alone in his car. She alleged that he choked her, told her, “Don’t pretend you don’t want it, I don’t like listening to you,” when she tried to fight back and told him “no” repeatedly. The second victim accused Pacheco of groping her inside the El Sobrante church where Pacheco had worked as a youth group leader.
The girl told police that she and Pacheco had exchanged lewd texts and images and met up several times, but that their “relationship” dissolved roughly two months before Pacheco allegedly assaulted Doe 1.
The plea deal allowed Pacheco to avoid a jury trial, which had been scheduled to start in late May. He faced 15 years to life in prison if convicted as charged.