A family that suffered sexual abuse for years at the hands of a 62-year-old told the defendant how he betrayed the titles of mentor, best friend and father before he was sentenced to 32 years in prison.
Ernest Urioste, who was living in Woodland Hills at the time of his arrest, pleaded no contest Nov. 19 to several felony charges, including continual sexual abuse of a child, on the day scheduled for his preliminary hearing.
He requested to be sentenced that afternoon, for crimes against several others that happened in the Santa Clarita Valley more than 10 years earlier.
Urioste said he was consenting to a plea deal to avoid forcing further testimony from his victims, a decision he came to after his youngest victim took the stand that morning, according to Judge Michael Terrell, who presided over the sentencing, in the minute order.
That was one of Urioste’s many decisions that brought scathing criticism from his family during their victim-impact statements, after his plea deal was announced.
Urioste received a 16-year sentence for one count of continuous abuse and a six-year sentence for another, with each term to run consecutively, with an added allegation that he took advantage of a position of trust, according to a court transcript of the sentencing at the L.A. County Superior Court’s San Fernando Courthouse.
Each count had a different victim.
Urioste was given an eight-year term and a two-year term for lewd acts against a child for a third victim, which made the 32-year total.
During their victim-impact statements, a handful of family members excoriated Urioste for the “immeasurable” amount of hurt, disappointment and betrayal for years of abuse.
More than one made references to confronting Urioste years prior when the abuse became known — with Urioste saying he would address it, but never doing so, according to his victims.
“You let down your mom, your sister, your three daughters — you have three daughters and you would go and do this to a little girl?” said one of his victims who was identified in the transcripts only by her first name.
She called Urioste a “monster,” and said he deserves to rot in prison.
In a letter from Urioste’s daughter that was read into the record, she said she wished Urioste had never met her mother, a statement she acknowledged was “counterintuitive to my existence,” because “this is the legacy of your lies, your crimes, your choices.”
Before being taken into custody, Urioste asked for forgiveness and talked about his life and a childhood that included his own child sexual abuse, including losing his virginity in the fourth grade and what he later learned in therapy to be “broken boundaries, broken borders, crossed and blurry lines.”
Urioste will be sentenced to lifetime sex-offender registration and protection orders against his victims.
He was taken into custody at the end of the proceeding. He’ll have a restitution hearing for his victims in January.
