SAN FRANCISCO -- A 208-year prison term was reduced Wednesday to 25 years for a youth convicted in the kidnapping and 10-month sexual abuse of a 2-year-old girl held captive in a van.
Alex Cabarga, 24, has served seven years in prison and will get credit for the time he has served, making him eligible for release in five years.
The resentencing was ordered in August by the 1st District Court of Appeal, when it ruled his 208-year prison term amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
But the same court upheld the 527-year sentence of Luis 'Treefrog' Johnson, the man who orchestrated the kidnap and sexual abuse of Tara Burke.
Johnson also sexually abused and controlled Cabarga for more than nine years prior to the 1983 arrests. The appeals court reasoned that Cabarga was Johnson's 'third victim.'
The 25-year term had been sought by the San Francisco district attorney's office. Cabarga's lawyer sought, but was refused, Cabarga's immediate release on probation.
Cabarga's parents raised the youth in a permissive communal environment. At the age of 9 they abandoned the boy to Johnson, who beat and abused him for the next nine years, trial testimony showed.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Robert Dossee issued his sentence after two days of emotion-charged testimony by Burke in a hushed courtroom.
The youngster, who is now 9 and uses an assumed name, said she still fears Cabarga and wanted him jailed for the rest of his life.
Judge Dossee ordered that the Burke family and the family of a second vicitm, a young Vietnamese boy, Mac Lin, be notified when Cabarga is moved or released from prison.
Young Burke was kidnapped from her parents' car in a shopping center parking lot in February 1982 and Johnson and Cabarga held her and the 10-year-old Vietnamese boy in a filthy red van for nearly a year.
Lin escaped and led police back to the van in an industrial area of the city, less than three blocks from police headquarters. He described the sexual abuse, which the two men had photographed.
Tara's mother, Elizabeth Burke, testified Tuesday that before the kidnapping, 'Tara was a sweet, loving, trusting little girl bursting with joy and laughter. What we got back in December 1982 was a monster - somebody who thought she was a boy, knew all the worst forms of sexuality imaginable, all forms of profanity, and brainwashed beyond belief.'
