By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
A Del Rio man has been ordered to serve more than 50 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of two sex-related offenses against a young girl.
State District Judge Steven Hilbig sentenced Albino Cedillo, 30, to 53 years in state prison during a hearing in 63rd Judicial District Court here Dec. 16. In early November 2021, a jury comprised of five men and seven women found Cedillo guilty of the offenses of continuous sexual abuse of a young child and of aggravated sexual assault of a child, both first-degree felonies.
The victim of Cedillo’s assaults, now a teenager, was present in the courtroom when Hilbig handed down his sentence, but elected not to address Cedillo or the court.
First Assistant District Attorney Jessica Shawver-Savino represented the state, as she had at Cedillo’s trial, and Cedillo was represented by Eagle Pass attorney Edgar H. Juarez.
According to court records, the victim in the case first made an outcry to her stepmother, telling the stepmother that Cedillo, her mother’s boyfriend, had touched her “down there” and “did something to her backside.”
When the stepmother attempted to speak to the victim’s mother about the young girl’s outcry, the mother “blew it off,” an affidavit filed by police investigators in the case reads.
The stepmother then went to the Del Rio Police Department in June 2019 to report the incident.
The victim, who was 12 years old at the time she made the outcry, told her stepmother, then later police investigators, she had been “six or seven years old” when a man, whom she identified as Cedillo, sexually assaulted her.
“(The girl) stated Cedillo, who was in a relationship with her mother, ‘hurt’ her,” the affidavit reads.
The indictment against Cedillo charged him with “at least two acts of sexual abuse of a child less than 14 years of age” between April 30, 2012, and April 30, 2014, including one act of aggravated sexual assault of a child – sodomy – that is alleged to have occurred in June 2014.
During the Dec. 16 sentencing hearing, Shawver-Savino painted a bleak portrait of the trauma Cedillo’s young victim has faced and continues to face.
Shawver-Savino began by telling the court that people are taught to expect consequences for their actions. She said the victim’s “life will forever be shaped at the hands of the defendant” and his “unspeakable sexual abuse.”
“These events are still as raw and traumatic to her as the day they happened . . . She will forever carry the wounds in her mind and soul from what he did,” Shawver-Savino said.
The young woman’s life milestones – marriage, having children of her own – will be shadowed “by this dark presence in the back of her mind,” Shawver-Savino continued.
She said the young woman “still has nightmares that the defendant will get out and find her.”
Because of the impact of Cedillo’s actions on the victim’s life, Shawver-Savino asked the court to sentence Cedillo to life in prison.
Following Shawver-Savino’s statements, Hilbig ordered Cedillo to stand, then sentenced him to 53 years in the Texas Department of Corrections, with credit for time he has served behind bars since his arrest several years ago.
Cedillo was remanded immediately to the custody of the sheriff’s office, handcuffed and led from the courtroom.
In a press statement issued this week, District Attorney Suzanne West noted Del Rio Police Department Sgt. Jesus Galindo served as the lead detective in the case. She said Galindo, with the assistance of the Bluebonnet Child Advocacy Center, “brought Cedillo to justice.”
West said Shawver-Savino served as lead prosecutor in the case, with assistance from herself and Assistant District Attorney Ben Moorman. She said district attorney’s office investigators Fidel Navarro, Thomas Wylie and Larry Pope also helped with the case.
Of the case’s outcome, Shawver-Savino said, “I am truly grateful for the service of our jury during this trial and would also like to extend our gratitude to all court personnel and law enforcement partners who made this outcome possible. This child will always carry scars from the unspeakable things the defendant has done, and because of that, there may never be closure. However, this jury and our judge gave this child something just as valuable . . .They gave this child justice.”
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