A former police youth leader was sentenced to three years in prison Thursday for having sex with a 15-year-old girl. It was later revealed the baby he thought he fathered with her was not his.
Scott Callan, 28, tearfully apologized to the girl, his family and the Salinas Police Department before he was handcuffed and led to prison. He said he wishes the baby boy well.
Callan's sentencing was delayed in January so prosecutor Cristina Johnson could seek a paternity test to support a request for child support as part of his restitution. Defense attorney Richard Rosen said then that Callan had been allowed a visit with the infant and believed the baby was his, though Rosen was unwilling to waive the test for setting of restitution.
The DNA test, returned on Valentine's Day, excluded Callan as the father of the baby.
The victim was a member of the Salinas Police Youth Explorer Program, which Callan, a community service officer, supervised. When it became evident she was pregnant, another member of the program, who suspected her relationship with Callan, asked for advice from a peace officer outside Monterey County, Johnson said.
That officer, a mandatory child-abuse reporter, notified Salinas police in October. Investigators confronted Callan, who confessed and said he thought the child was probably his.
Though he could have sought probation, Callan agreed to the plea bargain and prison because it let him avoid lifelong registration as a sex offender.

Members of Callan's family were present Thursday and left the courtroom in tears after he was taken away in handcuffs. Judge Mark Hood noted he had received many letters from them and others in the community who wrote about the exemplary life Callan had lived. Hood said Callan's actions hurt those people, the community, the police department and, mostly, the victim, who "had to grow up too fast."
"You were to be a person our youth could look up to," he told Callan. "The police department put their trust in you and the children put their trust in you and you violated that trust."
Callan was a nine-year veteran of the Salinas Police Department. Rosen asked Hood to request the Department of Corrections place him in protective custody because of his connection to law enforcement.
Callan was originally charged with five counts of lewd acts on a child younger than 16 years old and more than 10 years younger than himself; three counts of statutory rape; and one count each of sodomy and oral copulation on a person younger than 16, sexual exploitation of a child and possession of child pornography. A sentencing enhancement alleged he caused great bodily injury by impregnating the girl.
He pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawful sex with a child younger than 16 and more than 10 years younger than himself in return for the three-year sentence.
Johnson and Rosen said the plea negotiation would not have been different had they known the paternity test would come back negative because Callan was pleading to the sex, not the great bodily injury. What was most important to Callan, Rosen said, was to avoid registering as a sex offender.
Callan can be eligible for parole after he serves 50 percent of his sentence, and at some point, "prison will be behind him, but registering as a sex offender stays with you for life," Rosen said. "They say it's not punishment, but it's the worst punishment possible."
Johnson said she considered the case more serious than most "underage sex" cases.
"One of the bigger things in this case was how he met her," she said. "He was a person who was supervising these kids, these explorers. Taking advantage of that situation is what made this more egregious than your typical statutory rape."

Virginia Hennessey can be reached at 753-6751 or vhennessey@montereyherald.com.