Atascadero barber and convicted rapist Nathan Abate received the maximum sentence allowed under California law—eight years and eight months—after a San Luis Obispo County jury found him guilty of sexually assaulting two women between 2009 and 2012.
Presiding Judge Michael Frye’s Nov. 19 sentence also requires Abate to register as a sex offender for life despite the now shuttered Cardinal Barbershop owner’s request to forgo registration. The court processed restraining orders against Abate, underscoring the judge’s orders that Abate can’t have any degree of contact with the survivors and their families. He will serve his sentence at the California Men’s Colony and faces the possibility of lifetime parole upon his release.
The sentencing hearing occurred over Nov. 12 and 19, with impact statements from survivors and Abate’s defenders consuming the first day.
“I was just some drunk girl at a party to him,” a survivor named Amanda said. “The women he has hurt will never be whole again.”
Amanda, whose last name the court withheld for anonymity, wasn’t included as a victim in the trial. Naming herself as an “unseen victim,” she told the court that Abate assaulted her in 2010 when she was 20 years old.
Abate, 36, and Julian Contreras—the former owner of the now-defunct Kin Coffee—came under fire in April 2022 when whistleblower “Ashley Doe” accused the pair on Instagram of assaulting her and her friend roughly a decade ago. Since her social media post, allegations streamed in from approximately 40 women who said they were also abused. The men were in their 20s when they allegedly picked on young women or children, supplied them with drugs and alcohol, isolated them, and forced them to perform sex acts with Abate alone or with both at once.
SLO County Sheriff’s Office detectives arrested Abate in January 2023 while Contreras fled to Mexico and remains a fugitive. On Oct. 18, the jury found the barber guilty on three counts of sexual assault on two separate victims. The jury deadlocked on a possible fourth count—an allegation of forcible rape of a third victim—with nine of the 12 voting for guilt.
During the first day of the sentencing hearing, Abate’s mother, who didn’t reveal her name, said he was a 20-year-old in a “toxic friendship” with Contreras when they allegedly committed the crimes.
Abate’s wife, Brandi Lee Abate, and his pastor, Josh, referenced his faith as they asked for leniency.
“He doesn’t work with kids, we’re not stupid,” the pastor said, and some hearing attendees responded with laughter.
“I did not mean that as an insult,” he said.
Survivor Ashley Doe, the victim whose assault charges the jury deadlocked on, said that Abate raping her roughly a decade ago “was my 10-pound stone.”
“This poison cost me connections with friends and family,” she said.
Abate’s wife named Doe and four other critics of Abate, including the Everything Atascadero Facebook page administrators, in a makeshift cease and desist notification for harassment, bullying, and defamation that she posted on the social media platform.
Doe told New Times that hearing the impact statements from other survivors along with the mother of a victim was “sickening.”
“The pain on her face, and then hearing her daughter’s impact statement,” she said. “My grandma came with me, and my grandma called it the darkest thing she’s ever been to, and she’s 80.”
Doe added that neither she nor prosecuting attorney Kimberly Dittrich have expressed any desire to re-prosecute Abate for the deadlocked charge that was declared a mistrial.
Once she got off the sentencing Zoom call, she said, she drove an hour and a half into a forest with her dog, hiked, and enjoyed relaxing in a hot tub afterward.
“I’m definitely going to spend, hopefully the next couple months, trying to find peace and calm and routine again,” Doe said. “We still have people who are looking forward to Julian Contreras being located and getting his day in court. I’m just thinking of keeping things as peaceful as I can until that moment happens.” Δ
Libbey Hanson contributed to this story.
This article appears in Nov 28 – Dec 8, 2024.