San Diego

A Navy petty officer convicted of molesting seven neighborhood boys was sentenced Monday to 16 years in state prison.

Jimmy Carty, 30, of San Diego also was fined $1,000 by San Diego Municipal Judge John Thompson. Carty pleaded guilty last month to molesting the seven boys, who were 6 to 15 years old. Twenty-six other charges were dismissed as part of a plea bargain. He could have been sentenced to 20 years.

Both Deputy Dist. Atty. Oscar Garcia and Carty’s attorney, Kay Sunday, said that Carty had a “compulsion” to molest. Carty’s therapist, Rod Schear, told the judge he is “very amenable to treatment” and that Carty himself was molested repeatedly as a child.

The molestations began in 1989 and ended last year in El Cajon and Pacific Beach, where the defendant lived at the time.