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WACO — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is under fire for a plea deal his prosecutors offered last month to a Waco man charged with repeatedly sexually abusing a young boy.

The deal in the case, which Paxton’s office took over about three years ago after the locally elected district attorney recused himself, would have let the man plead guilty to two misdemeanors and serve a total of just one day in jail.

Now Paxton, locked in a heated primary to be the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, is facing criticism from political opponents who say his office was too lenient toward the man, who admitted that he molested the victim as part of the deal. This comes even as Paxton has built a reputation attacking local district attorneys for being too soft on crime.

“Predators who commit these crimes tend to repeat them over and over again, until stopped,” U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who Paxton is seeking to oust in the primary, recently posted on X. “Paxton could have stopped this one, but instead cut him loose to reoffend over and over again, putting more children at risk.”

State Rep. Jeff Leach, a Plano Republican who has endorsed Cornyn’s reelection, sent a letter to Paxton’s office earlier this month calling the deal “incomprehensible” and demanding answers.

Paxton’s office did not respond to emailed questions for this story. A spokesperson pointed to a letter that two of his prosecutors who worked on the case sent to Leach last week, in which they explained that the case went to trial last year but ended in a hung jury, and the young victim did not want to testify a second time.

“The child emphasized that he preferred to move on with his life and prioritize his mental and emotional health,” wrote the prosecutors, Brenda Cantu and Dorian Cotlar.

Beyond Paxton’s immediate political rivals, the deal has attracted criticism from local officials in Waco, including the McLennan County district attorney, a state representative from the area and even the judge presiding over the matter.

“One day. Seriously? Somebody has to sell me on the wisdom of it,” said Judge Roy Sparkman, according to a transcript of an April 16 hearing. Sparkman, a visiting judge who previously served on the bench as a Republican, later insisted on a 60-day jail sentence.

The mother of the victim agreed to an early version of the plea deal in court, but said in an interview that she now disagrees with the outcome.

“We were put in an impossible situation,” said the mother, who The Texas Tribune and The Texas Newsroom are not naming to protect the identity of the victim. “How do you trust the prosecution to go back to a case that they want to plead out when they’re the ones that are supposed to fight for it, and they don’t want to do it?”

The Texas Newsroom and the Tribune examined hundreds of pages of court documents related to the Waco case and conducted more than a dozen interviews, including with people close to the case as well as experts who were not involved in it but reviewed some of the details.

The experts said the outcome reflects the difficult nature and often-painful reality of prosecuting complex child abuse cases.

“I do really love getting life or 50 years in a case when I feel like it’s appropriate,” said Angela Weltin, chief of the Special Victims Bureau for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office. “But there are times when I have to dismiss the case even when I know they committed this offense, because I can’t prove it and I can’t re-traumatize that child.”

Gerry Morris, the man’s defense attorney, said he was baffled by the suggestion that his client got any kind of special treatment and that misdemeanor plea deals are not uncommon in child sex abuse cases. “There was nothing extraordinary about what happened. Nothing. Not at all,” Morris said, adding, “to see [critics] sit here and armchair quarterback this thing is ridiculous.”