Since news broke months ago about her husband’s criminal record, Bexar County Republican Party Chair Cynthia Brehm has tried to suppress the truth about her family’s disturbing history even as some in the party have pushed for her ouster.

That history just got even more disturbing.

U.S. Army court documents revealed appalling new details about the government’s evidence against Norman Brehm, a retired lieutenant colonel and Cynthia Brehm’s husband of 22 years. The documents show that Cynthia Brehm was informed about details of her husband’s case as it unfolded and benefited from its outcome.

According to the documents, Norman Brehm gave a “full confession” detailing not only “indecent liberties” taken in 1999 with Cynthia Brehm’s then-14-year-old daughter from a previous marriage but also describing more than 10 years of “egregious sexual molestation” of three young relatives.

These descriptions are horrific.

Norman Brehm began “conditioning” one girl when she was 5 years old, the documents state.

“It began with me exposing myself, and progressed to showing her pornographic magazines, and having her masturbate me and then having her perform oral sex on me,” Norman Brehm admitted, according to the documents.

He initiated a similar regimen with a 6-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl, “showing them adult and child pornography materials, exposing himself to them while he masturbated …and on one occasion rubbing (the girl’s) breasts.”

His stepdaughter — Cynthia Brehm’s daughter — also testified that Norman Brehm exposed himself to her and asked her “to rub his groin and genital area,” according to the documents.

Related: SAFA still 'proud' of Brehm

Despite the government’s “crushing” evidence against Norman Brehm, he received an “extremely favorable plea agreement,” the documents state. After pleading guilty to just two offenses — indecency with a child and making a false statement — he received a sentence of five years confinement, later reduced to just two years.

In his own affidavit, Norman Brehm wrote that his defense counsel informed “both me and my wife” about details of the case. And Cynthia Brehm benefited financially from her husband’s plea deal, which included “a promise from the convening authority to … waive automatic forfeitures for a period of six months for the benefit of his wife,” according to court records.

After pleading guilty, Norman appealed the case, citing a court ruling on statute of limitations defenses. The documents obtained by the Express-News include briefs filed by the government as it sought to quash his appeal. For unknown reasons, the Army did not forward the charge sheet to prosecutors until 2006. On that basis, the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals set aside the guilty findings in May 2009.

In May, defending her husband’s actions to Republican Party officials, Cynthia Brehm mentioned only the indecency charge to which he pleaded guilty: “So here’s the story,” she said. “My husband got involved in pornography and he flashed my 14-year-old daughter.”

As a fuller account of her husband’s behavior has emerged, calls for the chair to step down have only intensified. Brehm did not return a call seeking comment for this column.

This month, precinct Chair Becky Edler wrote a resolution asking the party’s executive board to form a committee “to investigate rumors and allegations … regarding the conduct of (Cynthia Brehm), which, if true, would tend to injure the good name of this organization, disturb its well-being, hamper its work, violate its bylaws and rules, and that the committee be instructed, if it concludes the rumors and allegations are well-founded, to report resolutions covering its recommendations.”

The board refused to take up the resolution, however, thanks in part to Lynette Boggs-Perez, the party’s legal counsel, who warned: “There is nothing in Texas law to bar Chairman Brehm from seeking injunctive relief against the party or naming the BCRP as a defendant in a lawsuit.”

Edler called that a “not very well-veiled threat.”

The battle against Brehm, though, isn’t over.

“She didn’t commit the crime, but she had full knowledge about it and she lied about it,” Edler told me Monday. “That shows bad judgment. She does not represent our party values. She told lies about it, and you can’t have someone like that representing our party. … I don’t feel like she has the moral ground to do that.”

bchasnoff@express-news.net