SAN JOSE — Barely two weeks ago, the victim stood shaking at a parole hearing inside the spiked gates of San Quentin Prison﻿ and prepared to face the “Pleasure Point rapist,” who attacked her and at least four other women in Santa Cruz in the 1980s.

“I am here before you today shocked, angry and terrified,” she said, choking up as she read from her statement.

Thirty years ago, when she was a 20-year-old college student, she was told this day would never come. A judge called Kim Forrest Walters a “sexual psychopath,” and a 141-year prison sentence would mean the attacker, now 61, wouldn’t likely live long enough to be eligible for parole in 2057. But the 2-year-old court-ordered Elderly Parole Program, meant to ease overcrowding in state prisons, is giving Walters a chance to plead his case for release.

The program — which offers parole hearings to state prisoners who are 60 or older and have served at least 25 years — is now the center of a passionate debate, with victims saying they feel betrayed by the judicial system, which promised their attackers would be put away for good, and prison reform advocates who believe it’s one of the most humane, practical and cost-effective solutions to prison overcrowding. The only ones who don’t qualify are inmates serving life sentences without parole or who are on death row.

“This is a population, if you look at the data, that poses little risk to public safety, so we feel there are thousands of people unnecessarily suffering in our prisons,” said Lizzie Buchen of CURB, Californians United for a Responsible Budget, a coalition of prison reform groups. “From a fiscal perspective, this is one of the reasons we spend so much on our prison system.”

Buchen says criminals such as Walters would probably be denied parole anyway, but high-profile — and rare — cases too often drive public sentiment and derail important reform.

The Elderly Parole Program was instituted by a federal three-judge panel after a 2013 class-action lawsuit successfully argued that conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons, including poor health care, amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. As a result, the court ordered California to reduce its inmate population. The Elderly Parole Program and a realignment program to move nonviolent convicted felons back to county jails are among the solutions. The Elderly Parole Program will be in effect at least until California meets its prison population targets.

In Sacramento, prosecutors and victims rights groups have been working to prevent this temporary program from becoming state law. They scored a small victory last week when, after a call from this newspaper, state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, gutted Senate Bill 1310, which he introduced last month. The original bill would not only make the Elderly Parole Program state law, but it would also lower the eligibility age to 50 and the time in prison to 15 years.

The withdrawal was unexpected and came with little explanation. Leno said in a statement Thursday that the bill would be used as a place holder for “other criminal justice reforms” and that “the bill will not deal with the issue of elder parole.”

The news was “enormously disappointing,” Buchen said, but “we’re going to continue working on it, absolutely.”

Since the Elderly Parole Program began, in February 2014, more than 1,180 inmates eligible for elderly parole have had hearings. Of those, 317 have been granted parole, 781 have been denied and 89 were not ready but can qualify again in as few as three years.

Opponents say allowing early release based on age is arbitrary — especially if the minimum age dips to 50. In 2014, slightly more than 10 percent of crimes in Santa Clara County, for instance, were committed by people over 50 — crimes including seven murders and 55 sexual assaults, according to the California District Attorneys Association.

“It’s not the Birdman of Alcatraz we’re talking about here. It’s not this fantasy picture of these old harmless people who committed low-level offenses,” said Mark Zahner, CEO of the California District Attorneys Association. “The vast majority of people who would be eligible have committed very serious crimes.”

Walters is one of them. In the mid-1980s, he had already been paroled early, getting out of prison after five years of an 11-year sentence in Los Angeles for raping women. In 1985, he moved to Santa Cruz and stalked women in the beach community, including the Pleasure Point area, broke into their homes at night and held them at knife point. He threatened to kill their families if they made a sound. The trial was moved to San Jose, where he was convicted in 1987 on 32 counts.

Rafael Vazquez, a Santa Cruz County assistant district attorney, said at the very least any legislation on the issue should rule out sexual offenders like Walters.

“I’ve had cases of people molesting children at 70 or 80 years old,” Vasquez said. “I’ve seen a guy in a wheelchair that still managed to sexually assault additional victims.”

Victims advocates say that the program has been “horrifically traumatizing” for victims and is causing frustration in district attorneys’ offices. Staff members are having trouble tracking down victims to attend parole hearings because, since they were told their attacker wouldn’t reach parole age, they never registered in the victim database to be contacted.

“This is rocking victims’ worlds,” said Christine Ward, executive director of Crime Victims Action Alliance. “What’s unfortunate is that there are unintended consequences.”

The victim of the rape who braced herself to meet Walters at San Quentin earlier this month asked that her name be kept private. She still hasn’t told her teenage children what happened to her three decades ago.

“I don’t want my name used, but I want to shed light on this,” she said. “Nobody thinks of the victim having to go back and every three years sit in the same room with him. It’s such an injustice.”

The woman’s attacker ended up not showing up at the hearing earlier this month. Walters’ lawyer took his place, saying that because the inmate hadn’t taken advantage of rehabilitation programs, he would delay his hearing another three years to make a better case.

When the time comes, the victim says, she will find the courage, like she did when she testified against him 30 years ago, to go back to San Quentin again.

If he is ever granted parole, “I am terrified he will find me,” she said. “He was supposed to die in there.”

Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at 408-278-3409. Follow her at Twitter.com/juliasulek.