Mexican megachurch leader sentenced in US to 16-plus years for child sex abuse

FILE PHOTO: Devotees of the La Luz del Mundo (The Light of the World) church are seen after they prayed for their leader Naason Joaquin Garcia and against decrimination faced by their church, days after Garcia was arrested in California, U.S., in Guadalajara, Mexico June 9, 2019. REUTERS/Fernando Carranza

LOS ANGELES — The head of a Mexico-based evangelical megachurch that claims about 5 million followers worldwide was sentenced on Wednesday in a Los Angeles courtroom to 16 years and eight months in prison for sexually abusing three girls.

Naason Joaquin Garcia, leader and self-styled apostle of the Guadalajara-based church La Luz del Mundo (Light of the World), pleaded guilty last Friday to two counts of forcible oral copulation involving minors and performing a lewd act on a child.

Garcia, 53, entered his plea three days before he had been due to stand trial on 23 felony counts of sex crimes against children, including multiple charges of rape, conspiracy to engage in human trafficking and child pornography.

Several of his accusers, each identified in court only as Jane Doe, decried the plea agreement as too lenient, saying they were not consulted in the deal that Garcia reached with the California attorney general’s office.

In return for his guilty plea, prosecutors dismissed the majority of the charges he faced, including the most serious offenses, in a case that originally stemmed from allegations of five girls.

In victim-impact statements delivered during Wednesday’s hearing, all five said they felt robbed of their chance to more fully confront Garcia, who sat with his back to his accusers as each tearfully addressed their anguish at him.

“We looked up to you, you were our god, and you betrayed us. You are no more than a predator and an abuser,” Jane Doe No. 3 said as she choked back sobs.

Jane Doe No. 4, who identified herself as Garcia’s niece, said, “Naason and this church have ruined my life.”

Another of the accusers told the court Garcia had sent a message to church members professing his innocence but saying he was accepting the deal with prosecutors because he believed he could not get a fair trial.

“Your honor, this abuser thinks your courtroom is a joke. Even after he accepted the plea deal, he’s sending messages to the church that he’s innocent,” the accuser said.

In the end, the judge pronounced the sentence recommended by prosecutors – 16 years and eight months in prison.

Garcia’s conviction caps an investigation that began in 2018 leading to his arrest the following year at Los Angeles International Airport with a co-defendant, Susana Medina Oaxaca, who pleaded guilty last Friday to a charge of assault likely to cause great bodily harm.

A second co-defendant, Alondra Ocampo, also arrested in 2019, pleaded guilty in 2020 to three felony counts of contact with a minor for purposes of committing a sexual offense and one count of forcible sexual penetration. She had previously faced multiple counts of human trafficking and other charges.

A fourth person charged in the investigation, Azalea Rangel Melendez, remains at large, prosecutors said.

La Luz del Mundo is the largest evangelical church in Mexico, dating to the 1920s, with branches in 50 countries and boasting about 5 million members.

When a Los Angeles judge ordered Garcia to stand trial in August 2020, the church issued a statement defending their leader as wrongly accused, saying the charges against him stemmed from “unsubstantiated anonymous allegations” and “blatant hearsay.”

A La Luz del Mundo spokesman reached by Reuters on Friday said the church would have a statement on the latest developments later in the day, but no such statement was ever released.

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