Mexican megachurch leader sentenced to more than 16 years in California prison for child sex abuse
The leader of a Mexican megachurch who was accused of keeping his juvenile congregants as sex slaves was sentenced Wednesday to 16 years and eight months in a California prison.
Naasón Joaquín García, 53, pleaded guilty last week to two counts of forcible oral copulation involving minors and one count of a lewd act upon a child who was 15 after three years of vicious denials of the allegations, including branding his accusers as liars. In exchange, prosecutors dropped 16 other counts, including rape and human trafficking to produce child pornography.
“I never cease to be amazed at what people do in the name of religion and how many lives are ruined in the guise of a supreme being,” Judge Ronald Coen said during the sentencing.
Victims alleged a “secret inner circle” at the Guadalajara, Mexico-based La Luz del Mundo, which also has a church in Los Angeles, where García groomed young boys and girls, raped them, forced them into sexual acts with each other and filmed it.
Naasón Joaquín García, the leader of the fundamentalist Guadalajara, Mexico-based church La Luz del Mundo, appears in Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2019. (Damian Dovarganes/)
One victim testified that she was forced to wash his clothes, scrub his toilet and perform a sex act on him every morning for years, according to the Los Angeles Times.
A special agent from the California Department of Justice who testified during a preliminary hearing in 2020 told horror stories of footage he’d seen, including a “young male” wearing a suit and a black mask that covered his eyes, who had oral sex performed on him by a woman identified by a witness as his aunt. A 15-year-old girl said she was invited shortly after her birthday to join an “exclusive group of girls” who danced for García in their lingerie.
Another girl told stories of spreading whipped cream and strawberries on each other’s bodies and licking it off while being filmed.
Several women at La Luz del Mundo have also been accused of helping García carry out his twisted desires.
Alondra Ocampo pleaded guilty to three counts of contact with a minor for sexual offense and one count of forcible sexual penetration. Susana Medina Oaxaca pleaded guilty to one count of assault likely to cause great bodily injury. And Azalea Rangel Melendez remains a fugitive.
García has remained behind bars since 2019 arrest upon his return to Los Angeles.
With News Wire Services
