Almost three years after his arrest in California, a judge determined that the trial of the leader of the La Luz del Mundo church should begin on June 6 in a Los Angeles court, where he faces 19 charges of sexual abuse of minors, pornography child, sex trafficking, rape, among other crimes.
With this decision, Judge Ronald S. Coen concludes a period of more than two years in which Naasón Joaquín García's lawyers requested several postponements and even took the case to a state appeals court. In their latest strategy, they argued that the State Prosecutor's Office used false evidence and edited text messages from the complainants to incriminate their client. That motion was denied on Monday.
The postponement from May 9 to June 6 was made due to a case that Naasón Joaquín's lawyer, Alan Jackson, is litigating in this city.
The opinion of Judge Stephen Marcus, who analyzed a defense motion in the morning asking for charges to be withdrawn from the accused, is that the lawyers of the self-appointed 'Apostle of Jesus Christ' have had enough time to prepare the defense, although they claimed a few years ago weeks that they had just received thousands of communications from the witnesses because the Prosecutor's Office did not give them to them on time.
Naasón Joaquín is the grandson of the founder of La Luz del Mundo, a mostly Mexican congregation that boasts five million faithful in almost 60 countries. He has pleaded not guilty and the church compares his "unjust" trial to that of Jesus Christ. His attorneys indicated in a motion that they fear the 52-year-old pastor could face life in prison if convicted.
The legal defense alleges that some complainants set him "a trap for money" and that the prosecutors distorted their written conversations to enlarge the case. They stated that, after reviewing a flood of 500,000 text messages, 26,000 emails, 630,000 photos and videos, 6,500 phone call records and 7,200 internet searches on seven cell phones, they had not found a single trace that they were victims of sex trafficking. and coercion through the spiritual path.
“In fact, the devices reveal that the complainants lived their lives, participating in all the regular activities at work, school, romance, etc. There is not a single indication of a kind of 'spiritual coercion' that the prosecution has affirmed in court, ”says the 211-page motion that was analyzed this Monday in court.
But Judge Marcus said none of the text messages cited by the defense were exculpatory. On the contrary, some of these were "incriminating".
The "harassment" of the complainants
But the state prosecutors responded in a request that, in fact, those text messages from the 'Jane Does' confirmed the crimes of Naasón Joaquín. They denied, on the one hand, having fabricated evidence and, on the other, they denounced that the defense sent a judicial document to the press that contained private conversations of four of the five complainants with the purpose of intimidating them and contaminating the jury's verdict.
“The Prosecution believes that many of these messages were exfiltrated by the defense, not because they believed the communications to be exculpatory or admissible (as evidence), but because they wanted to use them to do exactly what the Prosecution fears: harass and intimidate the defendants. plaintiffs in this case. The actions of the defense in this regard, such as the manipulation of their messages, taking them out of context and misrepresenting the dates, are worthy of reprimand”, stresses the agency.
The indictment alleges that three minors, identified as Jane Doe 1, 2 and 3, were invited to be part of a "special" group that attended the church leader every time he visited Los Angeles. Later they were asked to dance scantily clad, participate in orgies and pose nude in hotels and other locations around the county. The co-defendant Alondra Ocampo would have been in charge of the girls and obeyed the orders of the minister, according to the government.
Ocampo, a 39-year-old American, pleaded guilty to four counts and is expected to testify against Naasón Joaquín. She's in a women's jail in Lynwood. Her sentencing is scheduled for October 12. Who is considered the main accomplice of the pastor, she has been interviewed in said prison by detectives from the Prosecutor's Office, who have shown her evidence of the case on a laptop, according to court documents.
The Prosecutor's Office compares the case of Naasón Joaquín with that of other powerful men accused of sexual abuse. That is why one of the highest profile criminal proceedings for dependency.
“Rarely a day goes by without a similar story in the news of someone leveraging their position of power to commit sexual crimes against vulnerable people within a culture that encourages and enables abuse. Garcia's crimes were not unlike the well-known cases of Harvey Weinstein (Hollywood), Jeffrey Epstein (society and politics), high-ranking members of the Catholic Church (religious institutions), and Larry Nassar (Olympic sports). a motion filed by state prosecutors in mid-April asking for the trial to proceed.
Detectives have testified in Los Angeles court that among the main evidence they have against Naasón Joaquín there are videos with alleged child pornography material that they found on the iPhone and iPad that were seized from him when he was detained upon arrival at the Los Angeles airport on December 3. June 2019. That same afternoon, officers went to an East Los Angeles resident where she was staying and seized other electronic devices and fake credentials, officers say.
At the time, Judge Ronald S. Coen warned that the jury selected for this case would necessarily see images of "child pornography" and demanded that the identity of the complainants be protected. Coen, who once said that he has presided over dozens of criminal trials in which he imposed death sentences, expects the trial to last eight weeks.