A judge in the Superior Court of Los Angeles has decided to bring to trial the leader of the La Luz del Mundo church, Naasón Joaquín García, on 36 charges of sexual abuse and rape. The Prosecutor's Office has presented the testimonies of five women who report sexual attacks by the religious leader in the last four years in California, for which Judge Ronald S. Coen has requested the trial against him and two of his collaborators: Alondra Ocampo, 37 years old, and Susana Medina Oaxaca, 25 years old.
Naasón Joaquín García, 51, was arrested in June 2019 at the Los Angeles airport when he was arriving in the city on a private flight. During the arrest, a personal iPhone and iPad were confiscated. There the investigators found photo and video evidence that the leader of La Luz del Mundo had sexually abused minors and that he stored child pornography. Joaquín García calls himself El Apóstol among the almost one million followers of this religious organization based in the Mexican city of Guadalajara (Jalisco). After his arrest, he was sent to prison with one of the largest bonds in California history, of $ 50 million.
The victims' accounts indicate that the collaborators of the religious leader gathered girls, most of them minors, to group them in the service of García. At first they were asked to do housework, but after a while some of them had to serve him personally without clothes and he sexually abused them. A 24-year-old witness, who was an assistant to the leader, told investigators that Joaquín García abused her in both the Guadalajara home and in Los Angeles. The young woman left the religious group and denounced the leader when they asked her to take her sister to also treat Joaquín García. According to the same testimony, the man asked that the women in his service be very young because that way “they were pure and had more love for him”.
Another of the accounts points out that Ocampo, García's personal assistant, asked a 17-year-old girl to go to the leader's room and warned her that “he was going to commit sins with him but that they were going to be forgiven because he was the Servant of God". The Prosecutor's Office has indicated that until now all the testimonies will remain anonymous until the trial is held, since some of the witnesses have already received threats and "have been intimidated." In other accusations, the victims describe the leader and his collaborators organizing sex videos.
The accusations against García have taken a turn in the direction of the courts after, in April, a Court of Appeals in California dismissed the case for a formal defect in the presentation of the accusations. The defense of the religious leader expected him to be released in the following weeks also because of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the Prosecutor's Office has found new testimonies that reveal a complex network of sexual abuse of minors and pornography, in which some collaborators of his church would be involved. The next hearing will be on September 1.
In Mexico, the religious organization has maintained close ties with the parties in power. His followers attended the events of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). In May 2019, before the arrest of the leader, the congregation held a great event at the Palace of Fine Arts to celebrate the 50th birthday of Naasón Joaquín, which was attended by a score of legislators. The concert raised a wave of criticism of the Government, since in Mexican public buildings the celebration of religious services is prohibited.