Posted on 12/07/2023 9:15:32 AM PST by Morgana
The pastor of a California church has been arrested on charges of kidnapping and molestation that involved a young teen girl from his congregation almost a decade ago.
Victor Manuel Hernandez-Pineda, 53, the pastor at Iglesia Pentecostes Movimiento De Gloria, was arrested on Friday (Dec. 1) in the wake of a police investigation by the Richmond Police that began on November 9. He was arrested on suspicion of three counts of kidnapping and four counts of molesting a girl under the age of 14.
The victim of the abuse, Karen Cifuentes, described what happened to ABC 7 in San Francisco. Karen is now 21 years-old. She just recently told her parents that when she was 13, the pastor convinced her it was God’s will they have sex. “He took me to a hotel near the school and at that moment I told him that I didn’t feel safe,” she said. “I didn’t feel good and that we shouldn’t do it, but he made me do it.”
Cifuentes said Hernandez would pose as a family member, check her out of school and then take her to a hotel. “What I want is for him to go to jail,” she said. “I don’t feel safe…He could harm me because I’m asking for help and he could find out and harm me. What he did was wrong. It’s not right. And I want the police to act.” Cifuentes says he sexually abused her five times over the course of three years.
Richmond Police moved to arrest Henandez because he may have become aware of their investigation. “When that happens, we feel it’s important to get them into custody, you know, whether it be to prevent them from fleeing, whether it be to protect the victim. All those are factors in which it would cause us to accelerate our investigation and take them into custody,” said Lt. Donald Patchin of the Richmond Police Department.
The pastor is being held on a $7 million bail, and authorities are looking into whether or not he has other potential victims.
I'm not going to say it but I'm sure you all are thinking it
He shoulda become a shrink. Then it can be called treatment.
Parenting is hard. You must be vigilant all the times. Everywhere.
So many parents drop their kids off at church thinking it’s church. It’s safe.
It’s school. It’s a family member. Always be on guard.
Call me skeptical with her making these accusations 8 years after the fact.
“Call me skeptical with her making these accusations 8 years after the fact.”
A lot of these sex abuse cases both catholic and protestant are being reported years, sometimes decades after the fact. How is it those cases are being prosecuted?
A pastor, eh? Would be great if there was some common factor in these incidents…
“Victor Manuel Hernandez-Pineda
I’m not going to say it but I’m sure you all are thinking it”
I’ll say it. Latin Americans don’t have the same cultural aversion to young women that Europeans and Americans do.
Even when they have UN-approved laws limiting marriages to 16 or older the fact is that outside of the upper classes that marriage or adult relationships at 13-15 is not uncommon.
The more bitter pill for Americans to take is the fact that many of us have grandmothers or great-grandmothers who were 13-16 when they got married.
In the current day the schools are openly encouraging sexual behavior among very young children so it is no surprise that a 13yo girl would have been picked up from her public school to go have a tryst with an older man.
After all, her teachers told her this was acceptable, didn’t they?
Then you don’t understand at all
I didn’t say it’s impossible. I said I’m skeptical.
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