The allegations against the Southwest Key youth care worker are the latest in a series of serious accusations of sexual abuse inside the government’s immigrant youth shelters.
by Topher Sanders and Michael Grabell
This story includes graphic details of alleged sexual violence against minors.
A youth care worker for Southwest Key has been charged with 11 sex
offenses after authorities accused him of molesting at least eight
unaccompanied immigrant boys over nearly a year at one of the company’s
shelters in Mesa, Arizona, federal court records show.
The allegations against Levian D. Pacheco, who is HIV-positive,
include that he performed oral sex on two of the teenagers and tried to
force one of them to penetrate him anally. The other six teens — all
between 15 and 17 — said Pacheco had groped them through their clothing.
All of the incidents are alleged to have taken place between August
2016 and July 2017, according to a court filing last week that laid out
the government’s case.
The case, initially investigated by local police, is now proceeding
through U.S. District Court in Phoenix. Pacheco had worked at Southwest
Key’s Casa Kokopelli shelter, one of eight the company runs in Arizona,
since May 2016.
Casa Kokopelli was cited by the Arizona Department of Health Services
in 2017 for failing to complete background checks, including
fingerprinting, to ensure that employees hadn’t previously committed sex
offenses and other crimes, records show. Pacheco worked for nearly four
months without a complete background check, according to documents and
an agency official. Those records did not show any previous arrests or
convictions for sex offenses, they said.
Pacheco, 25, was indicted in August 2017 after an investigation by local
law enforcement and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
inspector general’s office. The current charges include eight counts of
abusive sexual contact with a ward and three counts of sexual acts with a
ward. Pacheco, who is in U.S. Marshals’ custody, could not be reached
for comment, but he denied the charges in court documents. His federal
public defender, Benjamin Good, said, “We are looking forward to
defending Mr. Pacheco in court.”
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Source: ProPublica
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