Five Women Sue La Luz del Mundo and Naasón Joaquín García Over Alleged Abuse

Naasón Joaquín García, leader of the La Luz del Mundo church, pleaded guilty in June 2022 to charges of sexually abusing minors from his congregation. Reports differ on the details of the pleas. The BBC said he pleaded guilty “last week” to three counts of sexually abusing girls from his congregation, and Marca gave June 6, 2022, as the date of the plea to three counts. NBC News reported that he pleaded guilty to two counts of forcible oral copulation involving minors and one count of performing a lewd act on a child.

The sentences were also reported differently. The BBC said García, then 53, was sentenced in a Los Angeles court to 16 years and eight months in prison. Marca gave the same term, and NBC News reported 16 years. Grunge and the San Diego Union-Tribune reported a 17-year sentence. Christianity Today reported that he was sentenced for sexual offenses against minors but did not give a term in the summary provided.

After sentencing, Marca reported that García was transferred to a California state prison in Kern County to serve his sentence. Grunge, writing in 2022, said he remained incarcerated at the California Institution for Men. The sources do not reconcile these two locations.

NBC News reported that a lawyer for García’s victims said they planned to sue others. Later, five women filed a lawsuit against La Luz del Mundo and García in California state court. The lawsuit claims that García, a convicted felon, admitted to various child sex crimes earlier that year. It also claims he raped hundreds of people and forced victims to call him “uncle.” These are allegations in the lawsuit and have not been established in court. Protecting children and other vulnerable people from abuse, as in Mark 9:42, is central to how the victims’ advocates have framed their demands.

Christianity Today reported that the Mexican megachurch, based in Guadalajara, compared García to the Apostle Paul, according to the article’s headline. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that dissidents within La Luz del Mundo were pressuring authorities and seeking additional charges against García, whom it described as the church’s current leader and whom it called an “apostle.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that a Reddit group had become a flashpoint in the sex abuse scandal at La Luz del Mundo, a global church with its flagship temple in Guadalajara, Mexico.