Gustavo Arellano needs a stack of scorecards to keep up with the molestation misdeeds that have swirled around the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County for years. Maybe he can loan us a blank one for this week's allegations involving non-Catholic clergy in OC.
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Fullerton resident Timothy Han, a 21-year-old youth pastor, pleaded guilty Thursday to having sex with a 15-year-old girl in the parking lot of his Baptist church in Cypress. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 12.
The charges Han pleaded guilty to were felony unlawful sexual intercourse and a misdemeanor count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Last month, he took the girl to the parking lot at Miracle Land
Baptist Church, smoked marijuana and had sex with
her.
Jose Rama Campoverde, the 45-year-old pastor at Ministerio Cristo Vive church in Anaheim, will be arraigned in Fullerton Tuesday on various charges related this his allegedly having had improper contact with teen-age girls as young as 13. The cases stretch back to March 2004, and he met some of the girls through the church, prosecutors say.
He will face on one felony count of lewd acts on a child under 14, five felony counts of lewd acts on a child, two misdemeanor counts of child annoyance, and a sentencing enhancement allegation for lewd acts on multiple children. If convicted, he could get up to 11 years and four months in state prison.
While watching a movie at the church with a 14-year-old girl in July
2004, Campoverde allegedly kissed her cheek. While teaching her to drive that
same month, he is accused of putting his hand over her hand on the
stick shift and caressing it and of putting her hand back on the stick
shift when she pulled it away. In March 2009, he allegedly touched the
by-then 17-year-old's buttocks.
He allegedly put his hand down the shirt of a 13-year-old girl on April 15, 2007, and kissed and hugged her and touched her buttocks on two occasions between that month and September 2009.
In March 2009, he is accused of befriending a 15-year-old girl through the church, visiting her home and hugging her from behind, pressing his body against hers, kissing her on the cheek and touching her upper thigh, near her buttocks.
He allegedly picked a 16-year-old girl up from school in May 2009 and caressing her cheek and massaging her leg and arm, and of also attempting to touch her vagina and kiss her.
The last girl reported the alleged assault to Anaheim police on Sept. 11, 2009, which led to an investigation that uncovered the other girls. A protective order was then issued barring Campoverde from having
any contact with the girls without the presence of a third party.
Supervising District Attorney Investigator Tim Craig is searching for additional information and possible victims. You can call him at (714) 347-8558.
Campoverde has a prior 1992 conviction for the sale or
distribution of drugs.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.