PHOENIX — Levian D. Pacheco, 25, a former Southwest Key youth care worker, was sentenced to 19 years in prison, after being convicted of molesting seven unaccompanied alien minors.
Pacheco, who was sentenced in federal court on Jan. 14, was previously convicted by a federal jury of seven counts of abusive sexual contact with a ward and three counts of sexual abuse of a ward.
At his trial, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Dimitra H. Sampson and Tracy Van Buskirk presented evidence that Pacheco sexually abused numerous teenage boys at the Casa Kokopelli Southwest Key Facility in Mesa, said a release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Arizona.
The minors were being held in detention in this facility pending possible deportation.
Pacheco was employed as a youth care worker at the facility between August 2016 and July 2017, and was in charge of supervising the minors.
The jury convicted Pacheco of sexually abusing seven victims, some of whom he abused more than once. The criminal acts included touching the boys’ genitalia over their clothes and additional sexual abuse.
Pacheco’s sentence was increased because he exposed some of his victims to the HIV virus, said the release, which was disseminated on Friday.
The maximum sentence for sexual abuse of a ward is 15 years in prison; the maximum for abusive sexual contact with a ward is 2 years in prison.
Rep. Bob Thorpe, who has fought for an investigation of Southwest Key by Arizona officials since the organization began processing Unaccompanied Alien Minors during the Obama administration, stated, “Once again, here is another tragic example of President Obama’s established failed immigration policies, where children are separated from their illegal immigrant parents and placed in facilities like Southwest Key, where local officials and law enforcement were denied access and oversight. For almost a year, multiple children, who were thought to be under the protection of federal authorities, were instead sexually abused by this male employee. This sexual predator / monster inflected these innocent children with life-long emotional scars and incurable sexually-transmitted diseases. It was a horrific failure of responsibility by employees and officials at Southwest Key and the federal government, who must also be held legally and morally responsible.”
U.S. District Judge Steven P. Logan ordered the sentences for several of Pacheco’s counts to run consecutively. His prison sentence will be followed by lifetime supervised release.