HIV-Positive Man Molested 8 Teens While Employed At Immigrant Center: Report

An HIV-positive former youth care worker has been accused of molesting eight immigrant teenagers at a Southwest Key-run facility in Phoenix, Arizona, according to a report by ProPublica.

The employee in question was Levian D. Pacheco, 25, who was charged with 11 sex offenses, according to records filed with the District Court in Phoenix, for numerous incidents involving children between the age of 15 and 17 — all of which took place between August 2016 and July 2017. His trial is set to start on Aug 28 in Phoenix.

Pacheco, who worked at Southwest Key’s immigrant center at Casa Kokopelli in Phoenix and is currently in the custody of U.S. Marshals after being indicted in August 2017, faces eight counts of abusive sexual contact with a ward and three counts of sexual acts with a ward, the report said.

The accused allegedly performed oral sex on two of his victims and also tried to force one of them to penetrate him anally. Apart from these reported incidents, six other teens at the facility accused Pacheco of sexually groping them.

In its website, Southwest Key boasts of being a “national, nonprofit organization” that “is committed to keeping kids out of jails and prisons and home with their families, in their communities. We do this through three areas of programming: youth justice alternatives, immigrant children's shelters, and education.”

When asked about Pacheco’s case, Jeff Eller, a spokesman for Southwest Key told ProPublica, “Any employee accused of abuse is immediately suspended and law enforcement called. This is what we did in this case.”

“We report these cases to law enforcement and state agencies when they happen,” he added. “We educate every child in our care upon arrival to the facility of their right to be free from abuse or neglect in this program and this country. This message is repeated to the children throughout the duration of their stay at our shelters.”

Pacheco was removed from the center shortly after the victims started coming forward with allegations against him in July 2017.

However, despite the precautions Eller claimed that the organization takes when it comes to preventing such incidents from happening, the report states that Pacheco’s case wasn’t an isolated one. A similar streak of accusations plagued other immigrant youth centers run by Southwest Key across the state.

Fernando Magaz Negrete, an employee at a Southwest Key facility in Glendale, Arizona, was arrested Tuesday on allegations that he kissed and rubbed a 14-year-old girl’s private parts. In an older case, a 46-year-old youth care worker was convicted of groping a 15-year-old boy at another facility in Tucson, Arizona.

In fact, in a 2017 report by Arizona Department of Health Services, the company’s Casa Kokopelli center was cited for failing to meet standard practices of an immigrant center, including hiring staff members without running a complete background check. Pacheco himself reportedly worked at the center for the first four months without having his history evaluated.

The Health & Human Services (HHS) spokesman Kenneth Wolfe said the agency has removed all unaccompanied minors from the Casa Kokopelli shelter and issued a stop placement order for the center. It is unclear as to when the order is scheduled to expire.

“These are vulnerable children in difficult circumstances, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS’ Administration for Children and Families treats our responsibility for each child with the utmost care,” he said. “Any allegation of abuse or neglect is taken seriously.”

Pacheco told authorities that he was HIV-positive only after he was arrested. Following this, officials at the Casa Kokopelli center educated the children what HIV is and also took a couple of his victims to get tested. The results of the tests are not clear.

The report came a day after an immigration lawyer claimed that a toddler had died shortly after being released from an immigrant detention center in Dilley, Texas, run by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), due to "negligent care," sending social media into a frenzy.