A Tampa pastor, 81, allegedly sexually abused three girls under the age of 12.
The Tampa Police Department said that Jesus Manuel Castellano-Mojica was arrested on Friday, reported Tampa Bay Times. He was the pastor of Grace Church of the Nazarene which is located at a home on Wallace Avenue.
The Department of Children and Families informed cops on Feb. 14 that a girl, 7, might have been the victim of sexual abuse. An investigation was opened after which police found two additional victims, another seven-year-old girl and a woman, 28, who said that she was abused by Castellano-Mojica when she was 11 years old. Castellano-Mojica was the foster parent for all three girls, police said, according to Fox 13 Tampa Bay.
His neighbors said that they did not know the pastor well, and that they saw him mowing his lawn. They said that at times they would see kids at the home, but they weren't aware he was running any church. Neighbor Ken Copeland said "they are not paying attention to their job, and they're not going and visiting these families." According to him, they are not making sure "there is a safe environment for them, a clean safe home away from these predators."
Castellano-Mojica's daughter said that the church gave no comment on his arrest. Cops don't believe there are any more victims of sexual abuse. The pastor was formally charged with two counts of molestation and two counts of sexual battery. He remained in the Hillsborough County Jail on Tuesday on $200,000 bond.
In a similar incident, an arrest report for Paul Dyal, a Jacksonville pastor who is charged with sexually abusing a minor, said that one child was assaulted up to 30 times. The assault allegedly happened over the span of seven years, Action News Jax reported earlier this month. The 78-year-old pastor founded the Jacksonville Assembly of the Body of Christ church in Northwest Jacksonville. He is behind bars with no bond on a capital sexual battery charge.
In connection to the case, other suspects Vernon Williamson and Jerome Teschendorf were arrested in Oklahoma.
The victim, who was reportedly sexually assaulted starting in March 1979, said that Dyal would bathe her in his house.
