Overview
- Carlos Ramirez Valdez, 61, of Riverside, was sentenced on Oct. 24 after a jury in August found him guilty of longstanding abuse tied to church activities.
- He was convicted of 11 counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 and three counts of oral copulation or sexual penetration of a child 10 or younger.
- Prosecutors said the assaults occurred from 2012 to 2019, including repeated abuse of one child from ages 4 to 10 in a church basement and a van.
- Two other victims reported incidents from 2014–2015 and in 2017, describing assaults during a ride home from church and in a backyard shed, with police in Garden Grove and Riverside taking the reports in January 2020.
- Valdez served as a leader at Iglesia De Dios Ebenezer in Santa Ana and later as a pastor at another Santa Ana church; the Orange County DA’s Sexual Assault Unit prosecuted the case, with DA Todd Spitzer publicly condemning the crimes.