MESA, AZ — Eight teenage boys held at a Southwest Key Programs facility in Mesa were sexually abused by a worker, according to federal court documents. The worker, 25-year-old Levian Pacheco, faces several charges stemming from incidents alleged to have occurred between August 2016 and July 2017.
The case, first reported by ProPublica, is one of a string of reports of serious accusations of sexual misconduct inside the facilities run by Southwest Key, a nonprofit that will be paid $458 million under the Unaccompanied Alien Children Program this year to house 1,500 migrant children in 26 facilities across Arizona, Texas and California.
Eight of those facilities are in Arizona.
According to the ProPublica report, Pacheco, who is HIV-positive, is accused of performing oral sex on two of the teenagers and attempting to force one of them to penetrate him annally. The report said the other six teens, all of whom are between 15 and 17 years of age, accused Pacheco of groping them through their clothing.
Pachero had worked at the Casa Kokopelli shelter for four months before a complete background check was completed, according to court documents and an agency official, who told ProPublica records didn’t show any previous arrests for convictions for sex offenses. The facility had been cited in August 2017 by the Arizona Department of Health Services for failing to complete background checks.
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The report Thursday came a day after a worker at a different Southwest Key facility was accused of molesting a 14-year-old immigrant girl.
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Pacheco pleaded not guilty and denied the allegations. His attorney, federal public defender Benjamin Good, wrote in court filings that the allegations cover an “extraordinarily broad range of dates and lack specificity.”
“We are looking forward to defending Mr. Pacheco in court,” Good said in an email to The Associated Press.
Austin, Texas-based Southwest Key has come under increased scrutiny in recent years and has been cited for hundreds of violations by state regulators in Texas, according to a report by Texas Monthly. Some of the reports were fairly benign, the magazine said, but others involve reports of sexual abuse of the youths housed in the shelters.
Officials with the Trump administration insist the privately run shelters, including those operated by Southwest Key, are safe and even fun places for children. However, ProPublica reports show police nationwide have responded to hundreds of calls reporting sex crimes at shelters that house migrant children, including the 3,000 recently separated from their families at the border.
One of those calls resulted in the conviction of a Tucson shelter worker for molestation, according to records obtained by the Arizona Republic. In 2015, a 15-year-old boy who had just arrived in the United States five days earlier accused Southwest Key employee Oscar Trujillo of groping him through his trousers and trying to pull them down. Trujillo was convicted of class 5 sexual abuse, the report said.
Two years later, in 2017, a girl at the Southwest Key facility in Glendale accused a staff member of making sexually suggestive comments and dancing inappropriately in front of her and other children there. The Arizona Republic report said Southwest Key officials told police the matter would be handled internally.
In another case, a 6-year-old separated from her family was sexually molested at a Southwest Key shelter outside of Phoenix, according to a report by The Nation.
ProPublica said it discovered the case involving Pacheco while researching inspection records at the Southwest Key facilities in Arizona. Federal officials knew about the allegations against Pacheco when they were questioned by Congress about conditions at the shelters, according to the report, but did not mention it. Read the grand jury indictment.
ProPublica analyzed five years’ worth of police logs about calls to Southwest Key facilities involving dozens of runaways, reports of sexual contact among kids at shelters and sexual molestation of the children by employees.
Health and Human Services spokesman Kenneth Wolfe told ProPublica said the agency has removed all unaccompanied minors from the Casa Kokopelli shelter in Mesa, but didn’t say when a stop placement order would be issued.
“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,” Wolfe told ProPublica. “Any allegation of abuse or neglect is taken seriously.”
Southwest Key spokesman Jeff Eller told ProPublica in an email that he couldn’t comment on specific cases, and didn’t elaborate when asked how the allegations against Pacheco escaped detection for nearly a year.
“Any employee accused of abuse is immediately suspended and law enforcement called. This is what we did in this case,” he said, adding the allegations against the former worker were reported to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the shelter system, and the appropriate state agency.
ProPublica also asked Eller what steps Southwest Key would take to assure the public that children are safe.
“We find the premise of your question dishonorable,” Eller wrote.
“We report these cases to law enforcement and state agencies when they happen,” he said. “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.”
(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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