Another Southwest Key employee was arrested for sex abuse at shelter, court documents show

A Southwest Key employee accused of molesting eight teenage boys at a migrant shelter in Mesa is scheduled to go on trial this month, according to court documents.

Levian Pacheco, a youth care worker at the Mesa facility, is alleged to have abused two of the teens by performing oral sex on them, and attempting to force one of them to have anal sex, according to court documents. He's also accused of touching six others in the genital area over their clothing. The boys ranged in age from 15 to 17.

When Pacheco, 25, was arrested he told police he had HIV, court documents show.

This is the third known arrest of a staff member at an Arizona migrant shelter related to allegations of molesting children.

An employee of a Southwest Key facility in Phoenix, Fernando Magaz Negrete, 32, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of molesting a 14-year-old girl in July. He is accused of kissing the girl multiple times and touching her breasts and crotch over her clothes in the bedroom she shared with two other minors at the facility.

An employee at Southwest Key's Tucson facility was convicted of sex abuse in connection with a 2015 incident.

The Texas-based nonprofit houses juveniles who illegally entered the country by themselves and, more recently, children who were separated from their families after illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Pacheco's alleged abuse predates the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy, which led to the family separations.

Conditions at migrant shelters have come under scrutiny amid public uproar over the federal government's separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents and guardians.

Southwest Key spokesman Jeff Eller declined to comment on the Pacheco case.

He said in a statement that children are told when they arrive at their shelters that they have a right to not be abused. The children can call police, the Department of Child Safety, or Health and Human Service's Office of Refugee Resettlement at any time, he said.

Employees accused of sexual misconduct are immediately suspended and reported to law enforcement, Eller said.

"Southwest Key Programs does extensive work to prevent all forms of abuse," Eller said in a statement. "Our twenty-year history of taking care of children shows that when we see a problem, we report it, we fix it and we do it immediately."

Pacheco's attorney, Benjamin Good, declined to comment on the case, saying, "We are looking forward to Mr. Pacheco's day in court."

Most serious allegations to date

The allegations against Pacheco span an 11-month period, starting in August 2016, and often involved situations in which Pacheco was alone with the teens in bedrooms or bathrooms, according to court documents.

In one incident, Pacheco is accused of abusing a teen in medical isolation three times over the course of two weeks, the documents state.

The first incident occurred the morning after the teen underwent surgery. When he woke from the influence of medication he saw Pacheco in the room, according to court documents. Pacheco told him he had a "big one" and the teen told investigators he could see that Pacheco had "ejaculated on himself."

The incidents escalated, according to court documents. The boy said while he was lying down playing video games while still in medical isolation, Pacheco told him to "take his penis out of his pants." He then touched him in his genital area over his clothing.

The teen said Pacheco later came in to take out the garbage, but put the boy's video game controller on another bed, pulled down the victim's pants, shook his penis and placed it in his mouth.

Another boy told investigators he was awakened by the sound of Pacheco making noises with the blinds in his room, according to court documents. Pacheco then told the boy he was going to perform oral sex on him, pulled his pants down and put his penis in his mouth three times.

In another incident, Pacheco tried to force a teen to have anal sex when he cornered him in the bathroom at midnight, court documents show.

The other allegations are that Pacheco touched boys in their genital area, sometimes multiple times.

Two teens alleged Pacheco grabbed their penises over their clothing while they were in a bathroom. In another alleged incident, he touched a boy in the same way twice during a two-week period while the boy cleaned his room, according to court documents.

One teen said Pacheco came into his room after a soccer game and said in Spanish, "My love, I have arrived," according to court documents. He then grabbed his genital area while the boy put on a shirt. The boy told investigators Pacheco laughed and told him he, "had it big."

One of the teens told investigators that Pacheco reached out to him and another migrant over Facebook after they left the shelter.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva skeptical of migrant shelter tour Rep. Raúl Grijalva says “I’m assuming I’m seeing the best of” Tucson immigration facility and that the delay “lowers the believability factor.”

Pacheco claims investigator lied

In a motion to dismiss some of the counts, Pacheco's attorney, Good, said the lead investigator with Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, Lauren Hanover, lied to a grand jury.

Good claimed the agent left out information from an interview that contradicted one of the allegations.

The transcript of the interview shows a witness unable to confirm that Pacheco had sexually abused a teen. The witness said that Pacheco had only tried to touch the boy's genitals.

In a response to the motion, prosecutors noted that Hanover might not have had a full transcript of all the interviews at the time of his testimony. The witness later told authorities that he had also been abused by Pacheco.

The trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 28 in Phoenix.

Agnel Philip is an investigative reporter at The Arizona Republic/azcentral.com. Reach him at aphilip@gannett.com, on Twitter at @agnel88_philip or on Facebook.

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