Former ROC Pastor Geronimo Aguilar sentencing begins
Fort Worth Star-Telegram/October 12, 2015
By Mitch Mitchell
Fort Worth, Texas — With testimony that echoed women’s words in June, the sentencing phase of the sexual assault trial of a successful minister began Monday in Tarrant County court.
Geronimo Scott Aguilar, 45, was convicted in June on all seven counts of an indictment that stemmed mostly from a sexual relationship he had with one girl that started when she was 13 and he was in his 20s.
He was also convicted of having sex with the girl’s younger sister, beginning when she was 11.
Aguilar elected to have state District Judge Louis Sturns assess his sentence. Sturns delayed sentencing, as is usual, for the preparation of a pre-sentencing report. But in this case, Tarrant County prosecutor Eric Nickols said, both the defense and prosecutors asked Sturns to hear several more witnesses before making his decision.
“The first part of the trial was about what he did,” Nickols said. “This part of the trial is about who he is.”
During Monday’s testimony, one witness said she began having sex with Aguilar when she was a teenager in California. Earlier testimony established that Aguilar’s father was pastor of the Set Free Church in Anaheim, Calif., and members lived in communal homes.
The witness on Monday said that years later, she read an email that Aguilar sent to her 17-year-old daughter. He used the same words with her daughter that he used with her when she was about her daughter’s age, the woman testified.
“Every great man of God had concubines,” Aguilar’s email to her daughter read, the woman said.
She continued to have sex with Aguilar after she married, she said. Her husband had worked with Aguilar in the California church and was his best friend, she said.
When she told her husband about the ongoing extramarital relationship, Aguilar visited their house to talk with her husband, who ordered his wife to start packing, she testified. Aguilar returned with an envelope containing about $10,000, and they moved to another state.
The woman said she and her husband eventually divorced over her relationship with Aguilar.
“I’ve wanted to come out with this for a long time,” the woman testified.
The Star-Telegram typically does not name accusers in sexual assault cases.
In 1995, Aguilar moved to Fort Worth, where he began a music ministry at New Beginnings Church. In 2003, he moved to Richmond, Va., where he founded the Richmond Outreach Center, which started in a warehouse with 19 members and grew to have as many as 10,000 in attendance.
Aguilar was fired as senior pastor in 2013.
Aguilar’s attorneys, Heather Barberri and Thomas Pavlinic, put on witnesses Monday who asked Sturns to show leniency.
“Justice is represented by a set of scales,” said Greg Booth, a Richmond Outreach Center member who testified on Aguilar’s behalf.
“Personally, Geronimo has never shown me anything except for mercy and grace,” Booth said. “There is some bad stuff on one side of the scale, but there was a whole lot of good. And the good that he did has not stopped because he has been convicted.”
Aguilar was convicted of two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child that each carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. He was also convicted of three counts of sexual assault of a child under 17 and two counts of indecency with a child, each second-degree felonies, each which carry maximum sentences of 20 years.
The punishment phase is expected to continue today.
Prosecutor Elizabeth Kamber is assisting Nickols.
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