A youth pastor threatened to call federal immigration authorities on an underage girl and her family while he was coercing the girl into non-consensual sexual acts, say Florida police.
Luis Clarke, 38, was a youth pastor at now closed Abraza tu Sueno Church in Pembroke Pines, Florida. During his time there, he sexually assaulted a teen girl numerous times over six months, the Broward Sheriff's Office said.
The assault began when she was 15 in August 2016 until February 2017 when she was 16, an arrest report said.
The girl “never reported the sexual acts to her parents and went along with [Clarke’s] request because he threatened to report her and her family’s illegal status to authorities,” according to the report.
Another child who was forced to witness the multiple rapes reported them to authorities. The boy went to police on April 3, and the man was arrested last night, April 25, per reports. Excerpt:
One time, Clarke picked up the girl and a 15-year-old boy at a Hollywood park, took them to his residence where he activated his home alarm so that they couldn’t leave without triggering it and forced the boy to watch Clarke have sex with the girl, according to the arrest report.
“[Clarke] continued to yell at [the boy] demanding that he watch the sexual act,” Detective Alkie Lewis-Siminies wrote in a police report.
During the sexual assault, Clarke repeatedly shouted at the boy, called him gay and proclaimed more than once that the girl “belongs to him,” the boy told investigators.
It was the boy who went to police on April 3 to report Clarke, Xiques said.
Police made their arrest after Clarke left his home a little before 7 a.m. Thursday.
From Tonya Alanez, reporting for the South Florida Sun Sentinel:
[via Rebekah Entralgo Fernández/@rebekahentralgo]