3+ Days Later: Baptist Church Denies Pastor

7 News Belize
November 10, 2012

http://www.7newsbelize.com/sstory.php?nid=23884


On Wednesday's Newscast, 7News showed you 46 year-old Julio Cesar Garcia, the purported pastor from Franks Eddy Baptist Church who is in prison for allegedly having sexual intercourse with an 11 year-old female, a member of the church.

The 11 year-old alleged that Garcia had intercourse with her once in the church house and on another occasion at his home.

As a result, police arrested and charged him with 2 counts of unlawful carnal knowledge and he was arraigned and remanded to prison on Wednesday.

It is a heinous case of abuse of authority and trust, and the community is trying to recover from this betrayal.

But if you noticed, we used the word, "purported", because the Baptist Association of Belize says that Garcia is not the pastor of the church, in fact, they don't even know if he is a pastor at all.

In a press release sent out from the Association - ALMOST FOUR DAYS AFTER THE STORY BROKE, they refuted any claim that Garcia is associated with the Franks Eddy Baptist Church.

According to the release, the real pastor of that church is Oscar Aguilar. It's a major twist in the story, so today, 7News made several exhaustive attempts to contact several members from Baptist Association of Belize. We approached 3 members, including Pastor Lloyd Stanford, who refused to give us any comments; the Executive Secretary, Henry Baizar, who told us that he was not authorized to give any further comment; and Acting President, Pastor Samuel Brown.

When we asked Pastor Brown for comment, he told us that the Association has a Board which needs to give any authorization before he can give any interviews.

These men all say that Garcia is not the Pastor of the church, so where did we get that from? It came from no less than more than 15 members of the community with whom our news team had extensive conversations when we were following the story in the village. Garcia even told police that he is the pastor of the church. It's a major issue because the community of Franks Eddy believes this man to be the pastor, and the Association - after days of not saying anything - is now saying that he is only a member of the church in Belize City.