CALIFORNIA
Daily Democrat
By Katrina Cameron, kcameron@bayareanewsgroup.com
POSTED: 04/26/16
MARTINEZ — An East Bay minister was charged with 23 counts of sexually abusing a teenage girl over a three-year period, police said.
The Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office charged Fernando Maldonado, 35, of Concord, on Monday, said Martinez police detective Sgt. Dave Mathers. He has been charged with lewd acts with a minor, unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and sodomy of a minor.
The alleged victim is now 17, police said Saturday. They have not released the girl’s city of residence.
The investigation began when the victim reported the alleged abuse April 18 to Martinez police, the agency leading the investigation. The abuse began when Maldonado was a minister and the victim was a parishioner at Morello Avenue Baptist Church in Martinez, police said.
Maldonado is a former resident of Martinez. Morello Avenue Baptist Church has since been shut down, Mathers said. Maldonado left that church to become a minister at Grace Bible Church in Pleasant Hill in 2014, where the victim began attending the church and the abuse continued, police said.
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