PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
May 16, 2019
By Jeremy Roebuck
As a teenager committed to her Roman Catholic faith, she thought she was doing everything right.
She volunteered as an altar server at her Roxborough parish. She sang in the choir and worked nights and weekends as a fill-in secretary at the church office.
And even when, at 16, she gave in to the sexual advances of her priest — the Rev. Armand Garcia — she said she believed him when he told her that God had put him in her life to take care of her.
Then came the time she refused.
“He came up from behind me and pushed me up against a wall. He held my arms down and spread my legs apart,” the now 21-year-old testified in a Philadelphia courtroom Thursday. “I was wearing my school uniform. I didn’t know what to do.”
That alleged 2014 sexual assault in the rectory of Immaculate Heart of Mary parish now forms the basis of one of the first criminal prosecutions of an area priest since the Archdiocese of Philadelphia recommitted itself to cracking down on sexual offenses after a scathing 2011 grand jury investigation that led to charges against six clerics.
The testimony of the woman — offered publicly for the first time Thursday — serves as the backbone of the government’s case. The Inquirer is withholding her name because she is an alleged victim of sexual assault.
Her composed and self-assured account convinced Municipal Court Judge Wendy L. Pew to hold Garcia for trial on charges including rape, sexual assault, and corruption of a minor.
Prosecutors also have charged the 50-year-old priest with filming a sex act involving a child — counts tied to cellphone video his accuser said he shot of their encounters on at least two occasions.
“He said he wanted to have something to remember it by,” the woman recalled. “I could only watch a few minutes. I was very uncomfortable.”
Garcia, who spent much of Thursday’s hearing with his head bowed and hands clenched in his lap, has denied the charges.
But unlike many of the cases of sexual misconduct involving priests that have kicked off a new wave of the global clergy abuse crisis in the last year, Garcia’s alleged assault was preceded by what his lawyer, William J. Brennan, described Thursday as a “long-standing, consensual sexual relationship” with his accuser.
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