Wildomar’s Faith Baptist Church Perpetuated Culture of Secrecy Allowing Sex Abuse for Decades, Alleged Victims Claim
The Press-Enterprise
April Avila said she was 14 when her youth pastor at Faith Baptist Church in Wildomar began grooming her for sexual abuse. It started out as horseplay with Malo “Victor” Monteiro, who was twice the girl’s age. He would throw a playful jab to her arm, teasingly touch or tug at her hair, call her pet names, and often ask her to help with special projects and work. Then, things got intimate.
“What was once a friendly punch to the shoulder became a caressing touch. He would often wrestle me to the ground in response to teasing, his hands ending up in the wrong places. He would splash water on my shirt or push me into a pool or the ocean and then stand and watch as I walked out, laughing and ogling the entire time,” Avila, 32, said in an “open letter” she recently posted on Facebook. Two other alleged victims of Monteiro, as well as Monteiro’s sister-in-law, Kathy Durbin, also have posted their stories on Facebook. Durbin claims to have been sexually abused in her teens by the church’s former bus director, which was never reported to police, even though church pastor Bruce Goddard and his wife knew about the allegations. The four women went public with their stories following Monteiro’s July 27 arrest by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department on suspicion of molesting several teenage girls from the church over an 18-year period, from 1999 to 2017. They said they hope that by coming forward, any others who have endured similar abuse will be encouraged to come forward as well. Monteiro, 45, of Colton has been charged with seven felony counts of sexual abuse and is being held on $225,000 bail at the Cois Byrd Detention Center in Murrieta. He has been appointed a deputy public defender and is scheduled for arraignment on Thursday, Aug. 16, at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta. Monteiro’s wife, Crystal Monteiro, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Lawsuit claims victim threatened Less than 10 days before Monteiro’s arrest, one of his alleged victims, Rachel Peach, filed a lawsuit against Faith Baptist Church in Riverside County Superior Court, alleging the church was negligent in allowing the abuse to occur. Peach claims her relationship with Monteiro started in the fall of 2007, when she was 15, and advanced to sexual intercourse in the summer of 2008. She said she had sex with Monteiro on 10 to 15 occasions. Monteiro, according to the lawsuit, threatened Peach, telling her if anyone found out “it would damage her reputation and he would simply deny it.” She claims the church was aware of other inappropriate sexual relationships between youth pastors and their congregants and should have known Monteiro had been sexually abusing her. Bruce Goddard, pastor of Faith Baptist Church, did not return repeated telephone calls seeking comment. Grooming started with texts Although the Southern California News Group typically does not identify alleged victims of sexual abuse, Avila, Peach and another woman, Lea Ramirez, have come forward publicly with their stories. Ramirez claims she was 14 when she began receiving inappropriate text messages from Monteiro, who is married and has four children. “I was confused because he was a married man, but flattered that he was thinking about me. He was my youth pastor, after all,” Ramirez said in her Facebook post. She said she never had sexual intercourse with Monteiro, but added that he would make her feel guilty when she refused. “He then became very persistent and would say things like, ‘Stop pretending you don’t want it.’ ‘You’re all talk and no game.’ ‘You’re just a tease,’ ” Ramirez said in her Facebook post. She said Monteiro was the reason she left the church when she was 15. Durbin, Monteiro’s sister-in-law, alleges she was a victim not of Monteiro, but of the church’s former bus director — a man whom she considered a father figure and whose family she often babysat for. He initiated a sexual relationship with her in the early 1990s, when she was 15. He frequently complimented her on her looks, bought her gifts, and was someone Durbin could confide in. Father-daughter-like kisses on the cheek turned into kisses on the lips, and then the two started having sex. “I didn’t like it. I felt awkward and it was uncomfortable and gross,” said Durbin, 43, who now lives in Montana with her family. “I was emotionally his little girl, and so I let him have what he wanted to keep this father-daughter relationship going. I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back, it’s very clear that he had groomed me.” When Goddard learned of the relationship, he did not contact police, but instead moved the bus director, who was never charged with any crime and therefore is not being named, to another church out of state, according to Durbin. She said Goddard’s wife, Tammy Goddard, blamed her for what happened and called her a “homewrecker.” “She just assumed it was my fault. I just remember sitting there crying and feeling so completely alone. I remember regretting telling Pastor Goddard,” Durbin said in her Facebook post. She said she and Monteiro both attended the church as teens, and that Monteiro was aware of what happened to Durbin because he was dating her sister, whom he married. “Victor has used my story and the cover-up of my situation to keep multiple teen girls quiet about what he was doing to them,” Durbin said. “Victor told these girls my story and that nothing happened.” Monteiro heads to Menifee In September 2013, Goddard announced to his congregation that Monteiro was leaving Faith Baptist Church to start a new church in Menifee — Menifee Baptist Church — with longtime Faith Baptist member Pat Cook, Monteiro’s junior of 14 years and a former member of his youth group. Cook has served as pastor at Menifee Baptist since its inception in November 2013. Monteiro served as assistant pastor there until October 2016, when he abruptly left the church for undisclosed reasons, Cook said in an interview Thursday at his home. “He was supposed to speak at the service on that particular Sunday. He came up to me and was crying, and said, ‘Hey bro! We’re outta here!’ ” said Cook, 31. He said he asked Monteiro why he was leaving, but never got an answer. “I asked, ‘Are you going to come back next Sunday and say goodbye to the church?’ And he said, ‘Nope. You’re better with your words. You’ll figure out something to say.’ So that was that. I never got closure on the exact reason why he left.” Cook said he started attending Faith Baptist Church in 1998, when he was in sixth grade. When he entered his teen years he became a member of Monteiro’s youth group. A friendship was forged. Throughout his time at Faith Baptist, Cook said he never suspected Monteiro of anything inappropriate involving female members of his youth group, or anyone else at the church for that matter. “He was one of my bros, one of my closest friends,” Cook said. “The general consensus is, ‘How did we miss this?’ We didn’t have a clue.” Some of Monteiro’s alleged victims say there was another reason for his departure from Faith Baptist in 2013: He was involved in an inappropriate relationship with another church member. Cook said he had heard rumors about it in 2015 and confronted Goddard about it. “(Goddard) told me he knew of no allegations of immorality (against Monteiro) and that he never crossed any lines morally,” Cook said. “I regret that I never asked Victor about it.” Cook said there are no teenagers in his roughly 50-member congregation at Menifee Baptist Church, which operates out of the multipurpose room at Southshore Elementary School. The congregation is still growing, but as of now there is still no youth group. Therefore, Monteiro had no contact with any teenage girls while serving as assistant pastor at the church from 2013 to 2016, Cook said. The shock of Monteiro’s arrest prompted Cook to reach out to his congregants and friends on Facebook with his own post. “My heart is shattered over this,” he wrote in his post, encouraging others to come forward and talk to someone if they were victimized. Since posting the Facebook status update on Aug. 5, Cook said he was contacted by two other women who also claim to have been victimized by Monteiro. Cook said he provided them the number to the Riverside County sheriff’s detective on the case, Tony Pelato. Pelato did not return repeated telephone calls for an update on the case. Apostates speak out Those who claim to have been victimized or witnessed questionable conduct at Faith Baptist Church in Wildomar said the church maintains a culture in which women are marginalized. The church, they say, sends a strong message to members not to question its leaders, who are referred to as “men of God.” “I found that, if anything, the girls were the ones blamed for being inappropriate. It was a girl’s fault if something happened to her,” Avila said in her Facebook post. She noted one incident in which a female church worker approached her and a group of girls and told them they were being “too friendly” with Monteiro, and that he was a “man of God” and they needed to respect his position. Randy Lanning, who attended Faith Baptist for 13 years and graduated from its school, Faith Baptist Academy, knew Monteiro well. He said he attended the church from 1999 to 2012, and described Monteiro as “extremely charismatic” and well-liked at the church. “He was my teacher. He was a mentor,” Lanning said in a telephone interview. “Victor was always funny, outgoing, and with my personality we hit it off very well. We did a lot activities together and did a lot of goofy, stupid videos.” He said he never suspected anything untoward about Monteiro until the allegations against him surfaced. “I can remember, very vividly, an encounter between him and one of the (alleged) victims,” Lanning said. He said the incident occurred during a winter camp hosted by the church in the San Bernardino Mountains in the early 2000s. Monteiro and the alleged victim were a little too friendly, playing and rolling around in the snow, gazing in awe at one another, Lanning said. “I remember vividly seeing the face on one of the victims thinking, ‘Why is this so passionate?’ And now I know,” Lanning said. “It was just pushing and shoving on the ground — like light wrestling that to me was an odd behavior. I remember being suspicious, feeling that something about it wasn’t right.” While attending Faith Baptist Academy, Lanning said suspicion arose about a different staff member having an inappropriate relationship with an underage girl. When Goddard was informed, he didn’t do anything about it, and admonished the messengers for reporting their suspicions. “Essentially, we shouldn’t go about questioning the leadership — the man of God,” Lanning said. “Though they did not scream, shout and publicize that they oppress women, their actions and how they operate in their culture does oppress women.” He said he and his wife decided to leave the church when she became pregnant. “It just wasn’t an environment we wanted to raise our kids in,” Lanning said. In her Facebook post, Peach said what happened to her was something she put in the back of her mind and forced herself to never think about again. “I literally convinced myself it didn’t happen and that I was just being dramatic and moved on with my life,” she said. “I’m writing this to bring awareness. If this happened to me. If this happened to April. If this happened to Lea. It can happen to you. It can happen to your daughter, to your sister, to your best friend, to your niece, to your granddaughter. No one is safe from sexual assault. “No more blindly following the ‘Man of God.’ No more protecting the ‘Man of God.’ No more protecting the church,” Peach said. “I stayed silent for 10 years. Not anymore.”
|
.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.