MARTINEZ — A minister-turned-fugitive who jumped bail after hearing his victim testify was convicted of 23 counts of child molestation Wednesday.
After the verdict, authorities revealed that six families who supported the defendant had put up their homes to pay the $106,000 bond that freed him, and are now on the hook for his $1.295 million bail.
Defendant Fernando Maldonado, 37, will face a potential prison sentence of more than 30 years if he is caught, but he’s presumed to be in hiding in Mexico. Jurors convicted him of sexually abusing a young girl for years starting when she was 13 years old. Her testimony was corroborated by DNA, and Maldonado turned up missing the day after she took the stand.
“Absconding to Mexico knowing six families put up their homes to bail him out demonstrates how selfish he is,” prosecutor Jordan Sanders said after the verdict. “Those families face real jeopardies to their homes.”
The trial continued on without Maldonado after a judge determined he was voluntarily absent. Jurors took less than three hours to reach the verdict, a clean sweep of guilt across the board.
Maldonado was a minister at the now-defunct Morello Avenue Baptist Church in Martinez and the victim was a parishioner there, police said. He left that church to become a minister at Grace Bible Church in Pleasant Hill in 2014, where the victim also began attending and the abuse continued, police said. The victim came forward last year
“I hope this trial and verdict provides her some closure,” Sanders said. “She had the courage to come forward and disclose a heavy secret…my prayers are with her and my office fully supports her needs moving forward.”
Defense attorney Patrick Riggs, who told jurors he made no excuses for his client’s absence, suggested the victim’s statements weren’t corroborated by physical evidence, and were contradicted by other testimony. But in addition to DNA evidence corroborating the girl’s story he’d had sex with her in a church, prosecutors had an admission of guilt from Maldonado during a surreptitiously-recorded call between him and the victim.
“People are not always who you think they are, or want them to be,” Sanders said, when asked for his thoughts on the case. “A community thought (Maldonado) was a moral pastor but behind closed doors his character was revealed.
