Southwest Key employee sentenced for sexually abusing migrants
Feb 1, 2019, 2:25 PM
(AP Photo/Eric Gay)
(AP Photo/Eric Gay)
PHOENIX — A former Southwest Key employee was sentenced to 19 years in prison for sexually abusing seven teenage boys over a yearlong period at a Mesa facility.
Levian D. Pacheco, a 25-year-old Phoenix resident, was given the sentence on Jan. 14, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona announced Friday.
He was found guilty by a federal jury last September of seven counts of abusive sexual contact with a ward and three counts of sexual abuse of a ward.
Pacheco sexually abused the boys at the Casa Kokopelli Southwest Key Facility in Mesa between August 2016 and July 2017. He allegedly exposed some of them to the HIV virus.
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The boys were being held at the facility pending possible detention. Pacheco was a youth care worker at the facility and was in charge of supervising them.
Another Southwest Key employee was arrested for allegedly molesting a minor in his care.
Fernando Magaz Negrete, 32, was arrested last August for kissing and inappropriately touching a 14-year-old girl at a Phoenix facility.
Southwest Key facilities in Arizona stopped accepting minors last October and two facilities — Casa Phoenix in Phoenix and Hacienda Del Sol in Youngtown — shut their doors after the company settled with the state over a missed deadline regarding employee background checks.
