Volunteer in Nursery at Tarrant County Church Jailed on Child Sex Charges
By Matt Peterson
A one-time volunteer in the nursery at a North Richland Hills church was arrested Wednesday on charges of child sexual abuse, police said. Francisco Guevara, 65, of Colleyville was booked on two charges of continuous sexual abuse of a child and one count of indecency with a child. He remains in the North Richland Hills Jail on $125,000 bail. The allegations date back seven years when Guevara was working at St. John the Apostle Catholic Church, police said. At the time of the alleged abuse, the victims were between 4 and 7 years old. Two of the offenses occurred in the nursery, police said, and the third took place in Colleyville. Detectives began investigating in July when one of the victims came forward. Colleyville police also took part in the investigation. Shortly after the allegations came to light, a deacon read a letter about the investigation to parishioners during services at the church, 7341 Glenview Drive. The letter stated that several children reported that the abuse happened during evening prayers, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. This isn't the first child-sex investigation for the North Richland Hills church. Joseph Mangone, a former lay leader in the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth and the church's director of liturgy, was sentenced to five years in prison in 2003 for raping a 13-year-old girl. A few years earlier, the Rev. Philip Magaldi was removed from active ministries at the church after allegations of sexual misconduct arose in Fort Worth and Rhode Island. Magaldi, who was HIV-positive, was in the process of being defrocked when he died in 2008 at age 72.
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