(CA)
Sacramento Bee [Sacramento CA]
October 27, 2025
By Danielle Segura
A church leader who went on to become a pastor is accused of sexually assaulting three young girls between 2012 and 2019, California prosecutors say.
Carlos Ramirez Valdez, 61, of Riverside, was sentenced to 45 years to life in prison in connection with the assaults of girls he met as a leader at Iglesia De Dios Ebenezer Church, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said in an Oct. 24 news release.
Valdez’s sentencing comes after he was convicted in August of multiple felonies, prosecutors said. McClatchy News could not immediately reach the Santa Ana church for comment on Oct. 27. Attorney information for Valdez was not immediately available.
“Churches should be safe sanctuaries not hunting grounds for child molesters,” District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in the release. “These young girls were subjected to unimaginable abuse by someone in a position of trust.”
While Valdez worked as a church leader, he’s “accused of luring a girl into his van parked in the church parking lot or to the church’s basement to sexually assault the young girl repeatedly over a seven-year period,” prosecutors said.
The assaults started when the girl was 4 years old and spanned a seven-year period until she was 10, the district attorney’s office said. The girl eventually told a school counselor about the past abuse, prosecutors said.
A different child told Garden Grove police in January 2020 that she was sexually assaulted by Valdez “when he gave her a ride home from church” at age 9 between 2014 and 2015, prosecutors said.
The same month, another girl came forward to Riverside police, saying that “in 2017 Valdez had repeatedly sexually assaulted her in a backyard shed over an eight-month period,” prosecutors said, adding that she was 7 and 8 at the time.
After the alleged sexual assaults, Valdez went on to work as a pastor at a different Santa Ana church, prosecutors said. Santa Ana is about a 30-mile drive southeast from Los Angeles.
If you have experienced sexual assault and need someone to talk to, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline for support at 1-800-656-4673 or visit the hotline’s online chatroom.
This story was originally published October 27, 2025 at 10:03 AM.
Daniella Segura
Daniella Segura is a national real-time reporter with McClatchy. Previously, she’s worked as a multimedia journalist for weekly and daily newspapers in the Los Angeles area. Her work has been recognized by the California News Publishers Association. She is also an alumnus of the University of Southern California and UC Berkeley.