TUCSON (AZ)
Tucson.com [Tucson, AZ]
November 25, 2025
By Emily Hamer, Tim Steller
A Tucson pastor accused of failing to report alleged child sex crimes must be evaluated for competency before he stands trial, a Pima County judge ordered Monday.
Superior Court Judge Mark Hotchkiss agreed with a request by Pastor Isaac Noriega’s attorney that his client should be medically evaluated.
In a Nov. 12 court filing, attorney Douglas W. Taylor argued that Noriega, 83, is incompetent to stand trial due to dementia. He cited a doctor’s report saying Noriega has “late phase mild stage dementia, currently progressing into moderate stage dementia.”
Two doctors, one chosen by the defense and another by the court, will evaluate Noriega before a Jan. 26 competency hearing.
Noriega, longtime pastor of Golden Dawn Tabernacle on Tucson’s south side, was arrested in June and charged with two counts of failure to report child abuse or neglect of a minor, one felony count and one misdemeanor. He faces up to two-and-a-half years in prison.
The charges stem in part from an Arizona Daily Star/Lee Enterprises investigation that found the pastor and church leaders knew about and ignored decades of child sexual abuse allegations within the church community.
Twenty former congregants accused the church, which also goes by the name Tabernaculo Emanuel, of being a “cult.”
Former members of the congregation decried the incompetency claim as a way to avoid accountability.
“I think he’s telling two different things to two different audiences,” said John Calvo, a former member who has been publishing research on the church for more than two years.
“To the court he’s claiming that he is not competent to stand trial because he has dementia,” Calvo said. “But to the church he’s presenting a completely different persona in that he’s preaching multiple times a week, very lengthy services. He’s still presiding over the church.”
Neurologist Dr. Hadipour Niktarash believes Noriega is incompetent to stand trial because he does not have sufficient cognitive abilities to understand the nature of the proceedings or to meaningfully assist his attorney with his defense, Noriega’s motion states.
Niktarash stated that the pastor’s memory and cognitive processing will continue to deteriorate, according to the motion.
“I got a doctor’s letter telling me that my memory has been decaying for decades,” Noriega said during a Sept. 15 interview with a reporter about child sexual abuse that allegedly occurred in the church pews while he preached. “I’m now in a place where I don’t remember a lot of those things.”
Two victims said Noriega knew about and failed to report the alleged sexual abuse they experienced as children who were members of the church.
Pastors are mandatory reporters who are required by law to make a report to law enforcement or the Department of Child Safety when they have a “reasonable belief” that a child is the victim of abuse.
The felony count stems from allegations that Noriega pressured a father into not going to the police in 2012 when the father’s 12-year-old boy said Mora molested him. The boy, who is now an adult, told the Arizona Daily Star that adult church member Jose Mora penetrated him with his fingers and forced oral and genital contact, which Mora denies.
Noriega said in an interview with reporters that he was made aware of these allegations and that he did not report them as required by law.
The misdemeanor stems from allegations that Noriega did not report the alleged rape of a 7-year-old girl, Anjounette Thorstad, in the late 1980s by a teenage boy who was part of the church community. The teenager was a different alleged perpetrator, not Mora.
Also delayed are the court proceedings against Mora.
Mora was supposed to have a hearing on Monday, but it was postponed for at least 30 days in part because the prosecutor received new information and is considering additional charges against Mora.
Mora was initially charged in April with five counts of child molestation and three counts of sexual conduct with a minor, stemming from the alleged sexual abuse of two boys in his home around 2009 and 2012.
But in September, a third boy, Marcello, came forward and said Mora molested him hundreds of times during church, starting when he was 11 in 1999. Marcello also said Mora raped him in 2002 at another congregant’s home when he was 14. Marcello asked to go by his first name only in media reports.
Mora and his public defender did not respond to requests for comment on these new allegations.
Marcello said he reported his allegations to Tucson police in June. He said his understanding from detectives is that there will be “charges against Mora for what happened to me.”
Mora’s next hearing is scheduled for Jan. 6.