Edhat Staff
By the edhat staff
A priest based in Long Beach has been charged with possessing over 600 images of child pornography, according to prosecutors in Ventura County.
Rodolfo Martinez-Guevara, 38, was taken into custody on Wednesday in Long Beach, following an investigation by the Ventura County District Attorney’s office. The alleged images and videos involve prepubescent minors under the age of 12.
In a statement, District Attorney Erik Nasarenko emphasized the gravity of the accusations against Martinez-Guevara, given his position of power and trust as a priest. Nasarenko stated, “These are not simply images and videos. Rather, if found true, they constitute horrific exploitation of our most vulnerable, and the actions of the defendant must be met by the full force of the law.”
Martinez-Guevara was residing at the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit in Long Beach, adjacent to St. Maria Goretti Church and St. Maria Goretti Catholic School. Through the Missionaries, he had affiliations with several churches, including Our Lady of Guadalupe in Oxnard.
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles clarified that while Martinez-Guevara is affiliated with the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit Religious Order, he is not a priest within the Archdiocese. The statement provided details of his previous assignments, noting that he had been at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Oxnard as a transitional deacon and newly ordained priest from July 2021 to September 2022. Since then, he has been residing with the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit in Long Beach, with his ministry faculties revoked by both the Archdiocese and his order.
The Archdiocese expressed its stance against any form of sexual misconduct and reaffirmed its commitment to supporting victim-survivors. They emphasized their dedication to ensuring that parishes, schools, and ministries remain safe spaces for everyone in the community.
The investigation into Martinez-Guevara was initiated following multiple reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Authorities discovered extensive evidence indicating his possession of child sexual abuse material, predominantly involving young boys. The Ventura County Child Exploitation & Human Trafficking Task Force, consisting of various law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office, played a pivotal role in his arrest.
Pending his court appearance, Martinez-Guevara’s bail has been set at $750,000. The arraignment is scheduled to take place at Ventura County Superior Court on Friday.
This arrest has sent shockwaves through the local community, underscoring the importance of continued vigilance in protecting children from exploitation and holding individuals accountable for their actions.
As far as I know, this kind of sickness can’t be cured. There should be mandatory life sentences for actual molesters, death to rapists. For pervs just with images like this, some kind of mental health treatment should be forced. Something drastic. I don’t see how people like this can ever be trusted again to be anywhere near children.
Can we? Does the 8th amendment allow for that for crimes such as possession like this? Who knows, maybe he would never act on it, like not all adults act on what they see done in porn videos. As despicable and devastatingly harmful as it is, does possession alone warrant a life sentence? Can this be cured? Can the desire be psychologically or even medically eradicated? If so, THAT should be the remedy, in addition to lengthy prison time to account for the lives this material has destroyed. Again, this is only about those only in possession, not the monsters who act on these sick desires.
They can never be trusted, highest rate of recidivism out there. A sad and terrible thing–lock em up forever unfortunately.
Possessing child porn supports the production of it, and therefore makes the possessor culpable of actual harm. Now, if they make the images with AI, and no actual children are involved, that would be different, and could pose interesting legal questions.
I agree with you Sacjon. This story replaced one on the Edhat ticker about a Santa Maria guy getting only 23 years for kidnap and rape. He’ll be out in a portion of that time. Crazy.
PS – The death penalty is a tough issue. Maybe we should reconsider humane forms of “chemical castration” for violent sexual criminals, with lessons learned for how that’s gone awry before…
Roast that fool.
Ahh yes, another religious leader. The real groomers. Not the drag queens or the LGBQ community mind you, it’s almost always the pastors, priests and religious leaders.
Yep. Tax the church, Leave the drag queens alone!
Schools are worse: Consider the statistics: In accordance with a requirement of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, in 2002 the Department of Education carried out a study of sexual abuse in the school system.
Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft looked into the problem, and the first thing that came to her mind when Education Week reported on the study were the daily headlines about the Catholic Church.
“[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem?” she said. “The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-media-ignored-sex-abuse-in-school/
Voice, I’d want to see better statistics: what percentage of priests in contact with children are molesters, versus the percentage of K-12 teachers who are molesters. The majority of children go to school, while a much smaller number have any exposure to priests. I, personally, was never at risk of being molested by a priest, as I have rarely been near any. But I had many teachers over the years, and those many teachers had innumerable students. If you have a million teachers in proximity to a zillion students, you will get a larger number of molesters and victims, but the rate of abuse may not be as high as with priests. Let’s see the stats. Also, I cannot remember any time in my schooling when I was alone with a teacher. There may have been times, but not many. I get the impression that priests find ways to be alone with children that public school teachers wouldn’t easily manage (though I’m sure it happens).
Ahchoo, true there are more students than church-goers. But Voice has a point. Many years ago I worked for a local law firm that “prosecuted” teachers for bad conduct in districts throughout the state. I use quotes because it was administrative law, the bad conduct was not criminal — when it was, law enforcement was brought in.
Coaches and music teachers were the worst, most common abusers. Cliches are true because they have some basis in fact. “Regular” teachers were not as much of a problem in terms of sexual abuse.
All these male teachers knew to target emotionally fragile, needy young women.
It is more common than anyone thinks. But that’s true of rape and domestic violence too, still to this day.
It was referenced in the cbs link, also here:
And now, it has been confirmed that public school teachers are 100 times more likely to abuse kids than Catholic priests. https://go2tutors.com/teachers-more-likely-abuse-kids/
and here. basically 9.6% in schools vs. 4% in churches. But yeah, keep showing your religious bigotry.
https://www.academia.edu/21997616/A_Forgotten_Study_Abuse_in_School_100_Times_Worse_than_by_Priests
Don’t forget to give the Catholic Church 15% of your salary so they can continue to house, feed, and shuffle priests like this to new communities after family complain of abuse.
The best way to avoid this is to not go to church. If that doesn’t work for you, at least never bring your kids there.
BASIC – Sorry, but I’m not letting this go. Explain yourself for that comment. You’re saying the best way to avoid being molested is to avoid church? What about all the non-priest molesters out there at schools, scouts, kids camps, anywhere kids go basically? They’ll just stop molesting kids because “oh hey, they didn’t go to church!”
Dude, this is why so many questions your “vast” academic and professional credentials. What a terribly simple and ignorant thing to say.
ALEX of course, but not molestation in general. Further, he didn’t molest anyone, just had child porn. The best way to avoid your kids being molested is to be an aware parent, vet thoroughly those adults who are around your kids, etc. Simply avoiding church won’t keep your kids safe from predators.
Well, the best way to avoid your children being molested by priests is to keep your kids away from priests. That seems pretty reasonable
Sacjon, “just” had child porn. Yeah, that’s pretty freaking bad and we have no idea if he also molested kids. I never said that keep kids away from church protects them from predators, but that keeping them away from church protects them from priests.
ALEX – I could’ve worded it better. Either way, I stand by my disagreement that keeping kids away from church isn’t “the best way to avoid” pedophiles. Priests, yeah, but there’s far more out there than the sick priests.
Get rid of religion
The Church can’t hide this one.
Wow, Sac, you’re saying he “just had child porn” and “Further, he didn’t molest anyone”. Two problems with that:
1) How in the world can one minimize child possessing/watching porn? That’s frickin disgusting.
2) how in the world can you say he didn’t molest anyone? I’d venture to guess he very well may have or was looking to.
Crazy stuff Sac. Clueless. Is that really what you think? We all have to assume so. You wrote it.
I didn’t minimalize anything. Maybe I could have worded it better, but you still would miss the point, ma’am.
sacjon,
I see your distinction and agree it would be way worse if this priest was in the photos and was accused of rape of the little boys. I think the law looks at picture and video porn on the computer as participation in the process of the rape in the sense that this priest was a consumer of the abuse.
If they were smart priests, they’d buy AI illustration software and create their own artificial sick images, videos that are not of real people and then it would be “just porn”?
I feel sick inside over this because I think law enforcement is publicizing this, looking to see who comes forward. There is a good chance this guy acted out with boys from his parish and we will see this evolve over the next few weeks. I hope this guy was able to stay within his dirty eyes and mind and has no direct victims, but I am not confident of that at all at this point.
I’m religious so here is my stance:
1. There is no place in society for people who victimize children. And yes that absolutely includes possession. If there’s no demand, there’s no supply. As Sac eluded to, life in prison would constitute an 8th Amendment violation. But that’s only because we have dumbed down our consequences to make life in prison for child exploiters seem excessive.
2. Those saying that “religion is bad” are exercising their freedom of speech and religion and that’s ok. I don’t agree with them and they’ll never agree with me.
3. This is not a circumstance where we differ in our willingness to throw this person in prison for as long as the law allows. I personally support the death penalty in far more cases than most people so you won’t find me going easy on this guy. I believe that just like we have “gang enhancements” for criminal punishments, we should have enhancements for people who are entrusted in distinguished positions (1st responders, teachers, church leaders etc).