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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Evangelical, Pentecostal, and independent Franks Eddy, Cayo District, Belize · 2016

Julio Cesar Garcia: Belize Court of Appeal affirms church-member abuse conviction

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Disposition and response

Material that narrows or disputes the record

Appellate history

  • 2016-03-10

    The conviction and concurrent twelve-year sentences were affirmed.

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

self-described pastor, acting spiritual leader at Franks Eddy Baptist Church

Organization

Franks Eddy Baptist Church

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The cited record identifies claimed church authority, access to a child church member, and use of church premises as the material spiritual doctrine, practice, authority, or pretext connected to the documented harm. The relevant authority role is self-described pastor and acting spiritual leader at Franks Eddy Baptist Church.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Guru or spiritual-teacher authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. Date in cited record · jury conviction and sentence

    Supreme Court of Belize. Garcia was convicted on two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with an eleven-year-old church member and received concurrent twelve-year prison terms.

  2. 2016-03-10 · appeal dismissed

    Court of Appeal of Belize. The Court of Appeal dismissed Garcia's appeal and affirmed the conviction and sentence.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • claimed church authority
  • access to a child church member
  • use of church premises

Cited record

Sources

court reporting appellate disposition News 5 Belize, 'Pastor's Sentence for Sexual Offences Upheld by Appeal Court' (Mar. 10, 2016).

Contemporaneous appellate reporting records the dismissed appeal, two convictions, concurrent twelve-year sentences, one incident inside the church and the Baptist Association's denial that Garcia was an accredited pastor.

contemporaneous reporting appellate corroboration 7 News Belize / BelizeNews.com, 'Child Abusing Pastor Sent Back To Jail By Court of Appeal' (Mar. 10, 2016).

A second contemporaneous account describes Garcia as the acting spiritual leader, identifies the child as an eleven-year-old church member and corroborates the affirmed conviction and sentence.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis
https://archive.channel5belize.com/?p=126214 Corpus classification: court-reporting; evidentiary role: appellate-disposition. SHA-256 ce03c51fd76ec59766a8ed519f318baaf8f47d1dd238319acfb064b5433d9cc9
Retrieval
2026-07-20 · Preserved
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis
https://www.belizenews.com/160320.html Corpus classification: contemporaneous-reporting; evidentiary role: appellate-corroboration. SHA-256 c9c8febdabc7fa946da9cbe39e694ce96cc6501b0565b9c961b286cce0854dcc
Retrieval
2026-07-20 · Preserved
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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