Possible life sentence for SC Catholic priest guilty of sexually abusing 11-year-old

A South Carolina Catholic priest who plied an 11-year-old boy with gifts and took him on a trip to Florida before sexually assaulting him has pleaded guilty in federal court.

Father Jaime Adolfo Gonzalez-Farias, 68, pleaded guilty in Columbia, South Carolina, Thursday morning to one count of transporting a minor across state lines for the purposes of engaging in criminal sexual conduct. Federal sentencing guidelines means that he now faces between 10 years and life in prison. There is no parole in the federal system.

Gonzalez-Farias was charged with sexually abusing the 11-year-old younger brother of a seminarian in his parish in Laurens County. At the time, Gonzalez-Farias was a visiting priest from Chile employed by the Catholic Diocese of Charleston who held positions in Newberry and Laurens counties.

The victim came from an “immigrant family of limited means,” prosecutors told the court.

“When a victim is abused by a person in a position of power we will bring all of our resources to bear,” Elliott Daniels, an assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, told the media following the plea.

In court, federal prosecutors said that Gonzalez-Farias became close with the victim’s family and gave the boy gifts of clothes, shoes and a cellphone that he used to message the child.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Major, who spoke at the plea hearing, said that Gonzalez-Farias used an encrypted messaging platform to talk with his victim.

“Florida is waiting for Mr. Cricket and Mr. Wildfire,” Gonzalez-Farias messaged his victim, using nicknames he had invented for them. The priest urged the victim to be good so that his parents would agree to let the boy spend time with the priest and travel with him to Florida.

Prosecutors say that Gonzalez-Farias assaulted the victim in a hotel in Panama City, Florida, from Nov. 8 8 to 11, 2020. The priest touched the victim’s genitals over his clothes, showered with him, showed him pornography and performed a sex act in front of him.

Some of the same acts also took place at Gonzalez-Farias’ parish house in South Carolina, Daniels said.

When the boy returned from the trip, his family grew concerned about Gonzalez-Farias’ behavior and contacted the Laurens County Sheriff’s Office. The boy revealed the abuse to his family and again to investigators during a forensic interview, Daniels said.

“I think this speaks to the courage of the minor victim and his family,” Daniels said. “We couldn’t have brought a case without them.”

Gonzalez-Farias pleaded guilty to the second count of the three-count indictment, which charged him with transporting the minor across state lines knowingly and with the intent of violating Florida laws against molestation and lewd and lascivious exhibition.

In a hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis, Gonzalez-Farias changed his plea from “not guilty” to “guilty.” In a lengthy, prescribed back and forth with Geiger, Gonzalez-Farias, a dual-citizen of the U.S. and Chile, confirmed that he understood the charges against him and he still wished to plead guilty.

The priest, who primarily spoke through a translator, said nothing more than a soft “Si, entiendo” — “Yes, I understand.”

Church officials previously received two warnings about Gonzalez-Farias’s behavior, prosecutors said at a hearing in March. In 2017, a parishioner allegedly sent a picture of Gonzalez-Farias taking a young boy with him on a trip to Walmart, Daniels said. The following year, a woman expressed concern to church officials over Gonzalez-Farias’ relationship with her nephews, aged 10 and 12. In particular, she said that she was concerned by the attention Gonzalez-Farias showed the 10-year-old “behind closed doors,” Daniels said in March.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston said that it was “made aware of an allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor involving visiting priest Father Jaime Gonzalez-Farias in December 2020, after he had left the country for his home in Chile.”

As a condition of his plea, federal attorneys agreed to recommend that the Laurens County solicitor does not bring additional charges. However, this is not a guarantee that local charges will not be brought, Geiger told Gonzalez-Farias.

The priest, who was represented by Federal Public Defender Jenny Smith, may also be required to pay restitution as a condition of his plea.

Sentencing will take place after a report is prepared by the U.S. Department of Probation.

Major and Daniels thanked the Laurens County Sheriff’s Office, who brought the case to the FBI, for their prompt investigation of the case.