It's every parent's worst nightmare: A trusted youth sports coach is arrested for sexually assaulting a young child, and investigations discover that the victim had been brutally raped for more than a year.
As first reported by Dallas-Fort Worth television network WFAA, and quickly followed up by NBC DFW and other stations, Garland resident Bernardo Mondragon-Guzman was arrested on charges of repeated sexual assault of a child. WFAA reported that the 41-year-old GSA coach was found to have raped a 10-year-old member of the Garland Soccer Association multiple times.
Mondragon-Guzman is being held without bail because he is reportedly in the U.S. illegally. He could be deported to Mexico depending on the outcome of an eventual trial against him on the aforementioned sexual assault charges.
Disturbingly, investigators fear that the unnamed young victim may not have been the only child abused by Mondragon-Guzman, with outreach ongoing to find others that may have been attacked by the reported illegal immigrant.
"We have received some more phone calls, and investigators are telling me that now that there's several of those phone calls, that's going to warrant more investigation," Garland police spokesman Officer Joe Harn told WFAA. "So as we suspected, we may well have some more victims."
Both WFAA and NBC DFW reported disturbing details discovered by investigators in the case. According to Garland police, Mondragon-Guzman stored baby wipes in the glove compartment of his car and hid naked photos under the rear floor boards of his vehicle. Guzman also appears to have practically filmed his own conviction, with one cell phone video depicting a rape of the child in question obtained by police.
For its part, the Garland Soccer Association said it plans to do everything it can to reassure parents that their children are safe with those who serve for the not-for-profit organization.
"We're going to get to the bottom of it and we're going to do what it takes to make sure it doesn't happen again," Kimberly Verity, vice president of the Garland Soccer Association, told WFAA. "We want to do everything we can to protect our children. That's what we take pride in."
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