‘Cult’ church member molested small boy while his children napped, new victim says
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Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of sexual violence against children.
Jonathan Santos sobbed in one of the stalls of a McDonald’s bathroom in Tucson in February.
He knew he needed to clock in for work, but he couldn’t stop the tears. He could barely even breathe.
Santos, 23, had just left the Tucson Police Department in the middle of an interview about sexual abuse he said he experienced as a child at the hands of Jose Mora, a former congregant of the Golden Dawn Tabernacle. Mora was arrested and charged in April for alleged child sex crimes. The charges stem in large part from an Arizona Daily Star/Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team investigation in which Mora publicly admitted to sexually abusing a different child.
Santos kept replaying the detective’s questions about an incident with Mora when Santos was about 8 years old in 2009: What time of year was it? Who was there? Did anyone else witness it? How did you react? What led up to the interaction?
The last question sent Santos’ mind spiraling into self-blame.
“It really hit me because to me, in my own head, I had thought, ‘Oh, what did you do to seduce a grown man?’” Santos remembers thinking, even though that’s not what the detective asked. “I was like, ‘Even the detective doesn’t believe me.’ It was just self-doubt.”
Santos said he recognizes now that the detective had to ask detailed questions to investigate and find the truth. But at the time, the query caused him to relive his trauma, leaving him overwhelmed.
As Santos cried in the bathroom before starting his shift as a manager at McDonald’s, he said he was shocked to be met with support rather than blame. His coworker came into the bathroom, asked if he was OK and pulled him into a hug.
Responses like this from coworkers and friends are what have helped Santos heal. Santos said one friend told him he could tell her about his abuse over and over again until he could recount it without crying. He said she was patient and understanding.
“I wasn’t expecting the outcome that I got,” Santos said. “I wasn’t expecting to be accepted. I wasn’t expecting to be comforted.”
Santos kept his experience private for more than a decade and is now speaking publicly about it for the first time.
“It took a lot out of me … having to mostly deal with it alone,” he said. “I just kept burying it and burying it, and it wasn’t healthy for me.”
“I never imagined being able to say it without stuttering and say it without crying and breaking down.”
And now he can.
Santos said Mora sexually abused him on two occasions when he was between 7 and 9 years old. Mora was in his early 40s.
Santos was close in age to two of Mora’s sons, and he remembers the third son being a baby at the time. Santos said it was normal for him to go over to Mora’s house to play with the boys. Mora was a family friend and a member of their church, the Golden Dawn Tabernacle.
Former members have accused Golden Dawn of being a “cult” because of what they describe as the church’s practices of excommunicating former members, isolating congregants from the outside world, manipulating members’ financial and health decisions and allegedly ignoring child sexual abuse allegations for decades, an Arizona Daily Star/Lee Enterprises investigation found.
Content retrieved from: https://tucson.com/news/local/article_abdafba1-66a2-4efa-b09b-f677d5e78273.html.
