Sentencing hearing begins for convicted Fort Worth pastor

Before he built a 10,000-seat church in Richmond, Va., Geronimo Scott Aguilar was a sexual predator who had sex with underage girls, including two sisters in Tarrant County for which he was convicted.

The sentencing hearing for Aguilar started Monday with witnesses elaborating on testimony they first expressed in a Tarrant County courtroom this summer.

Aguilar, 45, was convicted in June on all seven counts of his indictment, which stemmed mostly from a sexual relationship he had with one girl that started when she was 13 and he was in his 20s. He was also convicted of having sex with that girl’s younger sister, beginning when she was 11.

Aguilar was convicted of two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child which each carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. He was also convicted of three counts of sexual assault of a child under 17 and two counts of indecency with a child, each second-degree felonies, each which carry maximum sentences of 20 years.

Aguilar elected to have state District Judge Louis Sturns assess his sentence.

During Monday’s testimony, a witness said the pastor was an active sexual predator. The woman, 52, said that she began having sex with Aguilar as a teen in California.

Years later, she testified that she read an email that Aguilar had sent to her 17-year-old daughter.

It was the same words that Aguilar used to get her to have sex with him when she was about her daughter’s age, the woman testified on Monday. The Star-Telegram typically does not reveal the identities of sexual abuse victims.

“Every great man of God had concubines,” Aguilar’s email to her daughter read, according to the woman’s testimony.

The woman testified that she continued to have sex with Aguilar and eventually told her husband, who had worked with Aguilar in a church in California and was his best friend, about the affair.

Soon after that conversation Aguilar visited their house to talk with her husband, who ordered his wife to start packing, she testified. Aguilar returned with an envelope containing about $10,000 and they moved to another state.

The woman said her husband, who was a recovering alcoholic, started drinking for six months before they moved back to California, where she continued her affair with Aguilar and became pregnant. She and her husband eventually divorced over her relationship with Aguilar.

“I’ve wanted to come out with this for a long time,” the woman testified.

Prosecutors said Aguilar, who was affiliated with New Beginnings Church in Fort Worth before moving to Richmond, Va., in 2003, had a pattern of sexually abusing minors that started 19 years ago.

In Richmond he founded the Richmond Outreach Center, a church that began in a warehouse with 19 members and grew to have up to 10,000 in attendance each week. Aguilar was fired as senior pastor there in 2013.

This story was originally published October 12, 2015 at 2:42 PM with the headline "Sentencing hearing begins for convicted Fort Worth pastor."