Interview with the Freedom's Phoenix
Listen to "Interview with the Freedom's Phoenix" on Spreaker.
Today, I interviewed with Ernest Hancock, of the Freedom's Phoenix (freedomsphoenix.com), and we discuss not just the underscored message of my latest documentary, Big Trouble in Little Quartzsite, but also how we can put it out into a revamped, more poignant documentary series. Watch that documentary at legallyinsanefilms.com, and follow me on X @cyleodonnell.
Catholic Megachurch Child Rape Cover-Up
Listen to "Catholic Child Rape Cover Up" on Spreaker.
Of all the major, American news agencies that covered the story, CBS and the Spanish version of CNN were the only ones to cover the story that Naason Joaquin Garcia, a Mexican national, admitted to multiple child sex crimes against American children while in this country.
Of those two, CNN published 10 sentences in their story, and CNN Espanol published 11. Each publication only published one story with no follow-ups. And, as you can hear...
[AUDIO COMMENTARY]
The two-minute broadcast of CNN Espanol’s story isn't going to do much good for the majority of people in America who do not speak Spanish. Rest assured that I will not only speak in plain English about how horrific this man’s assaults truly are, and I’ll be describing that case in a helluva lot more than 10 sentences.
Now, for full disclosure, Fox LA also covered the story - but not the main Fox masthead network, but their Los Angeles affiliate, where this trial took place. It’s not a huge shock that Fox covered it, given that Fox is generally not afraid of stories like these for the same reasons as NPR or CNN. But keep something very important in mind: while the left-leaning media is not covering this story because it doesn’t support a Woke agenda, the right-leaning media isn’t covering it because it admits of huge, glaring fault lines in the foundation of conservative America.
Even in the case where the Fox affiliate covered the story, however, Fox 11 Oakland only released a 27-second broadcast.
The story was also covered by other agencies in the aftermath of the case, including stories searchable in the Washington Examiner, NBC affiliates, ABC affiliates, the AP News and a few others. But news like this in a different context - for instance, outside of a religious organization - would be expected to take up hours of screen time on so many major broadcasts that the pattern is clear.
Now, this story was covered far and wide in Latin American countries, especially those loyal to man who broke the hearts of millions of people when they found out what he did to the children in his congregation.
Did you hear that last word there, “congregation?” That’s right, Garcia was a priest. Now, I dislike that grown men raping young boys and girls has become almost synomymous with the Catholic church - which, of course hails itself as a safe space for them. But then again, I hate that child rape is perpetrated at all - let alone in a seemingly organized fashion. And, trust me, there’s no better example than this one to prove that theory, as I’ll get into in just a minute.
Nevertheless, I don’t have to point out that it’s widely understood that the rampant pedophilia born of Catholic priests has not only been hidden, but also, when they do get caught, they just get moved around. Or in rare cases, they get a legal slap on the wrist, if any jail time at all. But those punishments are reserved for only the worst of the worst of these cases.
But this is no normal case of child sex crimes. This man not only admitted to sexually enslaving and violating children. He also happens to be the leader of a megachurch. And I’m not talking about Jimmy Swaggart-, Jerry Falwell-type of megachurch. They were big, but I’m talking about something much bigger.
I’m talking about a Catholic empire, three generations deep, started by Garcia’s grandfather, and followed by hundreds of millions of devotees around the world - many of whom make pilgrimages to see this man speak.
We really don’t have enormous religious figures in America like they do in other parts of the world. But this is the relative equivalent of the Dalai Lama coming out and admitting to rapinbg Buddhist children; or a major archbishop in the Vatican admitting to these crimes in front of all of Catholic Europe. This is by no means a small figurehead being outed to a marginal community.
This is a world-famous leader entrusted with the safety of thousands of children, doing the absolute worst thing to those children that someone can imagine.
To try and put it into the national context, it would be like, if the leader for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children was as well known as President Biden, and then admitting that they’d raped children for years. And then, of course, only two mainstream media agencies covered his trial. That’s the closest representation I can think of to describe just how monumental this case would be if it was taken seriously by the Establishment Media.
This is a story of a foreign national who came into America, enslaved and orally raped children for years.
But here’s the thing: that’s actually not even the worst part.
The worst part is that he was not alone. Not alone in the sexual acts. And not alone in organizing them.
I can’t find much information about the allegation that he and his father were exploiting children in the church before Garcia came to the States. But what is available here is striking.
Along the timeline of his conviction, it’s been a rocky road of charges being filed, thrown out, refiled and dismissed before a judge accepted his plea deal in June of this year. When Garcia was originally arrested he was charged with three dozen felony counts.
Two women working for Garcia, Susana Medina Oaxaca and Alondra Oaxaca, were also charged with dozens of counts. Collectively, they ranged from forcing children to make pornography, distributing child pornography and child sex trafficking - all in addition to the forcible sex acts.
In La Luz Del Mundo church, Garcia was known as The Apostle - alluding to an ability to speak directly to the Creator.
In the indictment, the allegations claimed that, in one instance, Ocampo forced a group of young girls to take off their clothes and touch each other in a pose for a photo she would take for Garcia. When the girls complained, they were told that “if they went against any desires or wishes of ’the Apostle′ ... that they were going against [God himself]"
This is one of the scariest things about organized religion. It creates a mythology so deeply believed, and it’s so easily abused to the point of threatening children with eternal damnation to get them to submit to sexual exploitation.
When Garcia was first arrested in June of 2019, he was released on a $50M bond. The two women also charged at that time had $25M bonds, respectively.
At that time, the megachurch’s official Twitter account decried the allegations as unfounded, stating, “Our confidence in him is not compromised and we are fully aware of his integrity, actions, and work.”
Other tweets are alleged to include that he was, "unable to receive a fair trial and evidence of the case was originally due to a complaint by five victims."
The statements went on to include that the evidence was "repressed and withheld."
Since his admission and subsequent conviction of the crimes, the tweets have been taken down.
In the end, after three years and dozens of filings, Garcia was convicted on three counts of child sex related crimes. The two women
He used God's wrath to coerce his victims to comply with his sexual deviance
In a common thread among religious institutions across the globe and throughout history, devotees are threatened with their existence in the afterlife if they don't comply with the current life of abuse by their religious captors.
These are the most despicable kinds of humans there are. And no one in the major American media networks wants anyone to know about it. This should drum up more than a few questions.
Ask those questions, my friends. Because unless or until we start having these conversations, this activity is going to continue. And your children just might be next.
Murder Trial Imminent for Execution Style Killing of Patrick Lyoya
Officer Christopher Schurr, a former cop from Grand Rapids, Mich., is accused of being a murdering, badge-waving shitbag, after finally facing charges stemming from his execution style shooting of an immigrant from the Congo named Patrick Lyoya. The victim was 26-years-old at the time of the killing.
Listen to "Charges Filed against Police Officer in the Killing of Patrick Lyoya" on Spreaker.
If this podcast has not been released, has been deleted, or to listen to the ad-free, early release version, LISTEN HERE.
The victim was killed on April 4 this year, but Schurr was not formally charged until June 9 - which is 65 days after Lyoya was shot in the back of the head, while laying face down on the ground as Schurr laid on top of him.
Not only was Schurr not charged during those two months and five days since the shooting, he was also not fired for the incident until his charges were formally filed. Continue Reading...
This not only speaks to the notion that police are automatically given the benefit of doubt over cases that would be immediately prosecuted if their roles were reversed. It also goes to show that literally murder charges have to be filed against cops in order to see them fired for killing the citizens they're sworn to protect.
The prosecutor, Chris Becker, said in a news conference streamed live on Facebook: “The death was not justified or excused … by self defense.” He briefly defined the statute for second-degree murder before making that statement, which he also said was a fairly simple charge to define.
This has me wondering, if it's so easily defined, why it took more than two months to assess whether or not the officer met the state's standard for prosecution.
Even so, Becker only charged Schurr with a single count of second-degree murder. There were no other offenses leveled against him that might have indicated that any departmental investigation of the killing was thorough enough to conclude whether or not Schurr breached his duties in pulling Lyoya's car over in the first place.
This further drums up the question that, if the county had two months to prepare a murder case against an average citizen who man-handled and murdered a cop in a similar scuffle, would they find more charges to file. It seems likely, since most prosecutorial cases against citizens by local governments for assaults on officers and other citizens include consideration of every aspect of the crime, including things like weapons charges, nearby property damage caused by the scuffle, whether or not the assailant was trespassing at the time of the incident, if their license was valid at the time of the incident and so on.
In fact, in this week's church shooting in Orange County, California, David Wenwei Chou, 68, was charged with one felony count of murder, five felony counts of premeditated attempted murder, four felony counts of possession of an explosive device, and felony enhancements of lying in wait and personal discharge of a firearm causing death, officials reported.
I suppose we're actually lucky to see charges even filed against the officer, since it's often reported that charges are rare for police killings. In fact, it's often falsely argued that police are not granted extra rights over the citizens. This is false, first and foremost, as, from the moment they sign their oaths as police, they're given the right to use deadly force in situations that would never be extended to common citizens.
They also benefit from the frequently called upon, and very powerful police unions who influence everything from lax prosecutorial litigation against cops to qualified immunity (which happens quite frequently, and makes it nearly impossible to successfully sue public officials). They frequently aren't prosecuted in small and mid-sized communities due to a lack of prosecutors who don't fall under conflicts of interest exclusions. It's also known that jury pools tend naturally to side with police due to their frequent practice of pruning certain details, court language rehearsals, and presupposed status in the courts.
These waters are further muddied by lax departmental oversight given to predatorial police officers using their badge as a get-out-of-jail free card.
Nevertheless, due to the delays in seeking justice for the Lyoya family, the incident rightly spurred protests around the Grand Rapids area, while the district attorney took his sweet time in coming to the decision to charge the former officer, who, only this week, was actually fired, presumably for cause relating to the incident.
The protests got so raucous that the protesters actually shut down a commission meeting this past Tuesday with shouts for demands of justice for Lyoya's killing. Presumably, the protestors knew very well that charges would likely immediately be levied against civilian citizens, if the killing occurred between traditional residents, as they argued that cops are not held to the same standard as status quo citizens in the eyes of the law.
I saw the original video for this incident many weeks ago. It all started from a standard traffic stop. Lyoya didn't appear aggressive, he didn't pull weapons, the officer didn't mention any suspicion of weapons, and he also attempted to manhandle Lyoya with no apparent suspicion of any crime. If I recall, the officer pulled Lyoya over for something related to his license plate. When Schurr asked for Lyoya's driver's license, that's when he started grabbing Lyoya. The incident turned into a scuffle, Schurr tried to shoot Lyoya with a taser - also for no apparent reason, and also for no apparent suspicion of a crime. Lyoya swatted the taser away.
At the end of the bodycam video, which extends beyond the time of the footage shot by Lyoya's passenger, a very sad scene plays out. Schurr's body camera had not only apparently stopped recording during the scuffle, it also magically started recording again after the paramedics had arrived on the scene. They'd started CPR on Lyoya, and the body cam was pointed upward at a second responding officer who stood over the EMTs performing the unsuccessful life-saving efforts.
Lyoya was not obeying the officer's commands, And in fact, it appeared at one time like he might flee the scene. But there was also no indication by Schurr that would indicate Lyoya was under arrest.
In the end, there was no reason I could think of that would justify such a delay in bringing charges against Schurr for his actions that day. But I can almost guarantee that if there was no one around recording the incident, that delay may well have ended up being a complete refusal to press any charges at all. This is especially fortified by the notion that Schurr's bodycam just happened to fail, as so many other officers' cameras seem to fail, right at a pivotal moment in an incident.
My heart goes out to the parents of Lyoya, who had to answer the door one day to one officer delivering the news that another officer in that same department had killed their son.
Keep them in your thoughts as well, as this case moves forward. And let's hope that they receive justice for the execution of their son.
If you enjoyed this article, consider becoming a supporting member. For just $3 you'll get access to insider-only case files, mugshots and background checks of perps, access to unreleased articles and podcasts, extended shows, and much more. For $5 you'll get the Legally Insane News show, including This Week in Guns and weekly recaps of legally charged stories from around the nation, and you'll also get access to Small Town Justice, an ultra-high studio quality audio project on in-depth investigations of corruption and crime from America's small and mid-sized communities. At the $9 level, you'll get access to our documentary films and the podcasts that go behind the scenes of production.
If you’ve been affected by a story like this, why not tell me about it? Send any questions, feedback or story ideas to thejusticepod[at]gmail[.]com.
Be sure to follow us on our brand new social media accounts. We’re on Twitter & Instagram @cyleodonnell.
Big Trouble Received Its 6th Award!
I feel like I'm just doing nothing but bragging these days about the success of my latest film, Big Trouble in Little Quartzsite. But it's not without merit, mind you! In just one month - the first month of the film festival season, in fact - BTLQ has already won six accolades from three festivals. and the latest two of those came in this afternoon! I'm completely blown away. So, here's where the film stands right now:
- Official Selection at the Scottsdale International Film Festival - a very prestigious festival, in which we have already been invited to do a Q&A after the screening. Probably the best part about this particular honor was that the festival director emailed us specifically to tell us that Big Trouble was unanimously voted into the show!
- Award of Excellence at the IndieFEST Film Awards - a wonderful collection of films from all over the globe, and all independent tickets!
- Official Selection at the IndieFEST Film Awards -
- Official Selection at the at the Impact Docs Awards
- Merit Special Mention for Documentary Feature at the Impact Docs Awards
- Merit Special Mention for Contemporary Issues & Awareness at the Impact Docs Awards
Big Trouble is a Big Winner!
In just the first month of the film festival season, my latest film Big Trouble in Little Quartzsite has already won three awards in a single festival, and one in another festival!
Here's the rundown so far:
- Impact Docs Awards - Official Selection
- Impact Docs Awards - Merit Award for a Feature Documentary
- Impact Docs Awards - Merit Award for a Feature Documentary Raising Awareness on Contemporary Issues
- IndieFest - Official Selection
