Too Much Focus, Too Little Family: Focus on the Family Employee Pleads Guilty to Attempted Sexual Assault on a Child

20091020__juanovalle~p1_200A Former Focus on the Family employee in Colorado Springs, Juan Ovalle, appears a bit too focused on the kinder. He has been sentenced to five years probation for attempting to lure an underage teen into having sex with him. He founded Spanish Christian Audio in 2001 to help Christian organizations with their audio needs.

Ovalle, 42, works with the Spanish-speaking arm of the Colorado Springs Christian group.

His outreach to youth on this occasion turned out to be a police officer who he thought was a minor. He asked her “Do you like older guys?” and proceeded to tell her what he wanted to do with her in their meeting, here.

He will now have to register as a sex offender.

For the full story, click here.

4 thoughts on “Too Much Focus, Too Little Family: Focus on the Family Employee Pleads Guilty to Attempted Sexual Assault on a Child”

  1. About the arrest affidavit: it states that Mr. Ovalle asked a series of questions about the fictional character’s sexual history and preferences, but it doesn’t say what the adults portraying the character said in response. It says that Mr. Ovalle asked “do you want to meet me?” but it doesn’t state how they had the character respond.

    Sadly, I’m sure that these sorts of advances happen all too often, but my question is: do the replies made by the police officer realistically model how actual kids deal with these sorts of advances? Is this technique (having adults portray kids online with the goal of setting up an arrest) doing a good job of preemptively identifying the adults who are actively trying to abuse kids and actually preventing them from doing so?

  2. The investigator’s arrest affidavit cited in the referenced article is not for the squeamish, as it says. Ye shall know they are Christians by their love—and their description of it I suppose.

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