Ex-school employee admits sex with student

This was reported to Silentlambs with the comment below.  Often JWs attempt to hide the religion when a molesters is identified.

"I'm a concerned witness. Did you know this guy Juan Manuel Cancino is an activewitness? As of last week he had not been disfellowshiped, despite the fact his trial for having sex with a minor has been ongoing for a year and a half. I'm disgusted!"                           

Ex-school employee admits sex with student

As part of a plea deal, Juan Manuel Cancino will be sent to the county jail, not 15 years in prison, if he returns for sentencing in January

By AISLING SWIFT (Contact)
Originally published 8:43 p.m., Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Updated 11:18 a.m., Thursday, November 6, 2008

Juan Manuel Cancino

NAPLES — A former Golden Gate High School soccer coach charged with having sex with a student in his office, a park and her home pleaded no contest Wednesday to avoid trial — and the threat of a state prison sentence.

As potential jurors waited upstairs, Juan Manuel Cancino, 28, of Golden Gate, who also was the school’s computer technician, pleaded to two counts of having unlawful sexual activity with a minor and was adjudicated guilty by Circuit Judge Elizabeth Krier. She imposed the sentence after the mother described her loss of faith in school employees.

“This has hurt my family so bad,” said the mother, whose name is being withheld to protect the teen’s identity. “... I cannot allow anybody to teach my daughter because I don’t know what their intentions are. .... She was a victim of abuse inside the school and also inside my house.”

She described the teen, now 19, as a good daughter, a good student who was invited to Washington when she was at Naples High School. But each time this case came up, she said, her daughter cried,

“It’s very hard to get over this,” she said. “So she is receiving counseling.”

“Good,” Krier said of the counseling, which is paid for by the court system.

The teen listened as she sat with her stepfather and Betty Ardaya, the prosecutor’s victim advocate, and Meghan O’Brien, the Children’s Advocacy Center court liaison.

As Cancino stood with defense attorney Jerry Berry and Assistant State Attorney Steve Maresca, they outlined the facts he was admitting to: they had consensual intercourse on Jan. 28, 2005, April 1 and April 30, 2005, when the girl was 16 and 17 and he was 24 and 25.

Cancino’s wife, Marilyn, 33, who quietly cried throughout the hearing, consoled by Cancino’s mother, sat up, shocked, when she heard Berry stipulating to those facts. She sat in disbelief as her mother-in-law, who also sobbed, hushed and calmed her.

Cancino originally faced up to 30 years on each of three first-degree sexual battery charges and 15 years each for two unlawful sexual activity offenses. In August, Maresca amended it to five lesser offenses and he faced 75 years on all.

Krier sentenced Cancino to two concurrent 15-year state prison terms, the maximum for the second-degree felonies. But he won’t go to prison. Instead, he’ll remain free on $50,000 bond and tie up his personal and work affairs before Jan. 2, when the sentence will be mitigated.

As part of the plea agreement, Krier will sentence him to a year in the county jail and four years of sex-offender probation, without an ankle monitor, which costs $13 daily. Although Cancino has been here legally since he was 5, he faces deportation to Colombia due to the conviction. He also will be barred from being around his two young children.

“Will they take my kids away?” Cancino asked.

Maresca replied: “You’ll have to jump through certain hoops before the court will allow you to have contact with them.”

But Berry doubted there would be a problem. “I’m extremely optimistic a therapist or a health counselor will say he’s fit to be around his kids,” Berry told the judge.

If Cancino does face deportation and returns to his country voluntarily, his probation won’t be violated. If he ever returns, he’d have to complete the term.

The teen and her parents declined comment as they left, but Maresca considered it a good resolution. “He is going to be punished, he will not be allowed to work in a school setting and the family is in agreement with the plea,” he said.

Cancino resigned as assistant girls soccer coach and computer technician after the 2005 school year. State records show he doesn’t have a current teaching certificate.

He and his wife then operated Tropical Palms Corp. and The Little Bonsai Store Co. from their Berkshire Lakes condo, but they were later dissolved, according to state Office of Corporations records. They lost their condo due to foreclosure in June and Cancino and two partners now operate D C Networks Inc., a Golden Gate computer support firm.

After sentencing, Cancino and his parents declined comment, but his wife denied the affair. “It’s not true,” Marilyn Cancino said, adding that he had to accept a plea bargain. “He had to do this for his family.”

Cancino was arrested April 26, 2006, eight months after the student, who had graduated, provided Collier County sheriff’s investigators with a taped statement. He’s remained free on bond since May 8, 2006.

Prior hearings showed Berry intended to show jurors the affair never occurred and sex in Cancino’s office wasn’t possible because it was near the library and people frequently passed by. He also planned to use the girl’s own statements to discredit her, suggesting she made up the story because she liked Cancino and heard he planned to marry someone. Berry planned to show Cancino, who was married, had photos of his wife in his office.

Maresco planned to call the teen and other witnesses to prove the affair, and show jurors cell phone records of calls between the two; Cancino had a separate phone in his wife’s name that he used to speak with the teen.

An arrest affidavit says they had sex five times between January 2005 and July 31, 2005, at the school, a park near her house, and her bedroom. Investigators were tipped off by the mother, who said her daughter admitted having sex with a high school staff member.

The teen told detectives Cancino called her during Christmas break in 2004 and she began helping him in the computer lab. She said he first kissed her in his office and they had sex there on Jan. 28, 2005, during school hours.

“(The student) reported that Cancino told her it was wrong, they shouldn’t be doing it, that if they kept doing that ‘stuff’ he could lose his job, go to jail and she would not be able to graduate,” the arrest affidavit says. “But they didn’t stop.”

After she graduated in June, the affidavit says, they had sex on her bed while her parents were at work, and the last time was in his car at a park. The affidavit says they began arguing when she confronted him about rumors he was was in love with someone else and was getting married, which he denied to her. (County records show he married Marilyn Hernandez, who is Cuban, in 2004.)

The girl confided in a friend, saying Cancino asked her to get a pregnancy test in April or May 2005. The friend’s mother alerted the assistant principal in February 2006, long after Cancino had resigned. The friend told detectives the teen “really loved Juan.” Affidavits say another friend told investigators that “she really had feelings for him,” and she’d cried after breaking up with Cancino, saying he lied to her and used her.

The day after Cancino called the teen to ask her to deny the relationship, affidavits say, the girl’s mother called detectives. They tried to interview Cancino, but Berry advised him to invoke his right to remain silent.