Former foster parent pleads guilty in sexual abuse case, will not serve jail time
BERNALILLO COUNTY, N.M. – The New Mexico foster father at the center of a high-profile sexual abuse case has pleaded guilty. KRQE first brought you the allegations against Clarence Garcia in a KRQE investigative story in 2018. On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to those charges, but won’t spend any time in prison. Garcia was a foster parent in Bernalillo County from 1999 until his license was terminated in 2018. In 2018, one of his foster daughters and victims told a school counselor Garcia was touching her inappropriately. This led to an extensive CYFD investigation. Garcia was later charged with sexually abusing six girls in his care. “Beginning when she was 14, J.H. – an intellectually and mentally delayed young woman – was continuously raped by Clarence Garcia for 16 months while in his supposed care,” said the victim’s attorney. On Garcia’s 66th birthday, he pled guilty to seven sexual abuse charges. Two counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor in the third degree, being a person i...