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A Denver church has been sued for allegedly failing to prevent a 13-year-old girl from getting sexually assaulted by the school’s music director—and then failing to take the matter seriously enough after that abuse came to light.
The troubling situation arose at St. John's Lutheran Church and School in 2022 when the victim’s family says she was assaulted by the school's interim music director Diego Marroquin. According to the lawsuit, the school never even ran a proper background check on the 34-year-old, because if they did, they would have known that he didn’t have legal authorization to work in the country. And yet he was allowed to work with children unsupervised.
It gets worse.
The girl became pregnant after the incident, secretly acquiring abortion pills to prevent further consequences. She told two of her friends what happened the following day. And Marroquin apparently stayed in touch with her over the summer, leaving voicemails that allude to their “relationship.” Those messages are referenced in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also says the Plaintiff wasn’t the only student who was subject to his disturbing actions:
The lawsuit alleges Marroquin engaged in inappropriate behavior with two other students, including showing underage girls sexually explicit photographs and videos, including videos of himself having sex.
One student, according to the lawsuit, was allegedly shown sexual text messages, photographs of women, naked images and videos of Marroquin having sex with a former girlfriend. The lawsuit also alleges he showed the student a photograph of a naked girl he said was 15.
Another student allegedly was taken to a restaurant after band practice and shown pornographic videos, including a video of Marroquin having sex. The lawsuit alleges Marroquin also showed the student text messages with a 14-year-old girl that included topless photographs.
Those girls didn’t come forward with their stories, though. They said Marroquin was well-liked among the students and “no one believed [the 13-year-old girl] when she reported her rape.” Therefore, they didn’t think anyone would believe their stories either.
In the case of the assault victim, when her parents discovered what had happened a few months later, they went directly to school officials. Jessica and Aaron Vandam had a meeting in which those officials said their daughter was lying, that this was all gossip, that she needed to ask for forgiveness, and that she should recant her allegations. The girl acquiesced under that pressure, and the church’s pastor, Andrew Farhat, didn’t follow-up, the lawsuit says, with any meaningful investigation.
Farhat also urged the Vandams not to take this matter to local law enforcement:
“Nothing bad happened,” Farhat said in one of the messages. “I knew it was a lie so I wanted to squash it right away so that no one would think that the police need to be involved. Now we’re protecting victims of slander, don’t want that at our school.”
The proverbial last straw, however, was the fact that Marroquin kept working at the school even after these allegations came to light. At that point, the Vandams knew school officials weren’t going to do the right thing on their own, so they went to police.
An arrest warrant was soon issued against Marroquin, who had fled Colorado. He was eventually found and arrested in Texas—after the Vandams, who had been tracking him on social media, saw him playing guitar during a livestream at his brother’s church. It soon led to a criminal charge of “sexual assault on a child under the age of 15 by a person in a position of trust.”
Unfortunately, the criminal charge didn’t stick. In 2025, Marroquin struck a plea deal that led to prosecutors dropping the sexual assault charge in return for Marroquin pleading guilty to a lesser felony charge. He was sentenced to “four years of sex-offender intensive supervised probation.” After that, he was deported to Guatemala, where he’s a citizen.
But even if the case against him is effectively over, it doesn’t absolve the people who allowed him to be near children and who subsequently tried to squash the case against him.
The lawsuit, which I have not seen but which has been reported on extensively by Brian Maass of CBS Colorado, includes damning details about what school officials allegedly knew:
The complaint says church officials knew Marroquin was communicating inappropriately with underage girls.
It alleges church pastor Andrew Farhat specifically warned Marroquin not to text minors but failed to monitor whether he followed that instruction.
There are also details suggesting church leaders knew this could be a potential problem for them—to the point where they literally transferred property so that, if they got sued, church assets couldn’t be seized. After all, it turns out, they didn’t have sexual-assault liability insurance, so anyone suing them could go after everything they had.
According to the lawsuit, April 2025 minutes said placing the property in a separate LLC was worth considering because of the church’s fiduciary obligation to protect itself and because “it’s a deterrent to lawsuits.”
In May 2025, the board allegedly decided to move forward.
…
The lawsuit says the properties had a combined appraised value of approximately $29.3 million and were transferred for $10.
The plaintiffs allege the transfer was designed to protect church assets from potential litigation.
The lawsuit says this transfer was fraudulent. It was, they say, just an attempt to stop or delay the Vandams from suing the church.
On Saturday, the church sent a letter to member families saying the allegations in the lawsuit were untrue, specifically the parts where Farhat said the victim was lying or didn’t take the alleged abuse seriously. They said staffers followed all mandatory reporting laws and took immediate action when they learned what may have happened. But they didn’t go into more detail than that, and they didn’t even bother addressing the property transfer.
According to the Denver Post, the family is trying to move on despite everything they’ve been through. (The family’s name is spelled two different ways in the two major news articles about this issue.)
The Van Dams’ daughter, who is now 17, hasn’t been able to attend school in person since the attack, and she struggles to trust friends and adults. The family moved out of Colorado and finds it difficult to attend church and maintain their faith.
If these allegations turn out to be true, think about what that means. Church officials didn’t just fail this girl. They put all their students in danger by allowing an alleged predator to continue working with kids. It’s never a good sign when a pastor’s first instinct is to shut down allegations instead of assuming the worst and proceeding accordingly. It’s clear what their priorities really are.
The alleged property transfer makes that moral failing look even worse. Church leaders did everything in their power to move nearly $30 million in assets—but they didn’t even go to local law enforcement with the assault claims. They treated a teenage girl as a bigger threat to the church’s well-being than the alleged predator they hired.
Thank goodness the parents knew better than to trust church leaders. They knew they couldn’t rely on Farhat to take this matter seriously, so they went to the police. When Marroquin fled, they knew school officials weren’t spending any time tracking him, so they did it themselves. And now, through this lawsuit, they’re demanding accountability because the church has proven incapable of policing itself. What does that tell you about their supposed moral high ground?
Yet again:
No drag queens or atheists involved. You know. The "immoral" ones.
Once again we see the disconnect between religion and morality playing out on more than one level. First the church ignored the girl, then they endangered their students by keeping a rapist on their staff, and last but not least, their first instinct was to protect the abuser.