Philadelphia priest pleads guilty to sexually abusing a 16-year-old altar server who said she endured a ‘nightmare’

A Philadelphia priest has admitted he sexually abused a 16-year-old altar server at a church in Andorra in what she described in court Monday as a “nightmare.”

The Rev. Armand Garcia, 54, pleaded guilty to corruption of a minor and unlawful contact with a minor in the abuse of the now-25-year-old woman, starting when she was 16 and an altar server at the Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in the Andorra neighborhood.

The woman said in court Monday that she went to the priest, whom she knew since she was 13 and who was a friend of her father’s, in 2014 to confide in him about a personal matter and he “exploited” her trust, eventually assaulting and raping her.

“I was targeted, manipulated, and raped to the very end of my contact with him,” the woman said in court Monday.

Garcia was initially charged with rape in connection with the August 2014 incident, which prosecutors said he recorded..

The woman reported the assault after Garcia was transferred to St. Martin of Tours parish in Summerdale in 2017 when she was away at college. As part of Garcia’s plea agreement with prosecutors, the rape charge was dismissed.

In court Monday, the woman said she revered and felt that she could trust the priest as someone who would help her in a time of need. Instead, she said, he manipulated and sexually abused her, telling her that God had sent him to heal her.

The abuse caused deep and permanent harm, she said, hampering her ability to trust friends, family, and potential romantic partners, and interfering with her ability to pursue a nursing career.

“I never wanted to lose my innocence at 16,” she said.

Garcia, who was ordained in 2005, passed a background check and attended child-protection training programs that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia requires for all priests, a spokesperson for the archdiocese said.

Garcia is out on bail and is scheduled to be sentenced in January.