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More Forbidden Freedom: Slavery in Southwest Florida

• Family accused of enslaving workers at Immokalee camp
• Human trafficking on Marco Island?: Islanders learn warning signs of ‘underground slavery’
• Immokalee sets stage for international talk on human trafficking

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A federal probe into human trafficking that netted three Guatemalan immigrants and reportedly rescued a young girl from sexual slavery has added rape charges by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office against another Lee County man.

Mario Pascual, 23, of North Fort Myers, has been held in the Lee and Hendry county jails since his detainment last spring.

His jailing on a federal material witness warrant, obtained by the Daily News, came as investigators said a Lee County couple helped smuggle a juvenile relative into Arizona, then on to Cape Coral. The girl was raped there by the man calling himself her husband, Fernando Pascual Francisco, investigators said.

But they say she also was raped by his brother, Mario, and now he is charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, the Daily News learned Thursday.

“I know Fernando had a debt and in exchange for the debt, he gave the girl,” said Anna Rodriguez, founder of the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking. “That’s because he had sex with her four times.”

According to a Lee County Sheriff’s report obtained Thursday, Mario Pascual was arrested May 5 on the molestation charge for those four assaults. His arrest report shows that Mario Pascual, who also goes by Mario Pascual Andres, has confessed.

“She was used and given to the brother (Mario Pascual) to excuse a gambling debt,” Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy said.

Messages were left Thursday for Sheriff’s Deputy Janet Rincon and Detective Shawn Ramsey, with the county’s Human Trafficking Task Force, but they were unavailable for comment.

Pascual Francisco, his sister, Matilde Pascual Andres, 26, and her husband, Sebastian, were indicted in May 2005 after the teen reported that Sebastian, his wife and Pascual Francisco held her captive inside their house, forced her to be their domestic slave and that Pascual Francisco raped her.

She is not being named because of the nature of the charges. She still lives in the area with her now-2-year-old son, Francisco. According to court records, she miscarried her first child, a girl.

Mario Pascual had been jailed until May 5 on a federal material witness warrant, which allows the government to hold him without the possibility of posting bond and without facing a criminal charge. He was held as a witness in the federal prosecution against his brother, sister and her husband. Those three have pleaded guilty. His brother-in-law, Pascual Miguel Sebastian, 32, was sentenced Thursday to 16 months in prison, with credit for 12 months already served.

“It’s my understanding they’re going to do that (file charges), but in state court,” Pascual’s defense attorney, Lee Hollander, said.

According to the State Attorney’s Office, a decision has not yet been made on whether to file rape charges against Mario Pascual. He remains in the Hendry County Jail on the Sheriff’s Office’s charge.

The child of Mario Pascual and his wife, who was 16 years old, died while he was jailed. Sebastian’s defense attorney, John Coleman, said the child suffered from an infection and died. She now is raising Sebastian and Matilde Pascual Andres’ two young children.

As part of Pascual Francisco’s plea deal earlier this spring, prosecutors agreed not to charge him with any state crimes, his defense attorney, Landon Miller, has told the Daily News. Molloy said they worked out three plea agreements to spare the child from testifying and being revictimized in court.

“If the state could pick that up and prosecute, that would be great,” Rodriguez said. “That would really, really be justice served.”

Rodriguez said while she welcomes charges against Mario Pascual, she worries the child may be asked to testify in state court.

“I’m concerned how will that affect her,” she said.