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Police arrest sex offender at home with two juvenile runaways in Southwest Albuquerque
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A convicted sex offender is accused of raping a teenage runaway multiple times at his mother’s home in Southwest Albuquerque.
Joseph Lacour-Benavidez, 42, of Albuquerque, is charged with 12 counts of criminal sexual penetration and one count each of criminal sexual communication with a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center.
Lacour-Benavidez has been a registered sex offender since 2003, when he was sentenced to more than a decade in prison on rape charges, according to court records. In 2017, he pleaded guilty to another sex offense after pretending to be a high school student and sending sexually explicit texts to a 13-year-old girl.
On April 21, the Albuquerque Police Department learned of two juveniles, a now-15-year-old girl and an 11-year-old girl, who left a foster home and were believed to be inside Lacour-Benavidez’s home in the 9100 block of Rodeo SW, near Gibson, APD spokesperson Rebecca Atkins said in a news release.
Lacour-Benavidez told police the girls were in his bedroom, while his mother denied them being in the home, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. The 15-year-old showed police sexually explicit messages between her and Lacour-Benavidez.
Police said Lacour-Benavidez told them he had sex with the girl four times, but she told police it was many more times than that. The teen told police he knew she was a minor when they met.
The girl told police Lacour-Benavidez smoked meth and gave her some of the drug to experiment with, the complaint states. Police later found more sexually explicit texts between Lacour-Benavidez and the teen.
