Pasco Deputy Arrested and Fired on Child Sexual Abuse Charges

A Pasco County sheriff's corporal was arrested and fired this month on charges of child sexual abuse, in a case the sheriff described publicly as among the most disturbing his agency has handled.

Donald Valverde, 37, was taken into custody Friday, September 4 and charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious molestation and unlawful sexual activity involving a minor. He was terminated from the Pasco Sheriff's Office the same afternoon.

The agency said detectives began investigating earlier that week after the alleged victim came forward. Investigators said the alleged conduct occurred while Valverde was off duty, and that he and the alleged victim were known to each other and had what the agency described as a custodial relationship.

Valverde had been employed by the sheriff's office since 2015. He is charged, not convicted, and is presumed innocent unless and until the state proves the allegations in court.

What the charges mean under Florida law

Lewd and lascivious molestation under Florida statute covers intentional touching in a lewd or lascivious manner of specified areas of a person under 16, or forcing or enticing such a person to touch the offender. The offense level depends on the ages of both the alleged victim and the accused.

Unlawful sexual activity with certain minors addresses sexual activity involving a person 16 or 17 years of age committed by a person 24 or older. It is a second-degree felony under Florida law.

Where a custodial relationship exists, Florida law treats the circumstance as an aggravating factor in several offense categories, reflecting the legislative judgment that a position of authority over a child increases both the harm and the culpability.

Penalties on conviction for offenses in these categories can be substantial, and convictions carry sex offender registration requirements that continue after any term of incarceration is completed.

The agency's response

The sheriff's office announced the arrest publicly through a community alert and a news conference, a practice that reflects a deliberate transparency posture when the person arrested is an agency employee.

Termination occurred the same day as the arrest. Florida law enforcement agencies generally have authority to terminate employees for conduct that violates agency standards without waiting for criminal case resolution, subject to any applicable collective bargaining provisions.

The sheriff indicated that Valverde had previously been the subject of an internal inquiry related to what were described as domestic situations, and that he could not be terminated at that time because of a lack of evidence.

That disclosure raises the question that follows most cases involving law enforcement officers: what the agency knew, when it knew it, and whether earlier information should have produced a different outcome.

Certification and the state's role

Florida law enforcement officers are certified by the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission, which operates under the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Certification can be revoked for conduct that violates the moral character standards the commission maintains.

Revocation proceedings run independently of the criminal case. An officer can lose certification based on a finding of misconduct even if a criminal prosecution ends without a conviction, because the standards of proof and the questions at issue differ.

Agencies are required to report separations involving misconduct to the commission, which maintains records intended to prevent an officer terminated by one agency from being hired by another without the second agency learning why.

That system, sometimes described as addressing the wandering officer problem, works only if agencies report accurately and if hiring agencies check. Both have been subjects of national scrutiny in recent years.

Reporting child abuse in Florida

Florida has a universal mandatory reporting law. Any person who knows or has reasonable cause to suspect that a child has been abused, abandoned or neglected must report it, and the obligation is not limited to professionals who work with children.

Reports go to the Florida Abuse Hotline, operated by the Department of Children and Families and available 24 hours a day. Reports can be made by telephone, online or by fax, and the caller does not need to be certain that abuse occurred.

The hotline screens reports and refers those meeting statutory criteria for investigation. Law enforcement investigates criminal allegations in parallel with the child protective investigation.

Failure to report is itself a criminal offense in Florida, and institutions that fail to report face additional penalties. The threshold is reasonable cause to suspect, not proof.

How cases like this proceed

Following arrest, the case moves to the State Attorney's Office for the Sixth Judicial Circuit, which covers Pasco and Pinellas counties. Prosecutors review the investigation and file formal charges, which may match, exceed or fall short of the arrest charges.

Arraignment follows, at which the defendant enters a plea. Discovery, depositions and pretrial motions follow that, and in cases involving child victims, Florida law provides specific procedures governing how testimony may be taken and presented.

Victim privacy protections apply throughout. Florida law and news organization practice both restrict identification of alleged victims of sexual offenses, and Marsy's Law provisions in the Florida Constitution provide additional protections.

The timeline from arrest to trial in a Florida felony case is typically measured in many months, and cases involving child victims often take longer because of the additional procedural protections involved.

The broader accountability question

Cases involving law enforcement officers charged with crimes carry weight beyond the individual case because of the authority the position confers. An officer has access, credibility and power that an ordinary citizen does not.

Agencies that handle such cases through public disclosure and prompt termination are generally taking the approach that accountability researchers recommend, on the theory that concealment damages institutional credibility more than the underlying misconduct does.

The prior internal inquiry the sheriff referenced is where scrutiny typically focuses in the aftermath. Whether an agency had information that could have prompted closer supervision, and what evidentiary threshold it applied, are the questions that follow.

Florida agencies are not uniform in how they handle these situations, and the practices that distinguish agencies with strong internal accountability from those without are visible mainly in how they respond when the subject is one of their own.

Crime and courts across Florida this month

Elsewhere in the state, suspended Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez is scheduled for trial October 20 in Lake County on racketeering charges connected to an alleged illegal gambling operation. He has pleaded not guilty.

In Broward County, a Fort Lauderdale woman was arrested after a stolen Broward Sheriff's Office patrol vehicle was recovered on an Interstate 95 off-ramp in St. Lucie County on the night of September 22.

Jacksonville Sheriff's Office homicide detectives made several arrests in September, including a September 2 arrest in the death of a man who had been dropped off at a hospital with a gunshot wound in October 2025.

Each of those cases involves charges rather than convictions, and each defendant is entitled to the presumption of innocence through the resolution of their case.

Resources for families

The Florida Abuse Hotline is the primary reporting channel for suspected child abuse, neglect or abandonment, and it operates continuously. Reports can be made anonymously, though providing contact information helps investigators follow up.

Child advocacy centers operate across Florida and provide coordinated forensic interviews, medical evaluation and advocacy services, designed so that a child does not have to repeat an account to multiple agencies.

Certified rape crisis centers in Florida provide advocacy and counseling services, and sexual assault victim advocates are available through many law enforcement agencies and state attorney offices.

Families seeking information about a specific case can contact the victim advocate office at the State Attorney's Office for the circuit handling it, which provides case status information and support services to victims and their families.

Pasco County and its sheriff's office

Pasco County sits north of Hillsborough County in the Tampa Bay region, with roughly 620,000 residents across a geography that ranges from dense suburban development along the coast and the US 19 corridor to rural areas in the county's eastern reaches.

The county has been among Florida's faster-growing in recent years, absorbing households priced out of Hillsborough and Pinellas counties while remaining within commuting range of Tampa employment centers.

The Pasco Sheriff's Office is the primary law enforcement agency for unincorporated Pasco County and operates the county jail. Its intelligence-led policing program drew national attention and litigation in recent years over how it identified and monitored individuals it considered likely to offend.

That history means the agency operates under more external scrutiny than a comparably sized Florida sheriff's office typically faces, which is part of the context for how it has handled public disclosure in this case.

Florida's sex offender registration framework

Florida maintains one of the more extensive sex offender registration systems in the country, administered by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and searchable by the public through an online database.

Registration requirements attach on conviction for qualifying offenses and generally continue for life, with periodic in-person reporting obligations and requirements to report changes in address, employment, vehicles and online identifiers.

Florida distinguishes between sexual offenders and sexual predators, with the predator designation applied by court order for certain offenses and carrying additional notification requirements including community notification.

Residency restrictions apply in many Florida jurisdictions, prohibiting registrants from living within specified distances of schools, parks and other locations where children gather. Those local ordinances vary considerably across the state.

What's next

The case proceeds through the Sixth Judicial Circuit court system on the ordinary felony timeline, with formal charging decisions by the State Attorney's Office followed by arraignment and pretrial proceedings.

Certification review by the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission proceeds on its own track and is not dependent on the criminal case outcome.

The Pasco Sheriff's Office has said the investigation remains active, and agencies in such cases routinely ask anyone with relevant information to come forward, since additional alleged victims sometimes emerge after an arrest becomes public.

Valverde is charged and is presumed innocent. Nothing described here constitutes a finding that the alleged conduct occurred, and the allegations will be tested through the criminal process.