June 24, 2011 – A 22-year-old former church youth group leader is behind bars charged with sexually assaulting several female members of a church group from 2005 through 2009.
Pennsylvania State Police investigators interviewed several alleged victims and other members of the Grace Fellowship Church, which at the time was located in Newtown Township.
Shorey was the church’s youth group leader at the time of the assaults, according to the affidavit of probable cause written by Trooper Gerard McShea. Five individuals filed a report with state police claiming they were sexually assaulted by Shorey between November 2005 and January 2009, the affidavit states.
Two of the assaults took place on a bus trip to a youth camp in Massachusetts in August 2007, court documents indicate. Another alleged assault took place on a church trip to New York in 2009, the affidavit states.
At the time of the assaults, the victims were juveniles, the complaint states.
Posted By rodneypires on June 27, 2011
Category: Sexual Assault
Tags: Sexual Assault
June 16, 2011 – Charges were filed Thursday against a Ham Lake Lutheran church youth director accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl in the summer and fall of 2010. The victim said the assaults took place at the church, on church retreats and at a youth camp, among other places.
Damian Burkhalter, 47, of Blaine, Minn., is the youth director at Glen Cary Lutheran Church in Ham Lake. He was arrested Tuesday in connection with the allegations, which surfaced during a therapy session.
Posted By rodneypires on June 17, 2011
Category: Sexual Assault
Tags: Sexual Assault
June 13, 2011 – Joshua O’Bannion, 26, of Gilbert, Ariz., pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual battery and three counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor today in Cuyahoga Common Pleas Court.
O’Bannion was a youth pastor at First United Pentecostal Church in Parma. Between January-December 2008, O’Bannion, then 24, sexually assaulted a 14-year-old female and a 15-year-old female who attended the church. The assault occurred in and outside of the church.
The victims disclosed the assaults to Parma police after O’Bannion was arrested in Chandler, Ariz. on Sept. 9, 2009 for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old female there. At the time of the arrest, he was working as a youth pastor at a church in Tempe, Arizona.
O’Bannion’s grandfather is currently the pastor of the Parma church.
O’Bannion is scheduled for sentencing July 25.
Posted By rodneypires on June 17, 2011
Category: Sexual Assault
Tags: Sexual Assault
May 24, 2011 – WARREN, Mich. — A former pastor of a suburban Detroit church who was principal of its school has been sentenced to about seven years in prison after pleading no contest to charges he sexually assaulted a teenage boy and accosted another.
Christopher Settlemoir was sentenced Tuesday in a Warren court, making no comment before the judge. He was pastor at Warren’s Antioch Baptist Church and principal of Antioch Baptist Academy.
Posted By rodneypires on May 25, 2011
Category: Sexual Assault
Tags: Sexual Assault
May 24, 2011 – New York – A former York County pastor hanged himself in a West Virginia jail cell Saturday after his arrest on a sexual assault charge last week, court officials said.
The Rev. Matthew D. Jarrell, 41, previously of Old Paths Baptist Church in North Codorus Township, had been senior pastor of Open Door Baptist Church in Mesquite, Texas, for seven years, said the Rev. Rik Parcell, associate pastor of the Texas congregation.
Jarrell was found hanging in his cell at the South Central Regional Jail in Charleston, W.Va., between 11 and 11:30 p.m. Saturday, John Lopez, acting chief of operations of the Regional Jail Authority, told the Charleston Gazette.
Posted By rodneypires on May 25, 2011
Category: Sexual Assault
Tags: Sexual Assault
May 10, 2011 – CONCORD, N.H. — A New Hampshire man faces a charge of felonious sexual assault on a 12-year-old girl, in a case in which a pastor and two church elders were convicted of not reporting the allegation to police.
Joel Clement, 53, of North Conway was indicted in April and arraigned last week, Conway Police said. He is free on a $10,000 personal recognizance bond. His next court date has not been set.
The pastor and two elders of the Valley Christian Church in Center Conway learned of the assault allegations from the girl’s parents in September 2009, but they failed to notify police. WMWV-FM reports that the parents told police six months later.
Ernest Willis, 52, of Gilford is charged with aggravated sex assault and felonious sex assault of his children’s then 15-year-old babysitter in 1997. Both Willis and the teen were congregants of Trinity Baptist Church in Concord at the time.
Information from: WMWV-FM,
Posted By rodneypires on May 10, 2011
Category: Sex Crimes, Sexual Assault
Tags: Sex Crimes, Sexual Assault
Saturday 7 May, 2011 – A volunteer at a Texas church home to the largest congregation in the United States has been charged with sexually abusing an autistic child.
Alvaro Daniel Guzman, 25, was charged with indecency with a child over a February 2010 incident at a Lakewood Church activities program for special needs children, according to local media reports in Houston. The arrest warrant was issued on Tuesday but Guzman is still free.
Lakewood is a Protestant “megachurch” run by pastor Joel Osteen, whose weekend services draw more than 40,000 people. Osteen’s television ministry is broadcast in dozens of countries.
Guzman allegedly fondled an 8-year-old autistic boy while he helped him climb into a play structure. Another adult volunteer allegedly witnessed the event and reported it to church officials and authorities.
The arrest warrant was issued this week. As of Saturday, Guzman was not in custody, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
Lakewood Church, in a statement posted on its web site, said Guzman was “immediately removed” from volunteer services and that state authorities were “notified immediately.”
Posted By rodneypires on May 9, 2011
Category: Sex Crimes, Sexual Assault, Uncategorized
Tags: Sex Crimes, Sexual Assault
April 14, 2011 – Police officers have arrested a man who allegedly sexually assaulted a girl for nearly three years while volunteering at Springs Community Church from the late 1990s through 2008. Police said the girl was 16 years old when 37-year-old Eric Caverly allegedly began sexually assaulting her. Caverly was a youth leader to the middle school ministry.
According to an arrest affidavit the church is where he first met the girl. He formed a friendship with the victim, and she frequently spent the night at the Caverly home. Caverly and the victim started “fooling around” when she was 16. Documents state he would take her hand and place it in his pants. Caverly and the teen first had sex when she was 17 years old.
Eric Caverly / Courtesy: Colorado Springs Police Department
The arrest is the result of a sexual assault report taken back in December, three years after the first assaults allegedly began.
Posted By rodneypires on April 18, 2011
Category: Sexual Assault, Uncategorized
Tags: Sexual Assault
March 25, 2011 – The ex-bookkeeper of a California church has been sentenced to nearly three years in prison for stealing $129,000.
Orange County prosecutors originally charged 37-year-old Elyse Marie Kennedy with 154 felony counts of forgery with sentencing enhancements for embezzling money from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Tustin. If convicted at trial, she faced up to 107 years in prison.
It wasn’t a sophisticated crime: She wrote 154 checks to herself.
In a plea deal Thursday, the Santa Ana woman pleaded guilty to two felony counts of forgery. She was sentenced to two years, eight months in prison. A restitution hearing is set for June 24.
Posted By rodneypires on March 26, 2011
Category: Sex Crimes, Sexual Assault
Tags: Sex Crimes, Sexual Assault
March 25, 2011 – Portland Oregon – The Pacific Northwest chapter of the Roman Catholic Church’s Jesuit order has agreed to pay $166 million to settle more than 500 child sexual abuse claims against priests in five states, attorneys said on Friday.
The victims, most of them Native Americans from remote Alaska Native villages or Indian reservations in the Pacific Northwest, were sexually or psychologically abused as children by Jesuit missionaries in those states in the 1940s through the 1990s, the plaintiffs’ attorneys said.
Posted By rodneypires on March 26, 2011
Category: Sex Crimes, Sexual Assault
Tags: Sex Crimes, Sexual Assault
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