A former northwest Indiana pastor was charged in federal court today with taking a minor across state lines in and has signed a plea agreement, prosecutors announced.
Jack A. Schaap, of Crete, and Dyer, Ind., was charged in a criminal information in U.S. District Court in Hammond, Ind., according a news release from the district’s U.S. attorney’s office.
The FBI had confirmed last month that it was investigating whether Schaap, the former pastor of an Indiana megachurch, broke any laws during a relationship with a girl who was 17 last month that led to his ouster from First Baptist Church in Hammond.
Schaap, 54, admitted to adultery and “improper behavior” with the teenager, leading a board of deacons to fire him last month, a church spokesman said at the time.
Schaap had a relationship between June 1 and July 30 with a girl who had not yet turned 18, and took her from Indiana to Illinois and to Michigan, according to the criminal information. Schaap took the girl “with the intent that she engage in sexual activity for which (Schaap could) be charged with a criminal offense,” according to the information.
Prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of several items Schaap is alleged to have used in committing the crime, including an iPad, an iPhone, a digital camera, a voice recorder and two computer flash drives, according to the information.
In his plea agreement, which also was filed in federal court today, Schaap admits that he had sex with the girl, the girl was under his care or supervision, and he used a computer to persuade the girl to have sex with him illegally.
Schaap was scheduled to have his initial court appearance Wednesday at 3 p.m. before U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Cherry in Hammond. As part of the plea deal, he waived his right to have the charges against him considered by a grand jury for indictment.
An FBI spokesman said last month that the agency was investigating whether Schaap was involved in “an improper sexual relationship with an underage.”
The Way Forward
Featuring the Writing of Bruce Gerencser
The lesson here is that the most dedicated, knowledgeable, and successful proponents of Christian fundamentalism, when faced with a choice between the abstractions of the faith and their own mortal longings, will risk complete disaster to actualize themselves in the palpable material world made up of reproductive flesh and blood. The irony is that this is without a doubt his most honest moment, it’s so utterly obvious what he really believes, because he would risk the loss of everything for this. And now he is paying that price. How unbiblical our standards of sexual propriety.
I predict that he will be back to running another church in no time. After all he is really, really sorry and the devil made him do it and God has already forgiven him.
People, please don’t buy into the religous crock and keep giving these kind of shysters your money.
Sadly, Renoliz, you are spot on. Some goofball church will eventually hire this “repeantant, god forgiven, devil blaming and a renewed passion to preach the (his) gospel” slime ball and then a few years down the road when history repeats it’s self, they will have no clue that this could have EVER happen again! After all, he said he was sorry and god has transformed his heart!
Yep, and if all else fails, they can start a new church like Ted Haggard did.
Even twice disgraced Jimmy Swaggart still has people following him. (as does people like Peter Popoff and Leroy Jenkins)
This sanctimonious pompous egotistical ass gets his just desserts if he goes to jail. His preaching is vile and full of hateful, misogynistic, homophobic, holier than thou fire and brimstone. He’s a pustule on the face of this earth, and I wish only the worst for him.
Cat, please tell me what you really think.
When these icons of the faith fall there is an sense of satisfaction that comes from their fall.
If this story was “middle aged man takes hot 17 yr old across state lines to have have sex” we would likely still be bothered by the story but we would “understand” how it happened. Old man, nubile, beautiful girl, stiff prick, no conscience. However, the Schaaps of the world set themselves up as pillars of moral virtue. Of course, those of us who left the IFB know better and when people like Schaap fall it is gratifying to know that we are right. I have no sadness for Schaap. His wife? A little bit. His children? I feel for them. They must be going through a difficult time with Daddy being so publicly exposed.
Yes, and I hope it opens his family’s eyes and they eventually leave the fold.
Yes indeedy, charged with a good old Mann Act violation. Ya gotta love it when a sanctimonious IFB pastor gets busted under a federal law designed to curb “white slavery.” As Hitchens said about Falwell, it’s a pity there isn’t a hell for him to go to.
Mann Act
A researcher discovered that if he fed sea birds to dolphins they would not age or die. One day, carrying his supplies back to his home, he found a elderly lion lying across his front stoop. Since the animal was old and looked toothless, he decided to step over the cat, upon which he was immediately arrested for “Transporting gulls over a staid lion for immortal porpoises”
You definitely have too much time on your hands.