The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Samuel McKinney, an Evangelical pastor at an unnamed church in Kentucky, was recently convicted of first-degree rape against a child under 12 years of age.
A former Kentucky pastor has been found guilty in a decades-old rape case.
According to Attorney General Russell Coleman, 60-year-old Samuel McKinney was found guilty Wednesday by an Estill County jury on the charge of first-degree rape against a child under 12 years of age.
The victim alleged the abuse occurred about once a month from May 1982 to December 1985 and stopped when she was about 11 years old.
The woman, now 50, reported the abuse in 2023 after learning her abuser was a pastor at an Irvine church.
“In our Commonwealth, there is no statute of limitations for felony charges, which allowed this courageous woman to come forward and report her abuse after all these years,” said Attorney General Coleman. “Her bravery was critical to putting this criminal behind bars, and we hope her example will encourage others in similar situations to come forward.”
The jury recommended a sentence of 20 years. Under Kentucky’s law, McKinney will be required to serve 85% of the sentence before he is eligible for parole. McKinney will also be required to register as a Sex Offender for the rest of his life.
He will be sentenced on June 3.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Waymon Jordan, Sr., pastor of Greater Blessed Hope Baptist Church in Waxhaw, North Carolina, stands accused of sexually assaulting a minor girl.
A pastor in Union County was arrested this week after he was accused of committing child sex crimes, the sheriff’s office said.
The pastor, 79-year-old Waymon Jordan Sr., was arrested on March 5. He is listed online as the founder and senior pastor at Greater Blessed Hope Baptist Church in Waxhaw.
The sheriff’s office said that in February, its special victims unit began investigating a report of a child sexual assault. Over the course of several weeks, detectives conducted numerous interviews and eventually named Jordan a suspect.
Upon his arrest, Jordan was charged with four counts of statutory sex offense with a child. An arrest warrant said that he engaged in a “sexual act” with a minor who was 15 years old or younger. The child’s exact age was not given.
The warrant indicated that the alleged crime happened in 2022.
Jordan was initially denied bond but then had it set at $200,000. He was released from jail on March 6. Court documents said that upon his release, he is not allowed to have any contact with the victim. He is scheduled to be back in court on March 25.
Greater Blessed Hope Baptist Church was contacted for a statement regarding Jordan’s arrest, but no response has been given.
A week after his arrest, Jordan allegedly committed suicide.
North Carolina pastor was found dead a week after he was charged with multiple child sex crimes, the Union County Sheriff’s Office today confirmed with The Roys Report (TRR). Waymon Jordan Sr., the senior pastor at Greater Blessed Hope Baptist Church in Waxhaw, North Carolina, was arrested on March 6, according to an earlier statement from the police on Facebook.
Jordan, 79, was charged with four counts of statutory sex offense with a child, the statement said. Following his arrest, he was released on a bond of $200,000, police said.
The pastor was found dead last week — about a week after being released, Lieutenant James Maye told TRR. Jordan was discovered behind his church with a weapon nearby.
While a cause and manner of death could not be revealed, Maye said police suspect no foul play in Jordan’s death. Police said that no other suspects are being sought in connection with his death.
“Everything on scene indicated this was an isolated event,” Maye said. “We can’t officially say this was a self-inflicted gunshot wound at this time because the medical examiner has still not made their findings public, so we are waiting on that. But we can say, like I said, that we do not believe that foul play was suspected.”
Maye noted that there is still an “active sexual assault investigation and an active death investigation into Mr. Jordan at this time.”
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Jeffery Summers, former pastor of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, and employee of Horizon Elementary School, stands accused of two felony charges of obscene communication with a minor, traveling to meet after using a computer to lure a child, and he has additional charges of obscene communication-use of a computer to solicit/lure a child.
A former South Georgia pastor has been arrested along with 16 others on Child Sex Crimes in Volusia County, Florida.
Jeffery Summers was a pastor at Maranatha Baptist church in Plains from 2005 to 2013. The Port Orange Police Department in Volusia County reports, he was arrested as part of a child sexting called “Operation Full Throttle”. In the sting, suspected child predators believed they were talking to underage children online but were in fact talking officers.
….
According to the incident report, “The defendant knowingly used a computer, the internet, or a cell phone to solicit a child whom the defendant believed to be a 14-year-old male with the intent to engage in some form of unlawful sexual activity with that child.”
52-year-old Jeffery Summers was arrested and now has two felony charges of obscene communication with a minor, traveling to meet after using a computer to lure a child, and he has additional charges of obscene communication-use of a computer to solicit/lure a child.
The police report also listed Horizon Elementary School as Summers’ employer. Horizon Elementary and the Volusia County School Board have been made aware and are taking appropriate action.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
By Eloise Goldsmith, Common Dreams, Used with Permission
Columbia University received a wave of criticism on Friday after it agreed to a number of demands from the Trump administration as part of negotiations over $400 million in federal grants and contracts that the Trump administration had pulled due to the school’s alleged “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”
The school agreed to a ban on masks and to appoint a senior vice provost with broad power to oversee both the department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studied and the school’s Center for Palestine Studies, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news. Also, Columbia has hired over 30 “special officers” who will have the ability to remove individuals from campus and arrest them, per the memo from the school announcing the update.
On Friday evening, writer Ross Barkan wrote on X, “I confess I don’t get Columbia folding. Don’t they have an endowment worth many billions? Very rich alumni? Alumni who hate Trump? They could do a massive ‘resistance’ fundraiser to make up for lost federal dollars. Very odd and very weak.” Others echoed this sentiment.
“Columbia’s capitulation to fascist government intervention is so severe when you really look at the details,” wrote Nour Joudah, an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, on X. “This is pathetic.”
Leaders at Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute expressed sadness. “The administration held up the university at gunpoint, but I can’t help but feel that Columbia has lost something it may never regain,” wrote the litigation director at the Knight Institute, Alex Abdo, on Friday.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight Institute, wrote on Bluesky that it is “a sad day for Columbia and for our democracy.”
The episode highlight’s the Trump administration’s escalating scrutiny of higher education.
In February, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order with the purported aim of rooting out antisemitism on college campuses, and has vowed to go after foreign-born students who have engaged in pro-Palestine protests, which he has deemed “anti-American activity.” The Department of Education—which the Trump administration is endeavoring to shut down—has also launched investigations into dozens of universities over alleged “race-exclusionary practices.”
But Columbia has so far been at the center of the administration’s feud with universities. In a March 7 press release, members of Trump’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced the cancellation of $400 million, and a day later immigration agents arrested a recent Columbia University graduate who played a major role in pro-Palestine demonstrations last year. The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident, has been widely decried.
On March 13, the Trump administration sent a letter to Columbia University Interim President Katrina Armstrong outlining a series of steps that Columbia must comply with in order to maintain a “continued financial relationship” between the school and the government.
Among the nine demands was a call for disciplinary proceedings for students involved in last year’s Gaza Solidarity Encampments and occupation of Hamilton Hall. The same day Columbia received the letter it issued expulsions, multi-year suspensions, and temporary degree revocations for students involved in the Hamilton occupation.
A senior administrator at Columbia told the Journal that the university had considered legal challenges to resist the demands, but decided that the federal government had too many ways to take back money from the university. Columbia has an endowment of about $15 billion, though according to the outlet it would not “take long for it to cease to operate in any recognizable form without government money.”
“Additionally the school believed there was considerable overlap between needed campus changes and Trump’s demands,” according to the Journal.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This cartoon correctly shows how many Evangelicals perceive the transgender/bathroom issue. Their perceptions, however, are categorically wrong.
What should we make of Evangelical Christians who are obsessed with human biological sex, gender, genitals, and what people do with them? I peruse scores of Evangelical blogs and websites every day. Without fail, one or more of these defenders of the one true penis will write an article disparaging LGBTQ people. Rare is an article about the peccadilloes of heterosexual people, even though their sexual sins and crimes are far more common than those found among LGBTQ people.
Some Evangelicals are, in particular, obsessed with transgender people. Take Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen. Week after week, Thiessen churns out articles attacking, disparaging, and demeaning transgender people. Between Thiessen’s defense of preachers who commit sex crimes and his obsession with hating LGBTQ people, it makes me wonder what lies buried deeply in his proverbial closet. Regardless, Thiessen’s unhealthy obsession with transgender people is disturbing, to say the least. If a transgender woman was beaten and killed near where Thiessen lives and law enforcement found his hate-filled writing about transgender people, he would quickly become a person of interest.
Today, Thiessen wrote another article about transgender people titled, If You Still Think It is Fair. Thiessen said things like:
How humiliating was it when a fake [transgender] woman was sent to the Miss Universe pageant in 2018? Of all the women in Spain, a fake one was deemed to be the most attractive? and qualified for a female beauty pageant??
….
It is not normal behavior to reject one’s actual gender and pretend to be a gender one is not. There is nothing fair about this inclusion in any women’s event or activity. What makes it worse is the fact that a female [U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe] is opposing Trump’s Executive Order banning fake women in women’s sports and activities.
….
There is nothing right or fair about including transgender in women’s activities. You will find that there is no historical foundation for these inclusions. It may have taken place in Sodom and Gomorrah but God destroyed those cities so we will never know.
….
When female athletes do not stick up for their real female counterparts, then you know there is something really wrong with many people. Maybe the problem is that many men and women think that since they are not involved in those activities, it is not their problem.
However, many problems are solved by those who are not involved. They have the advantage of not having emotional conflicts, should see the situation clearly, and can suggest proper solutions. Those outsiders can still champion right over wrong as eventually, the sinful behavior will reach their activities soon enough.
As Christians, we need to continually speak out and hold our ground.
….
It is not normal, it is not right, and it is not moral. Christians can do something with God’s help. When they address this problem, they just need to remember that Transgenders are God’s creation also, and are under severe attacks from evil.
They need to be rescued from this sin and the people who are locking them inside this sin. This is a spiritual warfare battle and Christians need to go into it armed with sincere prayer, the right attitudes, and the right knowledge. Wisdom will help apply that knowledge correctly so that God wins the day.
This is not something we can do on our own. We need Go’d help in this and other spiritual warfare issues. We are just not equipped with the right tools to handle spiritual problems on our own.
As Christians pray and get prepared for this battle, they can still speak out telling the world that has lost sight of the difference between right and wrong, what is right and what is wrong. Without the Christian testimony and witness, those godly standards are lost as no one else has them.
Stop the unfairness and humiliation of women and show Christian love to the real women of the world.
In what way do transgender people materially affect the lives of Theissen and others like him? None that I can think of. No, Thiessen is transphobic, and he rails against transgender people because he finds them disgusting. Or perhaps he is sexually attracted to transgender people, and God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, and the Bible can’t stop Thiessen from thinking lustful thoughts about what people have in their pants or under their skirts.
Less than one percent of Americans are transgender, yet according to Thiessen and other Evangelical zealots, they are an existential threat to the human race. In the past, Thiessen has said transgender people should be arrested and put in internment camps, much like the United States did with Japanese and German people during World War II. Bigotry is bigotry regardless of the clothing it wears.
Transgender people were disgustingly used as a political prop for Donald Trump and other MAGA politicians during the last election. Based on the ads, you would think transgender people are lurking in the shadows on every corner, hoping to find a defenseless child to rape or assault. Some ads focused on transgender women playing women’s high school and college sports. Keep in mind that few transgender people play organized sports. According to one news report, ten transgender women played college sports last year. Ten. A whopping ten transgender women out of thousands of female athletes. At the high school level, last year in the state of Ohio, only two transgender girls played sports, Yet, we are to believe that a total of twelve transgender women are destroying high school and college athletics. Child, please. This doesn’t mean that there are not issues to resolve when transgender people play sports. There are, and it is up to league administrators to determine what constitutes fair play. However, this is not a simple issue to solve. If it is just a matter of testing for testosterone levels, what will happen to heterosexual women who have high testosterone levels? As a former player of high school and college basketball, we used to joke about the jumping capabilities of White people; you know, “white people can’t jump.” Generally speaking, Black athletes run faster and jump higher than Whites. Should Black athletes be penalized for having genetic superiority? So it is with transgender women. If being trans gives them an unfair competitive advantage, then it may be necessary to adjust the rules — based on science and not because of bigotry. So few transgender students play sports that it is impossible to know whether they have a physical advantage, and, if they do, how much advantage they have. This is an issue that must be addressed by science, and not the shrill, hysterical rants of Evangelical preachers. (I should note that many transgender people want this issue addressed too.)
Rarely does Thiessen write a post for his site without mentioning BG and MM, also known as Bruce Gerencser and Ben Berwick (Meerkat Musings). His latest post disparaging transgender people mentions both of us. Here’s what “Hetero D” had to say:
We know that there will be those who disagree with us, for example, MM and BG, but their minds are confused and deceived so their opinions do not matter. This issue is a product of deception and confusion as the people allowing this humiliating act are just as deceived and confused about life and gender.
According to Theissen, our opinions on this issue don’t matter. Why? Our minds are confused and deceived by a mythical being, Satan himself. What, exactly, are we confused about? It is Thiessen who refuses to accept what consensus science tells about biological sex and gender. The Line, owned by Jimmy Snow, features a weekly call-in show hosted primarily by transgender people. If you want to understand the plethora of issues surrounding transgender people and the challenges they face living in a world increasingly hostile to them, I encourage you to tune in to their program.
Matt Dillahunty, whose significant other is transgender, also has several programs on The Line. Matt is a good source for those who want to understand transgender people. I will give you fair warning, Matt has zero tolerance for bigots like Thiessen. Honest, thoughtful discussions are welcome, but disparaging and attacking transgender people will bring upon you the wrath of Almighty Matt, and rightfully so. I should note, it is almost always Evangelicals who call into these programs to attack transgender people. They are not interested in learning about biological sex and gender or making good-faith efforts to understand transgender people. In their minds, as with Derrick Thomas Thiessen, transgender people are e-v-i-l. For you who regularly comment on this blog, you have read the comments of several transgender people. Do they seem “evil” to you? Of course not. If anyone seems evil, it is Theissen, but even with him, I don’t think he is actually evil. He has been conditioned and indoctrinated his whole life to hate LGBTQ people. In recent years, Thiessen’s hatred has focused on transgender people, though it is unlikely that he personally knows anyone who is transgender
I remember thinking just like Thiessen about LGBTQ people. My hatred and bigotry were driven by not only my Christian Fundamentalism but also the fact that I didn’t know any LGBTQ people. Oh, there were people I suspected were “gay,” but I wasn’t friends with any of them. It took actually meeting and befriending LGBTQ people for my views to change. Today, I have friends all across the sexual and gender spectrum. My life has been enriched in every way by knowing them.
For you who are former Evangelicals, how did you view and treat LGBTQ people? Were you a bigot like Thiessen? What caused you to change your mind about LGBTQ people? Do you know or are you friends with transgender people? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Daniel Menelaou, a youth pastor at the Alpharetta, Georgia campus of the sixteen-campus Australian global megachurch Futures Church (formerly Influencers Church), stands accused of child pornography possession. Futures Church is affiliated with the Assemblies of God.
Officials at Futures Church headquartered in Australia were left in shock last Wednesday after Daniel Menelaou, a youth pastor with the Alpharetta, Georgia, campus of the global megachurch, was arrested and charged with possession of child pornography.
Arrest records from the Roswell Police Department lists six counts of possession “or control any material depicting minor in sexually explicit conduct,” against Menelaou who began working at the Alpharetta campus of the church in August 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile.
A report from Fox5 said Roswell Police and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation raided 28-year-old Menelaou’s home after receiving a cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
“During the course of that search warrant, we seized several electronic devices that will be analyzed for additional evidence,” Roswell Police Officer Tim Lupo told the news outlet.
Investigators said the youth pastor, who also worked as a student mentor at Temple Christian College in Australia prior to his work in Georgia, uploaded multiple videos that “depict a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct” and shared the images using the messenger app called Kik.
“Our hearts are heavy as we share heartbreaking news with you. In recent days, one of our youth [pastors] working overseas, Daniel Menelaou, was arrested and charged with possession of materials depicting minors in sexually explicit content. Like you, we are deeply shocked, grieved, and blindsided by this news. We also want to be absolutely clear that these charges have no connection to anyone in our church community,” wrote Pastor Tony Cornbridge of Futures Church in Australia.
“We understand that this is difficult to process, and our hearts go out to all those affected, as well as Emma and their families. In moments like these, we lean into the grace, wisdom, and justice of God, trusting Him to bring healing, clarity, and comfort.”
Futures Church, which is formerly Influencers Church, is a Pentecostal church affiliated with the Assemblies of God denomination. According to the church’s website, it has 16 campuses located in Australia, the United States and Indonesia.
Reacting to the charges, another spokesperson for the church said in a statement to The Christian Post that they condemned Menelaou’s actions in “the strongest possible terms.”
“Until his arrest, we had no prior knowledge of any allegations or indication of wrongdoing. The details outlined in the arrest warrant are deeply disturbing and stand in total opposition to our unwavering commitment to protecting children,” the spokesperson said.
“Our hearts go out first and foremost to any victims who have been harmed. We remain committed to standing with all survivors of abuse, particularly children, whose suffering should never be ignored or minimized,” the spokesperson continued.
“Futures Church has a zero-tolerance policy regarding any form of abuse. The moment we became aware of Daniel Menelaou’s arrest, we placed him on immediate administrative leave. However, the full extent of these charges was unknown to us until the last few hours and his position has now been terminated. Let us be unequivocally clear this behavior is reprehensible and has no place in our church.”
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
In 2023, Paul Coleman, pastor of Good Samaritan Outreach Ministries in Wichita Falls, Texas was indicted on one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of indecency with a child by sexual contact.
A pastor of a Wichita Falls church has been indicted on one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of indecency with a child by sexual contact.
The indictments alleged the sexual assault occurred on November 19, 2022, and the indecency on October 1, 2022.
Investigators said the 11-year-old victim’s family attended his church, Good Samaritan Outreach Ministries on East Carolina Street.
According to the arrest warrants, the girl made an outcry at the hospital and Patsy’s House Children’s Advocacy Center. She said Coleman began by kissing her at the church and in his home on Perrigo Street.
The victim said on November 19 she had gone to the bathroom at the church and came out to find Coleman with his pants down around his ankles and then he sexually assaulted her. She said he threatened to kill her if she told anyone what happened.
One of the girl’s siblings was also interviewed at Patsy’s House and said he saw his sister against a wall and heard her telling Coleman to get off her.
He said Coleman told him to get out and not tell anyone, or he would do something to him.
In 2024, additional sex crime charges were levied against Coleman.
Just over a year since he was released on a lower bond, a former Wichita Falls pastor is back in jail with new child sex crime charges and bonds.
Paul Andrew Coleman has bonds totaling $300,000 on new indictments alleging continuous sexual abuse of a child and aggravated sexual assault of a child.
The anonymous victim in the continuous abuse charge is different from the female victim listed in Coleman’s first indictments in March of last year.
With two new charges and being reindicted, Coleman now has four counts filed.
Coleman was first arrested in December 2022 with bonds of $300,000. They were lowered to $120,000 in March 2023, and he posted bonds the next month and was released with the stipulation he wear a GPS monitor at all times.
The first two offenses are alleged to have occurred November 19, 2022, and October 1, 2022. The additional offenses are alleged to have occurred June 1, 2022, and Nov. 30, 2022.
The first offense allegedly involved an 11-year-old girl who attended his church, Good Samaritan Outreach Ministries on East Carolina Street, with her family.
She said Coleman began kissing her at the church and in his home on Perigo Street and sexually assaulted her when she came out of the bathroom at the church.
She said he threatened to kill her if she told anyone what happened.
The girl’s brother told interviewers he witnessed the assault and was also threatened.
More than two years after a former Wichita Falls pastor was first accused of sex crimes against young girls in his congregation, a date has been set for his impending trial.
Paul Andrew Coleman, 68, of Wichita Falls, stands accused of one count of continuous sexual abuse of a child, two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, and one count of indecency with a child by sexual contact.
On March 4, 2025, an order was signed by 78th District Court Judge Meredith Kennedy, who specially set Coleman’s trial to begin on May 19, 2025.
Coleman, the founder and former pastor of Good Samaritan Outreach Ministries on East Carolina Street, has been held in the Wichita County Jail on bonds totaling $425,000 since May 17, 2024.
The charges against Coleman stem from between June 1, 2022, and November 30, 2022, when he was alleged to have sexually assaulted two girls who had attended his church and were both preteens at the time.
….
According to statements made by the victim’s family members and a forensic interviewer, the assaults of the two girls occurred at his residence and the church.
Other court documents alleged that Coleman had been sexually abusing the alleged child victims since September 2020.
The prosecution also accused Coleman of grooming one of the victims and her family by buying them things, dropping food and gifts off at their house, and buying a victim a phone. They also say Coleman would come to the victim’s home when adults were not home.
They also accuse Coleman of grooming the other alleged victim and her family by helping to “discipline” the victim and her siblings by getting isolated contact with them, giving them attention, playing games with them and kissing the victim.
According to the state’s notice, Coleman allegedly threatened to kill one of the victims if she told anyone how he was touching her. He’s also accused of threatening to “do something” to the victim’s brother if he told anyone what he saw.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo, and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities. On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation — to go unchecked. Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa holders, green card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my firstborn child.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
In 2024 when Donald Trump as a presidential candidate proposed piping water from British Columbia, Canada to California, his statement was largely dismissed as campaign rhetoric.
Once he was elected, Canadians started paying attention but the potential water grab was seen as logistically and politically problematic and unlikely to gain traction. And the issue received scant attention in the water-rich Great Lakes regions of the U.S. and Canada.
But now, Great Lakes water and related agreements between the U.S. and Canada are clearly on President Trump’s radar according to a recent New York Times story.
The Times reported that Trump told Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in February that he wanted to abandon various border agreements including those concerning water.
“He wanted to tear up the Great Lakes agreements and conventions between the two nations that lay out how they share and manage Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario,” according to the Times.
Executive director of the Traverse City non-profit FLOW, Liz Kirkwood said the scope of agreements include the Boundary Waters Treaty, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and the Great Lakes Compact.
Kirkwood described the agreements as a “Great Lakes partnership between Canada and the U.S. and they are a global model to protect and steward 20% of the planet’s fresh surface water.”
Kirkwood said any attempt to break the agreements would be “bad for the health of our lakes and our communities and ultimately destructive of the U.S. relationship with a trusted neighbor.”
Given the magnitude of Trump’s statements, Great Lakes Now canvassed the region for reactions, seeking comments from select governors and the Premier of Ontario. Ontario borders four of the five Great Lakes and is Canada’s most populous province with 14 million people.
In addition to FLOW, Great Lakes Now sought comments from Illinois-based Alliance for the Great Lakes and Wisconsin-based Milwaukee Riverkeeper. Both were instrumental in promoting passage of the Great Lakes Compact that prevents large-scale diversions from the Great Lakes.
Alliance CEO Joel Brammeier said: “U.S. treaties and agreements with Canada, and similar agreements among the states and provinces, are the bedrock on which sustainable protection and restoration of our Great Lakes is built.”
“There is no space for the U.S. to step back from its shared obligation,”Brammeier said.
From Milwaukee, Riverkeeper Cheryl Nenn said: “we should not play politics with the Great Lakes.”
Nenn also noted that only 1% of the Great Lakes are replenished by rainfall and snowmelt.
“They are a one-time gift from the glaciers, and we need to protect them from abuse and over-consumption and that should supersede all politics,” Nenn said.
Great Lakes Now also sought comments from water policy experts who have held official governance positions.
Chicago’s Cameron Davis was a longtime Great Lakes advocate before moving to the U.S. EPA under President Obama where he advised the administrator on Great Lakes issues.
“Midwesterners see protecting the Great Lakes and its water as an act of patriotism,” Davis said. “And they’re smart enough to know Canada is our friend in that effort.”
Davis noted that support for the lakes has been bi-partisan and he expected that the Great Lakes states “will defend their relationship with Canada.”
The bi-partisan federal support over the last 20 years includes an executive order signed by President George W. Bush that declared the Great Lakes a “national treasure.” Bush’s order laid the groundwork for development of the Great Lakes restoration program.
President Obama jumped-started restoration by putting $475 million in his first budget and funding continues today. It was also Bush who signed the legislation that codified the Great Lakes Compact into federal law.
Canada’s Maude Barlow is a veteran author and water advocate who served as the senior adviser on water to the United Nations General Assembly.
Barlow pointed to the lack of detail in Trump’s comments but said if he is referring to abandoning the Great Lakes Compact, “that is worrying.”
“He could then just cancel the Compact on the American side and start diverting Great Lakes water around the country to service the manufacturing and technology resurgence he is planning. In this case there would be little Canada could do,” she said.
The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec have agreements that mirror the U.S. Compact but exist separately.
Barlow said Canadians value and protect their water heritage and will fight to defend it.
“And we know many Americans would take our side in such a struggle,” Barlow said.
Michigan’s Dave Dempsey served as a senior adviser on the staff of the International Joint Commission (IJC), the U.S.-Canada agency that advises the countries on transboundary issues.
“The IJC has a culture of joint fact-finding,” Dempsey said. “And the respectful resolution of boundary waters disagreements has served the two countries well. Abrogating the treaties would be a colossal mistake.”
An IJC spokesperson declined to comment on Trump’s water statements saying the agency “does not comment on political matters or issues of domestic policy. This is important in order to ensure our effectiveness as an impartial advisor to governments.”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, both Democrats, did not respond to a request to comment on President Trump’s water statements.
Daniel Tierney, spokesperson for Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine declined to comment saying “I am not aware of a formal or final policy on which to comment.”
However, it’s important to note that Great Lakes governors have responsibility for the lakes via the Compact.
At a meeting of Great Lakes governors and premiers in Milwaukee, in 2019, Gov. Whitmer told Great Lakes Now that the lakes are “at the core of who Michigan is” and said, “absolutely, Michigan has to lead on Great Lakes issues.”
A spokesperson for Ontario Premier Doug Ford declined to comment saying:
“The issue is purely speculative at this point.”
Ford, a Progressive Conservative, has been aggressive in responding to Trump’s tariff threats.
The White House did not respond to a request to comment on Trump’s desire to put water agreements between the U.S. and Canada in play.
Please check out Circle of Blue for more articles on the Great Lakes.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.
A lot of people forget that Gaza was once a place inhabited by both Jews and Palestinians until 2005 when Ariel Sharon decided to give it all away.
And the result we saw October the 7th. President Trump did something bold. He looked into the future and said kind of a what if. We don’t know exactly what might happen in Gaza, but here’s what could have happened in Gaza.
Gaza could have been Singapore. Instead, Hamas turned it into Haiti.
And I’m very optimistic that with his leadership, his bold and innovative thinking, he doesn’t think like the other politicians and diplomats have thought. I heard somebody say he’s thinking outside the box. That’s ridiculous. He’s not thinking outside the box. He throws the box away and says, let’s start with a blank slate and see where this could go. That’s leadership.
I will use this term, Maria. I think we will see something of biblical proportion happen with his leadership in the Middle East.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
