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.
Viktor Lishavsky, formerly the pastor of an unnamed Evangelical church, stands accused of sexually assaulting numerous foster children who were under his care.
Viktor Lishavsky, 37, carried out sickening sex attacks on mostly victims aged 13 or under in his care and treated them as his “personal harem”.
The “monster” abused five schoolgirls for five years when he was their legal guardian, it is claimed.
Cops arrested him in June 2017 in Komsomolsk-on-Amur after one of the foster girls complained to a teacher.
But details of his alleged depraved offending over five years have only just emerged.
Social services in the Khabarovsk region have now been accused of negligence in putting vulnerable children including orphans under his supervision.
Igor Komissarov, a senior official of the Russian Investigative Committee, expressed dismay over the alleged reign of terror.
He said: “Just imagine these girls who were given to a rapist.
“Why in Khabarovsk region did the so-called foster dad have the opportunity to rape children under his control for five years?”
Lishavsky, the former head of an evangelical church who ran a shoe repair shop, was seen as a “model foster father”.
He even appeared on local TV with his wife Olga as an example of a successful fostering family.
The “trouble-free family” had passed repeated inspections by social care workers.
The couple are reported to have had three children of their own, and to have fostered up to nine more youngsters.
No charges have been brought against her.
Lishavsky was paid £265 a month by the state to care for each of the five adolescent girls he abused.
A local media report claimed: “With the money that the government paid him as a foster parent, he rented an apartment where he had sex with either one or another foster daughter every other day, or every third day.”
Lishavsky is accused of more than 900 offences including 248 rapes and 358 “violent sexual acts” against girls aged 13 and under, according to a leaked charge sheet.
He also faces more than 270 further sex abuse charges involving girls aged between 12 and 17.
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.
Twenty years ago, Andy Savage, teaching pastor at Highpoint Church in Memphis, Tennessee, sexually assaulted a church teenager. He was never prosecuted for his crime. His church, at the time, Woodland Parkway Baptist Church in Spring, Texas, covered up his “sin.” Thanks to fine people at The Wartburg Watch, Savage’s victim’s story is being heard far and wide, forcing the not-so-good pastor Savage to shed crocodiles tears before his church as he confessed his crime. Astoundingly, the tone-deaf, clueless sheep at Highpoint Church gave their pastor a standing ovation.
Lisa Gutierrez and Adam Darby, reporters for the Kansas City Star, wrote:
Members of a Memphis megachurch stood and applauded their pastor on Sunday when he admitted to and apologized for engaging in a “sexual incident” with a high school student 20 years ago.
Jules Woodson, who accused Highpoint Church Pastor Andy Savage of sexually assaulting her when she was 17, told The New York Times she watched the moment, streamed live on the church’s YouTube page, in disbelief.
“It’s disgusting,” she said.
Though Savage, an author and podcast host, remains on the Highpoint staff, repercussions have begun for what Woodson says happened two decades ago.
The Times reported that on Monday afternoon, Christian publishing company Bethany House canceled the July publication of Savage’s book “The Ridiculously Good Marriage.”
Also on Monday, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis reported that the Austin Stone Community Church in Austin, Texas, placed staff member Larry Cotton on leave.
Cotton was associate pastor at Woodland Parkway Baptist Church in Texas, where Savage worked at the time of the alleged assault.
Woodson has said a pastor at the church urged her to stay quiet about what happened.
“We grieve for what happened to Jules Woodson,” said a statement to the Commercial Appeal from Austin Stone’s communications director John Young. “… No person should ever be subject to sexual sin from any church leader.”
The church felt it was “appropriate to ensure (Cotton’s) qualifications for his current role of leadership,” the statement read.
“In order to remove our potential bias from the situation, we have placed (Cotton) on a leave of absence while an investigation by a third-party organization is undertaken. We will provide a full report to the church after its completion.”
Woodson graphically shared her story on Friday with The Wartburg Watch, a site started by two Christian women who pursued their faith but saw “disturbing trends within Christendom.”
After she did, Savage went on social media to say he “had a sexual incident with a female high school senior” when he was a college student working for a Texas Baptist church now known as StoneBridge.
Savage, who helped found Highpoint Church, said he responded in a “biblical way.” He said he had apologized to Woodson immediately and asked for her forgiveness, Fox 13 in Memphis reported.
During his remarks on Sunday he did not tell the congregation what happened, but he said he had sinned and had not keep it a secret from Highpoint’s leaders. He also said he believed the episode had been “dealt with in Texas.”
“Until now, I did not know there was unfinished business with Jules,” he said, reading a statement off his cell phone.
“Jules, I am deeply sorry for my actions 20 years ago. I remain committed to cooperate with you toward forgiveness and healing.”
When he finished, church members stood and applauded.
Chris Conlee, Highpoint’s lead pastor, said he supported Savage, one of the people “hurt by the ripple effect of the consequences of that sin.”
Woodson told The Times the episode had not been “dealt with” because it had never been reported to law enforcement authorities.
….
She told The Times she sent an email in December to Savage at Highpoint, asking him, “Do you remember that night that you were supposed to drive me home from church and instead drove me to a deserted back road and sexually assaulted me?”
She said she decided to go public when he didn’t respond after more than a month.
Here’s some of what she wrote in the blog post.
“One evening, in the early Spring of 1998, I was hanging out with my youth minister, Andy Savage, at my church, Woodlands Parkway Baptist Church located at 10801 Falconwing Drive,” she wrote.
“I was 17 years old at the time and a senior at The Woodlands High School. There had been multiple kids there at the church after school, but as the night got later I was the only student left, alone in the church with Andy. I did not have a vehicle at the church, so Andy offered to take me home to my Mom’s house. …
“We reached a dead end and he turned the truck around before putting it in park. We were stopped, and he turned the headlights off. Suddenly, Andy unzipped his jeans and pulled out his penis. He asked me to suck it. I was scared and embarrassed, but I did it. I remember feeling that this must mean that Andy loved me. He then asked me to unbutton my shirt. I did. He started touching me over my bra and then lifted my bra up and began touching my breasts.
“After what I believe to have been about 5 minutes of this going on, he suddenly stopped, got out of the truck and ran around the back and to my side before falling to his knees. I quickly buttoned my shirt back up and got out of the truck. Now I was terrified and ashamed. I remember him pleading, while he was on his knees with his hands up on his head, ‘Oh my god, oh my god. What have I done? Oh my god, I’m so sorry. You can’t tell anyone …”
She said she felt manipulated and used, and that guilt and anxiety were “eating at her soul.” She said she took her accusations to the church’s leaders, but police were never called.
She said she was told that the associate pastor would inform the head pastor and the church would deal with the situation.
Savage, she said, went on as though nothing was outside of the norm, teaching a workshop titled “True Love Waits” about sexual purity and abstinence.
In the fire-hose torrent of sexual harassment scandals we are staggering under these days, one thing stands out as a common factor in all the cases: The accused are men.
“One of the reasons it is men who harass women, and sometimes other men, is that this is about power and overwhelmingly (workplace) upper management is male, so the positions of power are disproportionately occupied by men and the bottom is disproportionately occupied by women,” says Abigail Saguy, professor of sociology and gender studies at UCLA and author of the 2003 book, What is Sexual Harassment?
You may be thinking at this point… well, duh, this is something we all know instinctively. Women don’t do this kind of thing — grope, talk dirty, assault, sexually coerce, even rape their work colleagues. It’s a Y chromosome kind of thing, right?
But not so fast. Franklin Raddish, a South Carolina Baptist pastor with a nationwide following, last month declared, as a means of supporting Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore (who lost Tuesday), that accusations of sexual harassment against men in politics and Hollywood amounted to a “war on men.”
“More women are sexual predators than men,” opined Raddish. “Women are chasing young boys up and down the road, but we don’t hear about that because it’s not PC.”
He provided no evidence of this because, well, there isn’t any.
Still, there are exceptions that prove the rule: On Friday, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Kansas dropped out of her race after The Kansas City Star found out she had been accused in a 2005 lawsuit of sexually harassing and retaliating against a male subordinate who rejected her advances when she was a corporate executive.
….
Which leads to the question: What are the numbers on women accused of sexual harassment? Has anyone conducted scientific surveys and found some? What’s the reason why it appears the vast majority of people accused of workplace sexual harassment are men?
And what’s the reason few men ever file formal complaints?
“Pride gets in the way,” says Todd Harrison, a partner in a California firm that handles thousands of employment-law cases per year. “Most good plaintiffs attorneys who handle discrimination and harassment claims take on female-to-male harassment and the same (laws) apply. It’s just a matter of whether the men who are victims want to come forward.”
There are few numbers available about women sexual harassers, and some of the numbers available are more than a decade old.
“It is extremely rare — it does happen but it is extremely rare,” says Genie Harrison, a Los Angeles-based attorney who specializes in workplace sexual-harassment cases. “Men can be victims and women can be abusers, and I’ve represented victims where a woman was the harasser, but I would say it’s at best a 99.9%-to-.01% ratio.”
Various government agencies, such as the military, the federal employee system or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, keep track of complaints of workplace sexual harassment but they generally focus on the accusers, not the accused.
— In the most recent data available from the EEOC, there were 6,758 complaints of sexual harassment allegations received by the commission in 2016, and a little more than 16% were filed by men. But the data don’t say who did the harassing — a woman or another man.
Moreover, EEOC data do not provide a comprehensive picture of the entire country. Plus, the agency estimates that most people, male or female, who have experienced harassment (more than 80%) never file a formal complaint about it.
….
Emily Martin, general counsel and vice president for workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, who handles workplace sexual harassment issues, agrees that women harassers are a “minority of cases” because women are less likely to exercise power over men at work.
“I’ve never worked with a client where a woman was the harasser; we’re a women’s-rights organization so the individuals who tend to reach out to us are women,” Martin says. “And women who target other women (for harassment) is an unusual fact pattern.”
Jennifer Berdahl, a professor in the business school at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver who studies the harassment of men, says harassment is also about gender and how society defines it. Males learn a sense of superiority over females from the time they are children, she says.
Being a man means being superior to a woman and dominating women sexually or otherwise; sexual harassment is taking that (thinking) to an extreme,” Berdahl says. “It’s possible there’s a rare woman who might get off on dominating a person like that but men are socialized from the age of 3 to think of themselves as being ‘a real man,’ defined as dominating women.”
In her research, she says, she’s found that the most common way a woman would harass a man is to question his manhood. For many men, she says, being scorned as “feminine” or “weak” is too humiliating to report.
Another source of limited data on women harassers: Law firms that specialize in employment law and sexual harassment cases, such as Perona, Langer, Beck, Serbin, Mendoza & Harrison in Long Beach, Calif.
Todd Harrison, a partner in the firm, estimates he handles about 150 cases of employment law a year, and about 65% of them are sex harassment cases. Of those, 10% — or less than 10 cases per year — involve women as the accused harassers, he said.
“Sexual harassment is not just about sexual innuendo or jokes or pats on the butt, it’s about power and intimidation, so the cases I’ve handled (involving women harassers), it’s normally a woman in a control position and using that power to intimidate men,” Harrison says.
“Sometimes there are sexual overtures, inappropriate touching without consent, offers for quid pro quo or sex for promotion,” he added. “A lot of times it’s a powerful woman in an organization who will talk down or treat a man different from his female counterparts.”
But men can be reluctant to come forward to complain due to fear of mockery, he says. Men may also buy into the notion that female-on-male harassment isn’t even possible.
“Embarrassment is always an issue,” Harrison says. “Societal norms say men are supposed to be able to handle this. But we have men (clients) who say, ‘It’s just not fair. We’re always accused of it, here’s a situation where we’ve been victimized by a person in authority.’ ”
….
— Maria Puente, USA Today, Women are Rarely Accused of Sexual Harassment, and There’s a Reason Why, December 18, 2017
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.
Nicole Marie Andrews, a volunteer youth worker at The Church at Canyon Creek in Austin, Texas and a teacher at Cedar Park Middle School, was arrested Tuesday and charged with the sexual assault of a child.
Kate Winkle and Brittany Glas, reporters for KXAN, write:
A former teacher in Leander Independent School District was arrested Tuesday on charges of having an improper relationship with a Vandegrift High School student whom she met at a church where she volunteered.
At the end of October, the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office began investigating an alleged sexual assault and improper relationship involving Cedar Park Middle School’s sixth-grade teacher Nicole Marie Faires Andrews. She was arrested on Dec. 12 after authorities said she had an ongoing romantic relationship with a 16-year-old boy she met at The Church at Canyon Creek, where she was a volunteer youth administrator.
Records show Andrews, 31, started teaching English/Language Arts at Cedar Park Middle School in August of 2015. The district said she resigned on Nov. 6, 2017.
According to court documents, the boy admitted that Andrews had sexual contact with him 11 or 12 times, as well as sending a naked photo of herself, over the summer.
….
The senior pastor of The Church at Canyon Creek, Monty Watson, said in a statement, “Our hearts go out to the victim and the family, and we ask for prayer for all involved. We are working with the authorities and fully cooperating with this investigation.”
Andrews has been charged with sexual assault of a child, which is a second-degree felony.
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.
Dan Johnson, pastor of Heart of Fire Church in Louisville, Kentucky and a Kentucky state representative, has been accused of sexual assault by a female church member. As of the writing of this post, no criminal charges have been filed.
Bruce Schreiner and Adam Bean, reporters for the Associated Press, write:
A Republican state representative in Kentucky says a woman’s claim that he sexually assaulted her in 2013 has no merit and he will not resign.
Dan Johnson made the announcement at his church on Tuesday, a day after the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting published a story quoting a woman as saying Johnson had sexually assaulted her in his basement on Jan. 1, 2013. The woman, Maranda Richmond, was a member of the church, where Johnson is the pastor.
The Associated Press does not generally identify alleged sexual assault victims, but is doing so because Richmond has gone public with her story.
Police documents from an interview with Richmond in 2013 corroborate what she told the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. But Johnson called her story “totally false.” He said it was part of a scheme to attack Republicans running for office, citing Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, who faces accusations from multiple women of sexual misconduct.
“I don’t think in every case women lie. Not at all. I think it is the season. Last election it seemed to be racism. This one seems to be sexual impropriety,” he said. “If the police or anyone involved had thought that this was a real case, don’t you think they would have pursued that? There is no way they would have let up if they thought there was something to it.”
Police documents obtained by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting show a detective closed the case because Richmond would not cooperate. Richmond denied this, saying she never once wanted to stop the investigation.
….
Johnson is listed as the bishop of Heart of Fire Church in Louisville. The church is known for its “gun choir,” which features Johnson and others holding guns while singing “Amazing Grace.” Johnson held a news conference Tuesday from the pulpit of his church. He began by leading his supporters in singing part of the Christmas carol “O Come All Ye Faithful.”
Richmond said she spent the night at Johnson’s home on New Year’s Eve 2012. She said she awoke a few hours after midnight to find Johnson standing over her. She said he put his hand down her pants and put his hand in her vagina, despite her begging him to stop. She said he eventually left and she slipped away early that morning before he woke up.
Johnson said he remembered that night, but he said “there was nothing that really happened.” Johnson’s wife, Rebecca Johnson, said Richmond was sleeping in the same bed as the couple’s daughter. Rebecca Johnson called the accusations “crazy.”
“She had a lot of issues in her life and we tried to be friendly with her, be a family close to her,” Rebecca Johnson said of Richmond. “I counseled her a lot, just like a daughter. I don’t know, I guess that didn’t go over real good.”
Johnson said he did not want to “blast” Richmond, adding he has “compassion for her” and he is “very sorrowful she is in this dark place in her life.”
But later, he added: “This woman is not my friend.”
“For this to be laid against me as an accusation is horrible,” he said. “I’m mad as can be. No one wants to be accused falsely.”
Update
A December 13, 2017 WDRB report says that Johnson was found dead, likely by his own hands.
Johnson posted the following to his Facebook wall:
The accusations from NPR are false GOD and only GOD knows the truth, nothing is the way they make it out to be. AMERICA will not survive this type of judge and jury fake news . Conservatives take a stand. I LOVE GOD and I LOVE MY WIFE, who is the best WIFE in the world,My Love Forever ! My Mom and Dad my FAMILY and all five of my kids and Nine grandchildren two in tummies and many more to come each of you or a total gift from GOD stay strong, REBECCA needs YOU . 9-11-2001 NYC/WTC, PTSD 24/7 16 years is a sickness that will take my life, I cannot handle it any longer. IT Has Won This Life . BUT HEAVEN IS MY HOME. “PLEASE LISTEN CLOSELY, Only Three things I ask of you to do,if you love me is (1)blame no person,Satan is the accuser, so blame the Devil himself. (2) Forgive and Love everyone especially yourself .(3)most importantly LOVE GOD. P.S. I LOVE MY FRIENDS YOU ARE FAMILY ! GOD LOVES ALL PEOPLE NO MATTER WHAT
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.
Tariq Ramadan, an Islamic scholar and professor at Oxford University, stands accused of sexually assaulting several women.
Carlotta Gall, a reporter for The New York Times, writes:
Tariq Ramadan, a renowned scholar of Islam, has taken a leave of absence from his teaching post at Oxford University after two women filed complaints that he sexually assaulted them in France.
….
Mr. Ramadan, 55, a Swiss-born theologian and philosopher, is a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at the university and a senior research fellow at St. Antony’s, an Oxford college that focuses on international affairs.
The accusations have created a storm in Islamic and academic circles across Europe. Mr. Ramadan is a grandson of Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1920s. He is the author of a dozen books in English on modern Islam and the Western world, and a familiar presence on television news shows and on social media.
Mr. Ramadan has said that the accusations are unfounded and has vowed to fight the cases in court. He has filed a defamation suit in Paris against one of his accusers, the French activist and author Henda Ayari.
Ms. Ayari accused Mr. Ramadan of raping and assaulting her in a hotel on the sidelines of a conference in Paris in 2012. She said Mr. Ramadan had acted as an online teacher and mentor to her and then had suggested one day that they meet at his hotel.
She wrote about the encounter in a book in 2016, but did not name her attacker at the time. Last month, encouraged by the wave of denunciations by women outing their sexual aggressors in the #MeToo campaign on social media after the Harvey Weinstein scandal, Ms. Ayari identified Mr. Ramadan as her attacker. She said she had not spoken out earlier because Mr. Ramadan had threatened her and her children.
Ms. Ayari has lodged a complaint with the French police, alleging rape, sexual assault, harassment and intimidation. Her lawyers said she had also submitted evidence with her complaint.
A second Frenchwoman has also filed a complaint with the police in Paris, accusing Mr. Ramadan of assaulting and raping her in a hotel in Lyon in 2009. That woman, who has not been named publicly, described a horrifying assault by Mr. Ramadan to two French newspapers.
Other allegations have surfaced in French and Swiss newspapers, including accounts from two women who said they had sexual relations with Mr. Ramadan before they had reached the age of consent, and a third who described having a consensual but violent relationship with him.
When you hear somebody say somebody hits like a girl How does that hit you? Is that such a bad thing? When you hear a song that they play saying you run the world Do you believe it? Will you live to see it?
Sister, shoulder, daughter, lover Healer, broken halo, mother Nature, fire, suit of armor Soul survivor, holy water Secret keeper, fortune teller Virgin Mary, scarlet letter Technicolor, river wild Baby girl, woman child Female
When somebody laughs and implies that she asked for it Just ’cause she was wearin’ a skirt Oh, is that how that works? When somebody talks about how it was Adam first Does that make Eve second best Or did He save the best for last?
Sister, shoulder, daughter, lover Healer, broken halo, mother Nature, fire, suit of armor Soul survivor, holy water Secret keeper, fortune teller Virgin Mary, scarlet letter Technicolor, river wild Baby girl, woman child Female Yeah, female
She’s the heart of life She’s the dreamer’s dream She’s the hands of time She’s the queen of kings
Sister, shoulder, daughter, lover Healer, broken halo, mother Nature, fire, suit of armor Soul survivor, holy water Secret keeper, fortune teller Virgin Mary, scarlet letter Technicolor, river wild Baby girl, woman child Female Mhm, female
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
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.
Twice-convicted Amish rapist Jacob Weaver was sentenced on Monday to three years in prison on two counts of gross sexual imposition, and one count of attempted gross sexual imposition. Previously, Weaver spent eight years in prison for first-degree rape. All of crimes were perpetrated against underage girls. Amazingly, Don Loucks, pastor of Ohio Valley Restoration Church in Hendrysburg (Barnesville),Ohio, asked the judge to grant Weaver leniency, saying that Weaver had really, really, really changed since being released from prison. What must a person do for an Evangelical pastor to be willing to say, lock him up and throw away the key? Forget WWJD — what would Jesus do. What would/should a father do if his daughters were raped and sexually assaulted? Does the good pastor Loucks not understand this?
Robert DeFrank, a reporter for The Times Leader, writes:
A former Amish community member previously convicted of rape of a minor, is going to prison again for sex crimes involving two Amish girls.
Jacob Weaver, 65, of Jerusalem appeared before Belmont County Common Pleas Judge John Vavra on Monday and was sentenced on two counts of gross sexual imposition, a felony of the fourth degree, and one count of attempted gross sexual imposition, a felony of the fifth degree. Vavra imposed a sentence of 17 months for the first two counts, to be served consecutively, and an 11-month concurrent sentence for the third count, for a total of 34 months.
The offenses were initiated in 1986 and continued through 2006. Court records indicate the two female victims were younger than 13 years old when the crimes began.
Weaver had been convicted of first-degree rape of an underage girl in 2006. His defense attorney asked Vavra to consider Weaver’s prior sentence of eight years and his efforts to reform, as well as his law-abiding life since his release in 2015.
Pastor Don Loucks of the Ohio Valley Restoration Church in Hendrysburg asked that some leniency be shown, adding that in the time he has known Weaver he has seen a change in his character.
Vavra took note both of the prior rape conviction and of the physical and psychological harm to the victims.
“I have to focus on the victims and what you put them through, based on the manner on which you manipulated your relationship with them,” Vavra said. “I’m uncertain whether, although there is a showing of remorse, whether that is genuine at this point, or whether you are simply hiding behind your newfound religious feelings to shield yourself from punishment.
“You victimized (the victims) quite frequently, and while this occurred many years ago, it also occurred over a course of years,” Vavra said, adding that consecutive terms were necessary.
“This conviction and sentence ends a horrible case that will see the defendant receive yet another prison sentence,” Belmont County Prosecutor Dan Fry said, pointing out that the abuse occurred in the late 1990s and early in 2000. Fry said the sentence was commendable in light of new victims coming forward.
He added that the victims were part of the Amish community, and factors including their ages made a prosecution of all offenses committed difficult. His office refilled the new criminal charges when it appeared that the other victims were ready to come forward.
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.
Catholic priest James Talbot was indicted earlier this month on charges of gross sexual assault. Talbot previously spent six years in prison after pleading guilty to raping two high school students.
Dennis Hoey, a reporter for the Press Herald, writes:
A former Jesuit priest who taught and coached at Cheverus High School for nearly two decades before being fired in 1998 is scheduled to be arraigned in Portland on charges he sexually assaulted a minor in Freeport nearly 20 years ago.
A grand jury indictment dated Nov. 9 and obtained by the Press Herald on Tuesday identifies the priest as 80-year-old James Francis Talbot of Dittmer, Missouri.
The indictment charges Talbot with gross sexual assault, a Class A offense, and with unlawful sexual contact, a Class C offense.
The indictment alleges that Talbot engaged in a sexual act with a minor and subjected the minor, who was 8 or 9 years old at the time, to sexual contact on or between May 1, 1997, and June 14, 1998.
The indictment said the alleged crimes took place in Freeport, but offered no information about a specific location, Talbot’s relationship to the minor, or why Talbot was in Freeport. It also was not clear why the charges are being brought now or whether this is the first time Talbot has been charged in Maine.
According to Maine statute of limitations, a prosecution for incest, unlawful sexual contact, sexual abuse of a minor, rape or gross sexual assault may be commenced at any time if the victim was not 16 at the time of the alleged crime.
The Boston Globe reported in October 2005 that Talbot pleaded guilty to raping and sexually assaulting two Boston College High School students in the 1970s and was sentenced to five to seven years in prison. Prosecutors said the assaults took place during wrestling practices.
When Talbot was accused of molesting the Boston College high students in 2002, the president of Cheverus said the school was unaware of the incidents in Boston when Talbot was hired in 1980.
“It was absolutely not known,” the Rev. John Keegan told the Press Herald in March 2002. “I was superior of the community and I would have heard. But there were no hints at all.”
Talbot served six years before he was released in 2011. He was ordered by the court to live out of state in a secure, monitored treatment facility.
….
Talbot was targeted in the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigation into abuses that had occurred within the Catholic Church. The Globe’s investigation resulted in the movie “Spotlight” that told the story of how the newspaper uncovered the sex abuse scandal in the Boston church.
In a March 2002 Spotlight article, the reporting team said that Talbot coached wrestling at Boston College High School and that he engaged in a “bizarre habit” of wrestling with students who were in various stages of undress, including wearing only athletic supporters. He was transferred to Cheverus High School in 1980.
The Globe reported that Michael S. Doherty of Freeport filed a lawsuit against Talbot in 1997 for molesting him while he was a student at Cheverus. The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, the Globe reported. No criminal charges were filed because the alleged abuse fell outside the statute of limitations at that time.
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.
Romello Leach, pastor of several unidentified churches, was accused on Wednesday of sexually assaulting a teen girl and impregnating her.
An El Paso County minister arrested on suspicion of multiple counts of sexual assault on a child is accused of impregnating a 14-year-old girl, arrest records show.
According to an arrest affidavit, Romello Leach, 22, and an unidentified girl whose parents Leach knows from church had sexual intercourse at least twice since late 2016.
Leach was arrested and booked into the El Paso County jail Wednesday. He faces four counts of felony sexual assault by one in a position of trust with someone under the age of 15 and four counts of felony sexual assault by one in a position of trust with someone between the ages of 15 and 18.
Arrest records show the girl did not tell anyone about her pregnancy until her mother noticed in May that she had “a larger belly.” On May 17, the affidavit said, her mother took her to the Colorado Springs Pregnancy Center, where they told an employee that the daughter had been impregnated by Leach. The daughter said she and Leach had sexual intercourse twice – once in November 2016 and again in February or April 2017.
….
The affidavit details a recorded telephone conversation obtained by deputies in which Leach’s ex-wife asked him, “So you didn’t sleep with that girl and get her pregnant?” Leach replied, “It happened.”
She then asks why he would sleep with a 14-year-old girl and get her pregnant when he knows her parents. Leach said “he knows he has made the worst mistake” and that “it is not like he will go around and sleep with everybody’s 13 or 14-year-old daughter,” the affidavit says.
During another recorded phone call between Leach and an unidentified person from Nov. 21, arrest records say Leach admitted to having sexual intercourse with the girl on at least four occasions and being the father of her child. He “admitted the behavior was wrong,” and said he was “full of lust” at the time.
The affidavit says the girl gave birth to the child, which Leach admitted was his, on Sept. 15, about two months after her 15th birthday.
What follows is a video of the Keith Urban singing Female. The song fits well with the current national discussion about women and sexual harassment.
