Should a Second Degree Rapist Serve as Youth Minister?

 

The undisputed facts:

1. A 19 year-old legal adult male takes a 14 year-old female into a city owned restroom at a public facility. The girl performs a sex act on the man and then has sex with him. The male videos the encounter.

2. Parents are informed that the man in question has the video of their young daughter and is sending it to other early-teen girls. They report the crimes, and the man is arrested on several charges including Second Degree Sodomy and Second Degree Rape.

3. A grand jury in this rural county fails to indict the young man even with the video evidence. There are only two possible reasons for this failure, and neither one is pretty.

4. Three years after the incident, the man's father attempts to have most of the records in the case erased by impersonating an unbiased "official."

5. Three more years pass, and the admitted second degree rapist, now 25, has finished college, is continuing his education, and is working as a youth minister at a church near his current school.

How should the public feel about this young man's employment? Admittedly, the victim in the case consented to two illegal sex acts. Yet this man, now so religious and so community-oriented, chose to video the crimes and then send the videos to other young girls for whatever his perverted reasons.

We urge all churches to take a look at those who labor with them under the umbrella of "youth minister."

A Stock Photo of Three 14 Year-Olds. They Deserve More Than Rape in a Public Restroom.