Church of God Pastor Charged for Rape of 12-year-old

[MineralMan]

The latest outrageous sexual abuse by a man of God...

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/grundy-county-pastor-charged-with-attempted-child-rape

ALTAMONT, Tenn. - A Grundy County pastor has been charged with attempted rape of a child.

The Grundy County Sheriff’s Office said 48-year-old William E. "Tim" Smith Jr. was arrested after he was found engaged in sexual conduct with a 12-year-old girl in a remote, wooded area.

His case has been bound over to a grand jury. He was held on a $200,000 bond.

Smith reportedly identified himself as a Church of God pastor in Palmer.

[RKP5637]

1. The devil made me do it. I've repented. n/t

[MineralMan]

4. Well, perhaps he'll have time for more prayers from his cell.

Unfortunately for him, there will be nobody listening. There never is. Perhaps he'll come to that realization as time passes.

[NeoGreen]

2. Apparently, it was all a big misunderstanding...

...he just forgot to pull his pants up after he went pee in the woods... off

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/06/05/cops-catch-pastor-trying-to-rape-12-year-old-girl-he-had-no-remorse/

Cops Catch Pastor Trying To Rape 12-Year-Old Girl: He Had “No Remorse”
June 5, 2018 by David G. McAfee

If you still believe all well-respected pastors who claim to uphold a divine morality are good people, you’re in for a shock.

Police in Tennessee were looking for a stolen 4-wheeler when they happened to stumble upon a truck stopped (but running) in the forest. What they found inside was William E. “Tim” Smith Jr., a 48-year-old pastor, trying to rape a 12-year-old girl.

Smith, the pastor of Palmer Church of God in Grundy County, Tennessee, was discovered with his pants down, on top of the child. He tried convincing police at the scene that she was 18 years old, answering for her when they asked the girl her age, but he was ultimately arrested.

A police report for the horrific incident shows that the girl was only 12, and that Smith showed “no remorse” for his actions.

I asked the male subject how old he was at that point and he replied 48 years old. I then asked the female how old she was and the male subject would answer for her stating she was 18 years old. The male subject answered the question for the female several times. Once I told the female to answer the question truthfully the male subject tried to persuade the female to tell me she was 18 years old. The female finally answered me stating her age was 13 years old…

The male subject was identified as William Smith. Mr. Smith identified himself as a pastor of a church in Palmer TN. Mr. Smith was placed under arrest and read his Miranda warnings at that time. Mr. Smith only stated that he had done nothing wrong and showed no remorse about the situation.

Reportedly he stated "he had done nothing wrong".

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

3. It warms my heart

To see folks like this display their adherence to their so precious "family values".

[Ferrets are Cool]

5. A fine upstanding follower of Christ and his teachings

[gibraltar72]

6. Should have been a judge.

[Igel]

7. Local high school had a teacher vanish.

A couple of people saw him escorted off campus one day, but that was it. They were teachers, and told to be quiet.

Eventually there was a small news article about a teacher accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a coed.

Then it vanished.

It was dealt with in-house. If you looked for that teacher's name or trace of that teacher on the school or district's sites, you'd find nothing except him mentioned in the caption to a couple of pictures. Then one day they, too, vanished, and when his students were reassigned to another teacher they inherited his gradebook rather than having a blank one set up for them to import grades he assigned. In other words, the students' schedules won't include his name and their transcripts will show they had their teacher for the last couple months of the school year for the entire year.

Behind the scenes the girl's friends say that the affair wasn't "attempted" anything but went on for months on and off campus before the parent got word of the affair.

That's how it goes. We may say teachers are attacked, but if at all possible the school district protects itself and nobody's really out to destroy the school district. It's a bad apple. It's a mistake. It's a one-off event. Nobody really blames the school district for trying to prevent embarrassment to the student--which means preventing embarrassment to the teacher, by the way. And the district doesn't want its mission of teaching derailed, and neither do the parents. Provided their kids are safe.

If he'd been a minister, the mere act by the church board of acting like an apology was even in order would be offensive. It would be the result of letting adult men interact with girls in an unsupervised manner. It would be a consequence of the principles of the organization. It would be endemic, and the fact that we don't hear about such things more is just the signs of a cover-up.

[MineralMan]

8. Well, in this case it's not going to disappear.

For too long, churches, especially, tended to push victims and families into keeping quiet. Then, they'd move the offender somewhere else and the problem would move with the offender. That's not as common now, since all the publicity about the Catholic Church doing that in cases of sexual abuse of children. These days, those who are caught are more likely to be prosecuted.

That's a good thing. Still, though, organizations often try to hush such things up, since they cut into their ability to fleece the public of money. I hope that kind of thing goes away forever. That might cut down on the number of incidents like the one described in my original post.

[thucythucy]

9. I think any institutions that act act as closed societies

in which there are gross disparities of power are prone to this sort of abuse. Churches are the classic example, but there are others.

Children with disabilities in residential schools were very often victims of physical and sexual abuse, especially before deinstitutionalization and the disability rights movement. Back in the 1960s and 70s it was reported that the most dangerous place to live in New York City, in terms of rape and sexual and physical assault, was on the back wards of the Willowbrook State School and Hospital. In the last decade or so sexual assault scandals have been uncovered at residential schools for the Deaf all across the country. There are some (for instance, Dick Sobsey, who wrote a book on the sexual abuse of disabled children) who state that the MAJORITY of girls with developmental disabilities will experience rape or abuse within their lifetime, and it becomes the vast majority when we're talking about kids in institutions. In almost every instance offenders were not prosecuted, but allowed to quietly resign. Many of them would go from institution to institution, repeating the abuse with absolute impunity.

Anytime you have someone--especially men--with unquestioned and unsupervised authority over people who are without voice or power, you'll see this kind of abuse. Adding religion--the "authority of God"--to the mix just compounds the problem even further.

If you haven't already seen it, I highly recommend "Spotlight"--the film on how the Boston Globe uncovered the abuse happening in the Catholic Church. Toward the end of the film it's pointed out how even the Globe spent years ignoring the problem, even though the abuse was hiding in plain sight.

The only way to even begin to deal with the problem is for institutions to acknowledge the problem and institute safeguards at all levels. And to work to level off these gaps in power and perceived credibility. In the case of the Catholic Church it took massive lawsuits and judgments, together with widespread media attention. Sue the institutions, jail the offenders and enablers. Otherwise we'll never see the end of it.

[MineralMan]

10. Yes, "Spotlight" was an excellent film.

The length of time such things went on while being covered up completely destroyed any respect I ever had for the Roman Catholic Church. For me, that destruction was permanent. I will not accept any apologies that organization offers, and will never be able to believe that it can be changed to prevent such terrible things from happening in the future.

I find the RCC to be beyond redemption, frankly. Not that it matters, of course.

[thucythucy]

12. One point that was made that I'd never before considered:

that the requirement that priests be celibate led to a "culture of deception" or whatever the phrase was. Because so many priests in fact were involved in adult consensual sexual relationships--which they had to hide, but which were often well known--led to deception about sex in any form being seen as more or less "normal." Which made it easier for pedophiles to flourish in such an environment. I'd never thought of that before.

Any institution that excludes women--half the human race--from positions of leadership and authority is beyond fixing, no matter what other reforms might be instituted. I don't see that changing any time soon.

[trotsky]

14. #Whataboutism n/t

[MineralMan]

11. The Tennessee-based Church of God is a highly legalistic

pentacostalist denomination. Such legalistic churches always seem to be near the top of the list for such personal crimes as sexual abuse. Authoritarianism is, I think, the reason. In a similar way, the Roman Catholic Church can easily hide abuses like this by shifting offenders around within the church to kick the can down the road.

Legalistic religious organizations tend to put too much power in the hands of clergy, which enables such abuses to occur and keeps the abused and their families quiet about it. That is, in my opinion, a major flaw in such organizations.

Dominionism is all connected to a legalistic, biblical view of how things should be ordered. That's what makes it so dangerous to secular societies like the United States. If successful, dominionists would apply biblical laws to the US. It's very little different from Sharia law in many Islamic countries. We need to guard against this. The founders understood the dangers of religious legalism being applied to civil society. There is a strong movement to inject just that into our system of government.

[Major Nikon]

13. The bible has no prohibitions on raping children

So why should he have remorse if his own higher authority effectively endorses it?

[LuvNewcastle]

15. Yep, they usually say, "at least it wasn't a boy!"