Another Baptist minister arrested, charged with child sex exploitation

Ian David

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Tue Feb-27-07 05:43 PM
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Another Baptist minister arrested, charged with child sex exploitation

Edited on Tue Feb-27-07 05:56 PM by IanDB1

Another Baptist minister arrested, charged with child sex exploitation
By Greg Warner
Published February 26, 2007

CAMDEN, S.C. (ABP) -- Another Southern Baptist minister has been arrested on child sex-abuse charges, this time for sending pornographic photos of himself to what he thought was a 14-year-old girl.

Kevin Ogle, 42, pastor of Northgate Colonial Baptist Church in Camden, S.C., had an on-line relationship for three months with an undercover police officer in the Internet predator unit of the Loganville (Ga.) Police Department, a small town 200 miles west, police say.

“We knew he was a pastor and that he was from South Carolina, but he was very smart about being elusive and we had difficulty tracking him down,” Sgt. Mike Westbrooks of the Logansville Police Department, told the Loganville Tribune. “We eventually solicited the help of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division through the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, and that’s how we identified him.”

Ogle was arrested Feb. 20 and charged with 11 counts of sexual exploitation of a child. Police cited 13 on-line sexually explicit encounters between Ogle and the undercover officer. Police said he has chosen not to fight extradition to Georgia.

“We got really lucky on this one,” Westbrooks said. “And we believe he has probably been doing this for some time. In one of the conversations he had with us over the Internet, he disclosed that he had been a youth pastor at a church some time back and had been in love with a 12-year-old girl. He never would say why, but he did confess that he had to leave that church.”

<snip>

Last year, an SBC Executive Committee leader was arrested in Oklahoma City for offering to have sex with a male undercover police officer. Police arrested Lonnie Latham, pastor of South Tulsa Baptist Church in Tulsa, Okla., on a charge of offering to engage in a lewd act. Latham, who supported SBC efforts to get gays to renounce their sexual attractions, resigned from the church and the powerful Executive Committee.

Ogle, who is married and has two sons, attended Fruitland Baptist Bible Institute, a conservative Bible school in Hendersonville, N.C., whose most famous graduate is Atlanta megachurch pastor Charles Stanley.

More:
http://www.abpnews.com/1780.article

See also:

Minister accused of soliciting sex from teenager

<snip>

The people he preached to on Sunday held a meeting about his arrest.

A man of God, he's now arrested and charged with cyber sex crimes. Kevin Ogle, 42, is accused of soliciting sex over the internet. Officers say he thought he was chatting with a 14-year-old girl, and instead it was an officer in Georgia.

Deacon Mike Clifton tells WIS, "It was discouraging and disappointing but again a pastor is human just like anybody else is."

Members of Ogle's Camden church held a meeting about his arrest. Despite the charges, they are committed to supporting him through this.

Ogle has been a minister at the Northgate Colonial Baptist Church in Camden for three years. Church members say Ogle was an excellent preacher. Church member Jean Shirley says, "I could not believe it. I thought it had to be an error. I just didn't think that could be our Kevin. I really didn't. He has so much God-given talent."

More:
http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6114375&nav=menu36_3

See also:

Clergy Sex Abuse Arrest Stuns South Carolina Baptist Church

Bob Allen
02-26-07

<snip>

Tuesday morning a work group of the SBC Executive Committee met with two representatives of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. SBC leaders objected to charges by the victims' advocacy group the denomination isn't doing enough to rid its clergy ranks of sexual predators.

<snip>

Christa Brown of SNAP-Baptist told EthicsDaily.com that urging churches to conduct background checks isn't enough. Most Catholic priests defrocked in recent years for sexual abuse, she said, were never charged with a crime and therefore wouldn't be listed in any sex-offender databases.

One SBC congregation, First Baptist Church in Greenwood, Mo., said it conducted two background checks in 2003 before hiring a music minister recently convicted of sexually abusing children at Southern Baptist churches in two states.

<snip>

Page told the AP the SBC does not have legal authority to establish an independent review board to investigate clergy sexual abuse complaints requested by SNAP, because each local church is autonomous.

Brown said that is the same argument Roman Catholic bishops made in 2002. Bishops view themselves as having dominion in their own diocese, she said, and creation by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops of an Office of Child and Youth Protection was termed an "extraordinary and unprecedented" step.

SNAP members Mike Coode and Christa Brown outside SBC headquarters last Monday. BCE Culture Editor Cliff Vaughn (background) shoots video.

More:
http://www.ethicsdaily.com/article_detail.cfm?AID=8583

And the enlightened (chuckle) discussion over on RimJob Land:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1789084/posts?page=1

And this is a completely different dude named Kevin Ogle, who has nothing to do with this: