Youth Pastor Charged With Nearly 200 Sex Crimes Going Back Decades
The state police in West Virginia are continuing to investigate a longtime youth pastor who has now been charged with nearly 200 counts of sexual abuse crimes involving children, many of them his relatives, dating back more than three decades.
A local TV station, citing court documents in Lewis County, W.Va., on the 2004 case, reported that Mr. Radcliff had forced the girls to perform sexual acts on him from 1987 to 1996, and sexually assaulted them in other ways until they were about 12. The victims are all now adults, the news outlet reported.
Mr. Radcliff, 57, who has worked as a youth pastor for at least four churches in the state, is in custody on bonds totaling $1.7 million. It’s unclear if he is still working as a pastor. His wife, Kathy Radcliff, who has been charged with knowing that the abuse took place, has been released on bond. The Radcliffs declared bankruptcy last year, according to state records.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/27/us/yo...ginia.html
The state police in West Virginia are continuing to investigate a longtime youth pastor who has now been charged with nearly 200 counts of sexual abuse crimes involving children, many of them his relatives, dating back more than three decades.
A local TV station, citing court documents in Lewis County, W.Va., on the 2004 case, reported that Mr. Radcliff had forced the girls to perform sexual acts on him from 1987 to 1996, and sexually assaulted them in other ways until they were about 12. The victims are all now adults, the news outlet reported.
Mr. Radcliff, 57, who has worked as a youth pastor for at least four churches in the state, is in custody on bonds totaling $1.7 million. It’s unclear if he is still working as a pastor. His wife, Kathy Radcliff, who has been charged with knowing that the abuse took place, has been released on bond. The Radcliffs declared bankruptcy last year, according to state records.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/27/us/yo...ginia.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
