Posted on 07/01/2015 10:33:07 AM PDT by Perseverando
LEXINGTON — A former pastor charged with molesting a teenage boy from his church is asking that his upcoming trial be moved from Rockbridge County.
Larry McKinley Clark’s attorney argued Tuesday that extensive publicity about the case would make it all but impossible to seat an impartial jury. Complicating the problem for Clark, attorney Dirk Padgett said, that news media coverage includes that of an earlier trial in which Clark was convicted of sexually abusing a second young parishioner.
“I do think it raises it to a different level if [potential jurors] are aware of a conviction,” Padgett argued during a hearing in Rockbridge County Circuit Court.
Judge Michael Irvine took the motion for a change of venue under advisement, saying he will first try to seat a jury in Lexington as the law requires. Irvine also agreed to postpone Clark’s trial, which had been set for next week, until Sept. 14.
Clark, 63, is the former pastor of the Pentecostal Outreach Church in Buena Vista.
Prosecutors said Clark sexually abused three young boys on numerous occasions after getting to know them through his ministry and youth group meetings associated with the church. The allegations have been divided into three trials, one for each victim.
In October, a jury convicted Clark of sexually assaulting a boy, who was 16 at the time of his testimony, over the course of three years, beginning in 2011. Clark was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
(Excerpt) Read more at roanoke.com ...
PFL
Wouldn’t be incidents like this if Pentecostal Youth Ministry people were allowed to marry.
Wouldn’t be incidents like this if there had been another Pentecostal Outreach Church congregation to transfer him to, before charges were filed!
Or they can lower the age of consent and then it’s all good. “Children are sexual, too.”
I've seen Catholics argue, with a straight face mind you, that fourteen ought to be the age of legal consent, and that priests who have engaged in intercourse with anyone aged fourteen should not be automatically charged with statutory rape, because the fourteen-year-old might have consented to (and maybe even initiated) the sexual act.
That is disgusting
I heard lower vouched for by a Japanese doctor (it’s legally 13 in Japan) but my response was, only if they also legalize homicide of the older partner by the younger partner’s parents.
It is disgusting.
And I have seen the same line of thought Alex is describing.
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