An arrest in New Hampshire has revealed a shocking story of a 15-year-old girl who was raped and impregnated by a leading church member at the Trinity Baptist Church in 1997. She was allegedly forced by the church to stand before the congregation and apologize before being taken out of state — and out of the reach of police investigating the rape.
The pastor of the church, Chuck Phelps, reported the rape to state youth officials, but the police were never able to track down the victim. She has now come forward at age 28 and stated that she was taken to another church member’s home in Colorado, home schooled and not allowed to contact outsiders. After she went to police, Ernest Willis, 51, was arrested.
What is not clear is if police tried to interview church leaders and whether they failed to disclose information on her whereabouts. Moreover, it is not clear how the church treated Willis, a well-known member of the church, after the rape was revealed.
As a young girl, the victim often worked as a babysitter for Willis. She told the police she would often stay the night if he got home late. She says that she was repeatedly raped on different occasion by Willis. He allegedly not only brought her a pregnancy test but, when it proved positive, asked if she wanted him to arrange an abortion out of state. She also claims that Willis offered to punch her in the stomach to try to cause a miscarriage.
Willis has been charged with four felonies – two counts of rape and two counts of having sex with a minor.
For the full story, click here.
There are hypocrites in every kind of human organization. And men have always found a way to cynically misuse an organization to achieve personal ends. And sheep to follow them. No reason to hang organized religion for this. There are a lot more valid reasons to hang organized religion.
The only hypocrites I’ve seen have been the so called Christians who profess love of Christ, but have little regard for the down trodden, unless they get a tax deduction out of it.
Buckeye:
I think Mespo has you on that one, just replace collectivism with religion and you get the drift. 🙂
Buckeye:
““Oh, the hypocrisy”; “let’s condemn all Christians for what one person or one group has done”. Good grief!”
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Do we really need a list of atrocities by denomination, by year, by diocese, to see the pattern? You cannot indict every Christian for the crimes of many of them, but you can certainly ask why any person would associate themselves with an institution that habitually perpetrates –via its clergy and prominent laity — every manner of sin, perversion, and outrage they claim they despise. Sorry you don’t get to excoriate others for their supposed sins or explain every calamity as divine retribution, while perpetrating or covering up for child sex abusers. It is rank and pervasive hypocrisy.
Since this happens more than once or twice under the guise of Church, we need to start making demands over allowing churches tax exemptions. T.V. shows, owning property which is not for having a building that’s other than a church, and stop trying to influence politicians.
That goes for all religions.
How about let’s be more careful about what constitutes a church, Chaz.
Not everyone who proclaims him or herself a Christian are really Christians at all.
ChaZ said:
Perhaps you missed this part:
Not only was the church’s leadership complicit in this crime, but it appears that they influenced the local police, who did not follow up with anywhere near the vigor that the situation requires, ie, making this a FBI problem.
The church aided and abetted a child rapist and did not excommunicate him. The church was instrumental in the victim’s relocation in order avoid prosecutions, almost certainly did not make a full and honest report to the cops, and shamed the girl according to their Biblical precepts in private and public. That sounds to me like a full endorsement by the establishment of that church.
But I suppose you are making the “NO True Scotsman” argument here? Please, then, explain your assertion against the backdrop of the similar and multifarious atrocities committed systematically and with full endorsement by the highest establishment of the RCC.
ChaZ
Too true. Another church, even a (gasp) Baptist church, might have handled this appropriately.
I suspect there are pediphiles in every respectable organization, perhaps even the ABA. But it is too much to resist special condemnation when it is a church.
“Oh, the hypocrisy”; “let’s condemn all Christians for what one person or one group has done”. Good grief!
Geez, already you guys are blaming religion for rape. Or the cover-up.
Just because a rapist just happens to be a member of a church which tried to do their damage control to avoid scandal does not mean that rape and cover-up was fully endorsed by their religious teaching or establishment.
Even though I am an athiest and strongly believe in separation of church and state, we must always remain unbiased when it comes to many different crimes being committed by religious people, that it is an action of an individual, not an establishment.
And please don’t bring in Waco, that’s apples and oranges.
Disgusting
Sounds as if there are plenty of people to blame in this horrifying story: the rapist, the pastor, the congregation, the parents of the victim. I’d say they were complicit in the crimes and/or coverup of the crimes committed against this child.
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Regarding the police–an excerpt from the article:
But moving the girl out of state prevented the police from collecting evidence or a statement, the police said yesterday.
“Without a victim, it makes it very difficult to have a case,” said Lt. Keith Mitchell. “That basically made the investigation very difficult.”
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The police knew a child had been raped and most likely dropped the case because the investigation was difficult? Do these police choose only to work on cases that are easy?
If anything should change it should be the definition of what constitutes a Church.
Too many of those so called churches have popped up in this country and the results in many of them have been disasters.
I’m sure people can think of a number for them from Jim Jones to Waco.
I document church abuse cases in Fundamentalism. (I am a Christian.) Thought you might like to read the unprovoked hostility spewed by Dr John Matzko, Division of History Chairman and faculty member of Bob Jones University about this case:
MATZKO: Subtract the questionable public confessions before the church, and to me it looks mostly like a case of sloppy police work thirteen years ago.
Raped twice? So the girl’s raped and then goes back to see the same guy again in private. The prosecutor better have a convincing personality to get a conviction on that sort of testimony.
JERI: No John, Go read the account. The man came to her house when her mother was not home and raped her the second time.
And why should anybody subtract the “questionable public confessions” of the church when that is the heart of the moral matter? Oh wait, I forgot about Fundamentalists who will do ANYTHING, believe ANYTHING they are told to hold on to their man-centered religion. Now stop excusing the men who let a rapist come to church and kept his secret while they sent his victim off to coventry. And be ashamed of yourself if you have a conscience left. Gosh it’s tragic to see the children whose lives are ruined by unrestrained corruption in Fundamentalism. It’s even worse to see aged men whose souls have been destroyed by it. Don’t you have the sense to fear God? You knwo what Christ taught about the little ones.
MATZKO: Sorry, I’m not buying it. Neither will a jury, if it even gets that far.
JERI: No you’ve bought something else, and a long time ago, and that is tragic. And no amount of evidence is going to change your mind.
MATZKO: In New Hampshire, penetration committed on a minor younger than 16 is indeed statutory rape. But the statute of limitations runs only six years. If Phelps reported the incident, then the problem is–unless proved otherwise–with the police.
JERI: Sure John, and that means nobody sinned, you know, because it all got wiped out by American jurisprudence. Of course Phelps never did anything wrong, not by covering the rape by calling it consensual sex, not by covering the rapist by staging the “discipline” to make sure nobody thought Willis had engaged in sex with a minor member of the church, not by protecting Willis by getting that child out of there. No John, no wrong was done,m because by now I have learned the heart of Christian Fundamentalist morality: IF IT WAS DONE IN A CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST CHURCH, IT WAS RIGHT. Now everybody shut your eyes and keep going.
MATZKO: I’m sure if the police wanted to know where the girl was, Phelps would have told them. And legally it’s their responsibility to follow up.
Now, as to what a pastor’s ethical responsibility is in a nasty situation like this, I’m uncertain. I’m pretty sure that in the Old Testament economy, either the girl would have become a polygamous wife or both the guy and the girl would have met their ends surrounded by a lot of hefty rocks.
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It’s a study in moral bankruptcy. This is what that 15 year old girl faced at Trinity Baptist Church in Concord New Hampshire.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1338783489&v=wall&story_fbid=107821685930255
The Old Testament is really quite horrifying. At least she wasn’t stoned.
If God had wanted 15 year-old girls to apologize for getting pregnant, we wouldn’t have given them their lovely lovely vaginas.
Pastor Phelps was way out of line here. Not only did he make the girl apologize, he reported the incident to the secular police. Does he not hold the Word of God close to his heart?:
Genesis 19:8 (New American Standard Bible)
8″Now behold, (A)I have two daughters who have not had relations with man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever you like; only do nothing to these men, inasmuch as they have come under the shelter of my roof.”
(/snark)
BTW, anybody notice that we have a pregnant girl here under the ‘protection’ of a Baptist church, and there is no mention of a child being born?
mespo,
From the way it sounds this particular “church” operates? You might even get me to grab a torch and join the mob. Hell, Jesus Himself would be up for a house cleaning.
And this little gem . . . “Police records do not show whether detectives asked church leaders to help them get in contact with the victim or if information was withheld.
“If somebody tried to cover this up or not cover this up, that’s a separate issue,” Mitchell said.”
The records don’t show if they were asked?
Bullshit.
More horror from the article:
The victim said Phelps told her she would be put up for “church discipline,” where parishioners go before the congregation to apologize for their sins.
She asked why. “Pastor Phelps then said that (Willis) may have been 99 percent responsible, but I needed to confess my 1 percent guilt in the situation,” the victim told the police.
“He told me that I should be happy that I didn’t live in Old Testament times because I would have been stoned.” [emphasis mine]
Fran Earle, the church’s former clerk, witnessed the punishment session.
At a night meeting of the church’s fellowship in 1997, Phelps invited Willis to the front of the room. Willis apologized to the group for not being faithful to his wife, Earle said.
“I can remember saying to my husband, I don’t understand it’s any of our business why this is being brought up,” Earle said.
Phelps then told parishioners a second matter was at hand; he invited the victim to apologize for getting pregnant.
“I can still see the little girl standing up there with this smile on her face trying to get through this,” Earle said.
A day after the session, Earle called the pastor’s wife, who said the victim had decided not to press charges for statutory rape.
“You’ve got to understand, we trusted our pastor and his wife to be telling us the truth,” Earle said. “They told us it had been reported. He reported it as a consensual act between a man and a woman. Well, I didn’t know a 15-year-old was a woman.”
Earle, who left the church in 2001 after 19 years, said it was regular to see young girls who were pregnant called to the front of the congregation to be humiliated.
Anyone left who still thinks religion DOESN’T make one crazy? Anyone think more indictments are in order?
Nice one, kidnapping…
A new flavour to add to the stench that is religion.
There’s just no line these cretins wouldn’t cross, is there?
Religion is a gateway crime. Round up all believers and shove ’em in the slammer for some years, depending on the class and amount of belief the police finds them in possession of….
Better yet, send them to that “better place” they so love, cuz they sure refuse to make this world one….
OMG is all I can muster.