SALT LAKE CITY UTAH: A Christian pastor who could lose his license to run a rehabilitiation group for homeless men is appealing. Following a KSL Eyewitness News investigation, the Department of Human Services issued a notice of revokation to Steve Sandlin. Sandlin is a pastor for the Central Christian Church. According to the notice, Sandlin forced homeless men to work as telemarketers in the basement of the church. Their wage: about 28 cents an hour. And even that money was withheld-- donated back to the church. The homeless men told KSL Sandlin forced them to sign contracts or threatened they'd go back to jail. Sandlin and another pastor, Robert Ferris, appealed the state's notice, and they've reqested a hearing. It's scheduled for the beginning of April. During that hearing, a judge will decide whether to revoke the license. link Prior reports: Feb 2: Program Meant to Help Men in Need, Not What it Seemed An Eyewitness News investigation today prompted state licensing...

A northern Ohio church pastor arrested in an internet sex sting has faced a judge over his charges. Roy Burton, a pastor from Milford Center near Marysville, Ohio, has been in Greene County several times over the past few months, mostly for court appearances stemming from his November arrest. Burton was charged with importuning and attempted unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. Wednesday morning, he waived his right to a trial, pleading no contest. A common decision in Greene County, where more than a hundred similar internet arrests have been made. "I think the message is they know the work of the detectives builds a solid case and they don't have any wiggle room to hide. Pretty much they are very strong cases and hard to put a defense on," said Assistant Greene County Prosecutor Adolfo Tornichio. Burton is scheduled to be sentenced on April 4. link link link

Norwich Bulletin NORWICH CT -- The former pastor of a Norwich church, who resigned under pressure from the church because of alleged "immoral" activity, was arrested this week on sexual assault charges. Charles Johnson Jr., the former pastor of the Norwich Assembly of God, was charged Tuesday by Norwich police with first-degree sexual assault and two counts of risk of injury to a minor. Police released few details of the alleged incident, but said the complaint was received Nov. 9 and involved a minor. Many members of the clergy in recent years have had allegations leveled against them. Not all ended with criminal convictions. The sexual abuse allegedly occurred between 2001 and 2002 while Johnson was still pastor at the 340 New London Turnpike church, according to police. The victim has alleged inappropriate contact on two occasions at Johnson's Norwich residence. Johnson was released Tuesday on a $150,000 bond and is scheduled to appear March 2 in Norwich Superior Co...

KYOTO JAPAN -- A church founder accused of 22 counts of rape and sexual assault against seven girls was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment by the Kyoto District Court on Tuesday. Handed the prison sentence was Tamotsu Kin, 62, founder of the Seishin Chuo Kyokai church in Yawata, Kyoto Prefecture. "He abused his position as a pastor, which is looked on with awe and reverence as someone close to God, and habitually committed the crimes," Presiding Judge Takeshi Uegaki said. "His actions were extremely malicious, to a level unparalleled by other sex crimes." Kin was convicted of sexually violating seven girls aged between 12 and 16 in his pastor's office and other locations between March 2001 and September 2004. He faced charges for 22 attacks, including one attempted sexual assault. On a regular basis, Kin preached that followers would "suffer in hell" if they resisted him, creating a situation in which his victims couldn't resist him, the court...

Murphysboro, IL - A registered sexual predator was caught by police in a Murphysboro church, and now 40 year old Russell Bryant faces new criminal charges. But Bryant's troubles with the law began long before his arrest in late November. Court documents in the Jackson County courthouse show that back in 2001 Bryant was charged with sexually assaulting a girl between the ages of 13 and 16. He plead guilty to those charges and was sentenced to 24 months probation and required to register as a sexual predator. Now Bryant is facing charges of having unlawful contact with children in the Elm Street Baptist Church. A violation of his requirements under the Illinois Sex Offender Act. Sources within the church tell Heartland News that they've witnessed Bryant acting inappropriately with children in the church and told church leaders about what they saw. These sources say the church leaders told them they knew about Bryant's previous criminal record, but that they didn't feel th...

A retiree encourages USF students to look inward, not to the heavens, for answers and says we should all be concerned about the religious right. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA AREA - His message is clear: Jesus is not coming. Not today. Not ever. At 59, James Young has spent almost a decade sharing his atheist beliefs with the public, driving every Wednesday morning from his home in Lithia to set up a tent at the University of South Florida Bull Market. Even on the coldest morning, Young is there, ready to share, and sometimes debate, his views with anyone who will listen that there is, in fact, no such being as God. "There are a lot of religious groups that set up tents there," said Young, a retired controls analyst. "It's important for these young people to know there is an alternative point of view." What may surprise some of these students is that in his early adulthood, Young was an evangelical minister, preaching in churches, and even on street corners, all o...

QUEENS NY-- The pastor of a Westbury, LI, church has been charged with sexually abusing his three daughters at their Rockaway residence over the last 4½ years. "What allegedly happened to these children is every child's and every mother's worst nightmare" district attorney Richard A. Brown said. "Even after the physical abuse has stopped, the consequences of such sexual assault for victims are profound and can result in emotion trauma from which they may never recover." Morales Saintilus, 53, of Rockaway, Queens, pastor of the Eben-Ezer Baptist Church, located at 859 Prospect Avenue in Westbury, is being held pending arraignment in Queens Criminal Court on four counts of incest, two counts of endangering the welfare of a child and two counts of sexual abuse in the second degree. If convicted, he faces up to four years in prison. According to court records in Queens Criminal Court, it is alleged that the defendant, between July 2001 and January 2006, had sexu...

Defense accuses him, husband of downplaying Plano mom's behavior MCKINNEY TX - The pastor of a charismatic Christian church attended by the Plano mother on trial, accused of fatally cutting off the arms of her 10-month-old daughter, told jurors Wednesday that mental illness is really demon possession that cannot be cured with psychiatry or medicine. "I do not believe that any mental illness exists other than demons, and no medication can straighten it out, other than the power of God," said Doyle Davidson, the 73-year-old minister of the Water of Life Church that Dena and John Schlosser attended several times a week. Dena Schlosser, 37, is on trial for capital murder in the slaying of her daughter Margaret in November 2004. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Schlosser was arrested after police, responding to a 911 call, found her in the living room of her apartment, blood smeared on her face and clothes, a Christian hymn playing and a Bible open near the cr...

The pastor of an Anaheim CA church has been arrested on suspicion of molesting three boys and a girl — all congregants whom he met during services, authorities said Wednesday. Raul Rosas Hernandez, 41, of Anaheim was released from Orange County Jail on $100,000 bail Wednesday. He is facing charges of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14, officials said. The children, 8 to 13 years old at the time of the alleged molestation, were members of churches that Hernandez attended or where he was a pastor. Investigators said the incidents occurred over a 16-year period. "He used the tight-knit community of a church to gain the confidence of the victim's parents and ultimately molested the children," said Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department, which made the arrest Tuesday. Hernandez is suspected of inappropriately touching the children while they were at his former house in Stanton, in his car and at a church, Amormino said. The allegatio...

A High Point North Carolina man was sentenced to 18 years in prison Thursday after pleading guilty to having sexual relations with a 12-year-old girl. Charles Douglas Parry, 36, pleaded guilty to 18 counts of taking indecent liberties with a child, 13 counts of first-degree rape, three counts of first-degree sex offense and one of felonious restraint. Assistant District Attorney Randy Carroll said Parry began having sex with the girl in January 2005 while he was a counselor for the youth group at the church where she was a member. Parry was making sexual comments to the girl six months before their liaison began during a youth group trip to Tennessee, Carroll said. Parry's relationship with the girl was exposed in mid-July when he took her, without her parents permission, to Virginia. After a three-day search he was arrested and the girl returned to her family. At first the girl denied having a sexual relationship with Parry because she felt close to him and was trying to protect h...

Those who believe in creationism -- children and adults -- are being taught to challenge evolution's tenets in an in-your-face way. WAYNE, N.J. — Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies. "Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?" The children roared their assent. "Sometimes people will answer, 'No, but you weren't there either,' " Ham told them. "Then you say, 'No, I wasn't, but I know someone who was, and I have his book about the history of the world.' " He waved his Bible in the air. "Who's the only one who's alway...

The pastor of a Madison Township church faces charges in Painesville Municipal Court that he used the identity of a member of his congregation to procure prescription pain medication. According to Lt. Ed Ebert of the Lake County Narcotics Agency, the Rev. David S. Reed, 38, of 6124 Maxwell Drive, Madison Township, is charged with three fifth-degree felony counts of deception to obtain a dangerous drug and three first-degree misdemeanor counts of identity fraud. Reed is pastor of Chapel United Methodist Church, 2019 Hubbard Road. Ebert said the narcotics agency made quick work of the case, largely through the help of an astute pharmacist. "What happened was, (Reed) used the name of one of his parishioners who is a doctor," Ebert said. "And he managed to pick up three prescriptions for Darvocet. He claimed he was Dr. so-and-so, and even knew the guy's DEA number and all the right information." Ebert said it was Reed's fourth attempt to fill the bogus prescript...

A Long Island pastor accused of repeatedly sexually abusing his three teenage daughters at their Queens home was held on $10,000 bail set Friday in Queens Criminal Court, authorities said. Before Judge Alex J. Zigman, the pastor pleaded not guilty to two counts of second-degree sexual abuse, two counts of endangering the welfare of a child and four counts of incest. The pastor, 53, whose name has been withheld by Newsday to protect his daughters' identities, faces up to 4 years in prison if convicted. His attorney, Sean McNichols, of Kew Gardens, said his client's family described the pastor as a "loving, caring father" and said they "entirely support him 100 percent." McNichols said the family was gathering bail money. According to the Queens district attorney's office, the pastor had sex with his eldest daughter, now 19, about twice a week between July 2001 and last month. He sexually abused his two other daughters, at the time both were younger than ...

The pastor of a Bay Area church, four men in the aquarium industry and a commercial fisherman were indicted on federal charges of illegally catching and selling hundreds of juvenile leopard sharks, prosecutors said Wednesday. The indictment charged Kevin Thompson, 48, pastor of the Bay Area Family Church in San Leandro, and the five others with selling 465 leopard sharks that were too small to harvest to pet distributors throughout the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. California leopard sharks, which can take 13 years to reach maturity, live as long as 30 years and are protected under a state law that prohibits the commercial catching of specimens under 36 inches long. The indictment, which alleges that federal wildlife agents seized sharks ranging from 8 1/2-inches to 17 1/2-inches in length, was based on a federal statute that incorporates the state law. The charges resulted from an investigation that followed the 2003 conviction of a pet distributor who was cau...

SALISBURY -- State investigators have ruled arson as the cause of a fire at a Mount Hermon Road church, only days after one of its pastors was accused of having an improper relationship with a minor in the congregation. The Maryland State Fire Marshal's Office said the 10:47 p.m. Friday fire at New Life the Apostolic Church was started when somebody went into the church and ignited flammable material. Investigators said Saturday it took 40 firefighters from Salisbury about five minutes to control the blaze, which caused about $85,000 in damage. The fire was contained to the church's foyer and it is not expected to force the 400 members to another church. "It is just a shock that somebody could do this," said one church member, who declined to be identified. The arson comes two days after one of the church's pastors was charged by police with having an improper relationship with a minor. Joshua Wayne Lawson, 29, of Salisbury is charged with sex abuse, second-degree...

A Springfield Fla. pastor was arrested and charged with animal cruelty after a witness told police he saw the pastor throwing puppies from a pickup truck Robert Tiencken said he saw Vincent Kohn, pastor of The Anointed Church of God, throwing several puppies into the woods and leaving them to die. "He was actually throwing them, not setting them down, but throwing them as far as the trees. Just chucking them," Tiencken said. "He said, 'I told my wife. You don't have to call the police. You don't have to call them.'" Tiencken called the police anyway. The detectives who tracked down Kohn said they found the malnourished mother of the puppies chained-up at Kohn's home along with four or five more puppies that had no food or water. The dogs are now being cared for at animal control. Many of the abused puppies had lost patches of fur and some were covered with sores hidden beneath their fur. Puppies Thrown From Pickup Truck Channel 4 wanted to give ...

This is a follow-up to the article posted here. A Ripon pastor accused of selling the town’s oldest church pleaded guilty to embezzlement on Monday and agreed to 16 months in prison, court officials said. Randall Radic, 53, entered his plea in San Joaquin County Superior Court as part of a deal in which prosecutors agreed to drop nine other charges. Radic had preached at First Congregational Church for nearly a decade before he sold the church last October for $525,000, allegedly using the money to buy a BMW. He also faked documents that gave him possession of his house, which was owned by the church, then used the property to take out loans, authorities said. Before the plea deal, Radic had faced up to nine years in prison for 10 counts, including two counts of theft by embezzlement, two counts of obtaining property by false pretenses, four counts of forgery of signature and two counts of presenting a fraudulent document. Radic’s attorney Michael Babitzke declined to comment on the ca...