CHICAGO | Cook County prosecutors on Friday announced a variety of felony indictments against eight people -- including three county employees and three ministers -- in a series of alleged fraud schemes against government agencies that reportedly cost more than $1.6 million. "This is particularly shocking because much of this money was intended to help impoverished individuals looking to better themselves," Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine said in a news release. "As if that were not bad enough, three of the defendants were county employees in positions of trust and three others were trusted by their communities as ministers," he said. Indicted were: -- Charles Koen, the managing director of the nonprofit United Front Inc . and pastor of Christian Hope Church , 8849-59 S. Greenwood Ave., Chicago -- Alex Brooks, vice president of United Front and a minister at Christian Hope Church -- Ronnie Marshall, an United Front employee and a minister at Christian ...

At about 7 a.m. Monday, before heading for the federal courthouse, actor Wesley Snipes joined black ministers from churches in Orlando , Gainesville and Ocala for a prayer service. Several ministers then came for the beginning of Snipes' trial on tax evasion charges. In front of the Golden-Collum Memorial Federal Building , they talked with reporters, saying they prayed for fairness, deliverance and God's favor. The Rev. Frank E. Thompson, of The Worship Center Orlando , had organized the service at New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Ocala . "All the pastors came because, No. 1, Wes' from Orlando and we came to pray on his behalf," Thompson said. "It's important not only to show support for him - but any person," said the Rev. Fred Maeweathers Sr., pastor of Shady Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Ocala . Snipes' lawyers had raised the issue of whether Snipes, as a black man, can get a fair jury in the Ocala Division of the Middle Distri...

NEW CASTLE - A former pastor of a Slippery Rock Township church pleaded guilty this week to two counts of possession of child pornography. No sentencing date has been set for Robert D. Schmidtberger, 52, but prosecutors recommended a sentence of 12 months minus two days to 24 months minus four days with 15 years' probation. Lawrence County Judge Thomas Piccione, who oversaw the guilty plea, ordered a psychological assessment to determine whether Schmidtberger might be a violent sexual predator. After his release, Schmidtberger will be required to register with the state police under the provisions of Megan's Law. State police filed the charges based on information provided by the America Online Internet service, which periodically reviews subscribers' e-mails. A review on March 12, 2005, detected three e-mails that included images that depicted child pornography. AOL personnel matched the sender's screen name to Schmidtberger and notified the National Center for Missi...

Reviving an ancient practice, churches are exposing sinners and shunning those who won't repent. On a quiet Sunday morning in June, as worshippers settled into the pews at Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan, Pastor Jason Burrick grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911. When a dispatcher answered, the preacher said a former congregant was in the sanctuary. "And we need to, um, have her out A.S.A.P." Half an hour later, 71-year-old Karolyn Caskey, a church member for nearly 50 years who had taught Sunday school and regularly donated 10% of her pension, was led out by a state trooper and a county sheriff's officer. One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs. ( Listen to the 911 call ) The charge was trespassing, but Mrs. Caskey's real offense, in her pastor's view, was spiritual. Several months earlier, when she had questioned his authority, he'd charged her with spreading "a spirit of cancer and discord" and expelled her ...

OMAHA, Neb .: A priest who once worked in Nebraska is under investigation for alleged sexual misconduct before he was ordained, the Omaha archdiocese announced today. The Rev. Patrick Henry, 66, had been serving as pastor of St. Christine Parish in Euclid, Ohio , until June, when he was placed on administrative leave because of a complaint filed with the Omaha archdiocese. The archdiocese said in a news release that Henry was accused of ''sexual misconduct with a minor'' in the mid-1970s, before he was ordained as a priest. Details of where that alleged abuse occurred were not available today. The case has been referred to police. It was also under review by the Vatican. The Diocese of Cleveland said Henry was cooperating with the investigation. A message left Friday for Henry at St. Christine was not immediately returned. No other number for him was listed. Henry, who is originally from Cleveland, served as a seminarian intern at Sacred Heart Parish in Norfolk in fa...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (ABP) -- Once touted by Southern Baptist leaders as the nation's next great African-American preacher, Darrell Gilyard was arrested Jan. 14 for sending lewd text messages to underage girls. Dogged for 20 years by dozens of allegations of extramarital sex with parishioners, Gilyard, 45, resigned Jan. 4 as pastor of Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church, a 7,000-member megachurch in Jacksonville, Fla., that he has served for 15 years. It is the fifth church position that Gilyard has been forced to resign from over charges of sexual misconduct. Gilyard was charged with lewd and lascivious conduct. He will be arraigned Feb. 5. Police have been investigating a Nov. 29 complaint filed by a member of the congregation claiming Gilyard sent sexually explicit text messages to her daughter. At least one other girl allegedly received similar text messages. One of the mothers produced a journal detailing her daughter's sexual relationship with the pastor, the police said...

An Albany Church Pastor is arrested Friday, and charged with having his own church burned. 45 year old Dr. Joseph Howard is charged with first degree arson. He is being held in the Dougherty County Jail without bond, along with 46 year old Curtis Jones. Investigators say Howard hired Jones to set the fire in the South Albany church. Arson Investigators say the burning of the Metropolitan Baptist Church on December 31st was not a hate crime, but a crime for money. They charge that Reverend Howard had his church torched to collect the insurance money. Formerly known as Trinity Baptist, Metropolitan Baptist Church on West Gordon Avenue was vandalized and set on fire. Furniture was found turned over in the church and school offices, but only the sanctuary was burned. Investigators charge that Reverend Howard sat down with 46 year old Curtis Jones and planned the arson, to make sure the entire church building burned. But the fire department put out the fire in the sanctuary. Witnesses ...

In divorce court: Megachurch pastor Jamal-Harrison Bryant and his wife of 5 1/2 years, Gizelle Bryant. She filed in Montgomery County on Jan. 9, alleging adultery. She states in court papers that the pastor makes more than $350,000 a year. He filed in Baltimore City the same day. His complaint says nothing about cheating. It does state that "there is no hope of reconciliation." "This is a private matter between Dr. Bryant and his wife, and we'd like to keep this matter private," said Jimmy A. Bell, lawyer for the Empowerment Temple pastor. The couple have three children, 1-year-old twins and a 3-year-old. The big question: Who gets the Bentley? STORY LINK

Posted by Dr. Zach "Kidd Kraddick in the Morning" is the morning show for KHKS 106.1 "KISS" FM, a popular Top-40 station here in Dallas that's also popular with my wife for their support of her favorite musician, Elliot Yamin . As such, it graces our clock radio and tends to wake me on a regular basis. Although there's usually some ridiculous conversation in progress when the alarm trips, this morning's was especially interesting and ironic. The group was discussing the recent viral video of Tom Cruise blathering on about Scientology, which they had placed on their website. Show member "Kellie Rasberry" [sic] was defending his comments in the video, with the argument that all religious people think that they have the Answer, so she didn't think he should be criticized. That alone tickled me awake, but then she offered the following case in point, which I'll paraphrase: "Everyone thinks Tom Cruise is crazy for thinking that aliens...

Michael Dowd speaks in tongues, and when he's not doing that, he's talking almost nonstop about why Christians should embrace evolution. As a Pentecostal-background pastor who finds salvation in accepting that the universe is 14 billion years old, and who believes our behavior can be accounted for by not only the apes but also the lizards in our ancestry, he's a popular oddity on the lecture circuit. This week and next, the author of Thank God for Evolution! will be giving several talks in the area. "I come out of the Pentecostal, charismatic style," he said. "I'm all over the place. Nobody gets bored at these meetings." Mr. Dowd grew up Catholic but later converted to spirit-filled Pentecostalism and began to speak in tongues. Early on, he also believed the biblical accounts of creation to be literally true and fervently rejected evolution. But through the years, he encountered Christians who believed that evolution and faith could be reconciled. ...

This just sent in from a member of the U.S. Marine Corps stationed at Camp Lejeune , North Carolina. These idiots are coming to the front gate at Camp Lejeune to protest the Marine Corps. They are also going to our Beruit Memorial Cemetery to celebrate the deaths of all Marines who have been killed in action. All Marines and Sailors on base have been ordered not to go to the protests or interact with them for any reason. That's probably a smart order, because I have a mind to go there with a platoon of Marines, all carrying baseball bats. That would probably just invigorate them all the more, though. These are the same ass-clowns that protested the funeral of a Marine a couple years ago who died in an I.E.D. blast. They were carrying signs saying "God loves IED's." Stupidity never ceases to amaze me.

Bishop Earl Paulk pleaded guilty to felony perjury in Cobb Superior Court Wednesday. Judge Frank R. Cox, chief judge of Magistrate Court, sitting in as assisting Superior Court judge, said he fined Paulk $1,000 and put him on probation for 10 years. He ordered Paulk to pay $32 a month in probation fees. Cobb County Sheriff's Office Earl Paulk RELATED LINKS: • Photos: Scandal surrounds Earl Paulk • More DeKalb news • More Cobb news Paulk, formerly a prominent minister, was charged with perjury for lying during a deposition last year in a sexual misconduct lawsuit against him. He turned himself into Cobb County authorities at 8 p.m. Tuesday and was sentenced about 18 hours later. Cox said District Attorney Pat Head and Paulk's attorney arranged the sequence of legal events. Louis Levenson, the attorney for the couple suing Paulk, said the plea should serve as a warning. "I hope that people will take a page out of this book and see that wha...

"Think about getting hit in the stomach unexpectedly and getting the wind knocked out of you." That's how Pastor John Anderson describes his congregations reaction after one of the East Tucson Baptist Church youth ministers was arrested for several sex crimes. Anderson said, "Shock, anger, denial rationalization, all of those are taking place right now." Taking place because Christopher Decaire was arrested on Friday and charged with nine felonies. He's accused of sexually molesting a 13-year-old girl from the church. "We're still numb, we're speechless." The alleged victim told a relative who then called police. This is the search warrant officers served the church on Friday. It shows police got swabs of Christoper Decaire's mouth for DNA. Other evidence they looked for included pieces of flooring, couches, curtains and other furniture found to contain biological material when viewed with a forensic light source. Police say those mater...

This video is from MSNBC's Morning Joe , broadcast January 15, 2008. "I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view." -- Mike Huckabee

ATLANTA (AP) — An 80-year-old leader of a suburban megachurch who is at the center of a sex scandal has been charged with lying under oath for saying he had sex outside marriage with only one other woman, court documents show. A warrant for the arrest of Archbishop Earl Paulk , co-founder of Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church, was issued Monday, according to court documents. Paulk was making arrangements Monday night to turn himself in, WAGA-TV reported. His attorneys did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press seeking comment. Former church employee Mona Brewer is suing Paulk, his brother and the church on allegations that Paulk manipulated her into an affair from 1989 to 2003 by telling her it was her only path to salvation. In a 2006 deposition stemming from the lawsuit, the archbishop said under oath that the only woman he had ever had sex with outside of his marriage was Brewer. But the results of a court-ordered paternity test revealed in ...

A pastor at the Greggton Church of Christ on Marshall Avenue was jailed Thursday after admitting to molesting a relative, according to a report by the Longview Police Department. Charles Thomas Hogland, 58, of Longview told police he inappropriately touched the girl at least six separate times, according to the report. He has been charged with indecency with a child by contact, a second-degree felony, and was released from jail about 2 p.m. Friday on $25,000 bond. Hogland was interviewed by a Longview police detective Thursday after the relative he molested made an "outcry," according to the police report. Hogland told the detective that each incident happened in the church parsonage, where he and his wife reside, according to the report. Hogland is the only pastor at Greggton Church of Christ, which has a congregation of about 50, he said. He has been there for about 10 years. Churches of Christ operate under a board of elders. Hogland said he and the elders will see what ...

A Cleveland clergyman has been accused of stealing about $300,000 from the church, taking money from a fund for the poor and stealing parishioners' identities prior to his imprisonment last year on unrelated charges. The Rev. Donald Ray Robinson, former pastor of Lane Metropolitan Christian Methodist Episcopal Church , was named yesterday in a 27-count indictment on charges of theft, securing records by deception, identity fraud and money laundering. His arraignment is set for Jan. 22. An investigation began after parishioners found that Robinson, 56, used church property as collateral to obtain loans and laundered money through bank accounts, said Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor James Gutierrez. He also drained the church's Benevolent Fund earmarked for the poor, stole the identities of church members to obtain illegal credit cards and pocketed a $5,000 grant from the Cleveland Foundation for a computer training program, Gutierrez said. Robinson became pastor of Lane Me...

FORT WORTH - The organization that took on the Catholic Church over sex abuse has accused a prominent North Texas Baptist leader of letting a predatory preacher move from church to church. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said they want Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to suspend its president, Dr. Paige Patterson . Pastor Darrell Gilyard is the center of the controversy. In early January, he resigned from a large Baptist church in Jacksonville, Florida after he allegedly sent lewd text messages to a teenaged girl. However, that isn't Gilyard's first time to meet with such accusations, which lead back to North Texas and Oklahoma. Back in the '80s and '90s, Pastor Gilyard was forced to leave four churches after women complained of sexual abuse. Some of those women, and even some church leaders, said Gilyard was able to move from pulpit to pulpit because the claims against him were dismissed by Dr. Patterson. "I never recommended D...

Mangalore -- The Infant Jesus Shrine located at Carmel Hill at Bikarnatte, played host to large number of faithful, on its annual feast held on Thursday January 10. More than sixteen thousand devotees attended the mass, which was celebrated by the Bishop of Belgaum. Bishop Peter Machado of Belgaum celebrated the mass along with more than 40 priests. In his homily, he said that most of the faithful come here expecting miracles. "They expect Almighty God to grant their wishes as proposed by them. But, one should look upon Jesus Christ who has obeyed the will of His Father to the end. He has led us faithful to follow his example by going through trials and tribulations in our life, thereby, enjoy the eternal peace with Him," he said. The Carmel Hill is not only a place of miracles, but its serenity should transform one to become a devout individual, he added. Earlier, Holy Masses were also held in Konkani, Malayalam, English and in Kannada at Infant Jesus shrine. Devotees, i...

Police are looking for a man accused of sexually assaulting a young girl in an East Austin church. The alleged assault took place at The Rock of Austin on East Martin Luther King Boulevard. According to the police affidavit, Gene Young, 27, worked at the church, and knew the girl since she was 12. Young is accused of starting a sexual relationship with her when she was 15, a relationship that went on for more than a year, ending last October. The victim told police she had sex with young about 100 times in the recording studio of the church. The victim, now 16 years old, recently told her pastor about the relationship. “The pastor was shocked and disappointed because he had known this young man for a long time. His family was a member of the church, the suspect was a member of the church and he was definitely shocked and in disbelief that this would happen at his church,” Detective Gizette Gaslin with the APD Child Abuse Unit said. Young was fired from the church. Police are looking ...

The Bishop of Tenerife (foreground) during the reopening of the San Andrés Church in Garachico - Photo - Infoicod.blogia.com Bernando Álvarez said that there are 13-year-olds who are wanting to be abused, and 'if you are careless they will provoke you' There is outrage in parts of Spanish society following declarations made over Christmas from the Bishop of Tenerife , Bernardo Álvarez . His comments were that there are youngsters who want to be abused, and he compared that abuse to homosexuality, describing them both as prejudicial to society. He said that on occasions the abuse happened because the there are children who consent to it. ‘There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what’s more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you’, he said. Regarding homosexuals, the Bishop said that homosexuality was something prejudicial to the people and to society, and that we would pay the consequences in the ...

A youth pastor at Bible Way Church has been charged with performing sex acts on a 14-year old girl three separate times. Investigators say 36-year-old Falcon Davis worked at the Augusta church for 2 years. They say Davis confessed to the crimes. He is now in jail awaiting a bond hearing. Investigators took him into custody after the girls mother called the Sheriff's Department this weekend. During the investigation they found 37 pages of Yahoo! Messages between Davis and the teenager. Many of them were sexual in nature. And investigators say the teen eventually told them that Davis came to her house to perform oral sex on her. They say this case serves as a warning to parents. "Monitor what your children do, because in all honesty you don't know who they're talking to. It could be a child, or an adult who is a predator of some sort," said Richmond County investigator Earnest Furgeison. Young people from age five all the way up to 18 are involved in the youth pro...