SC: Church Leaders Arrested After Giving Registrant a Second Chance.
A man in his 70s, convicted in 2023 of a sex offense involving a minor, was approved by his probation office to volunteer at a local church. It’s the kind of stable, supervised community connection that reentry research consistently shows reduces reoffense risk. His probation condition was that he have no direct contact with minors. Somewhere between that condition and daily reality, he ended up working as a custodian at a school the church also operates. When that came to light, it triggered a criminal investigation and now church leadership (not just the registrant) is facing felony charges alongside him, including obstruction and conspiracy counts.
Whatever the outcome of the criminal cases, the underlying problem is that probation conditions like “no direct contact with minors” are often handed down without much practical guidance on what that means. More concerning is criminal liability for third parties — employers, pastors, family members, program coordinators — because someone under supervision violated their conditions. When it comes to the registry, prosecutors are willing to charge obstruction, conspiracy, or “endangerment” counts against people who were not on probation themselves, but were just trying to help out someone who was.
In practice, that means legal risk to a third party who hires a registrant, which is a huge, huge additional barrier to finding employment. That’s a meaningful chilling effect. For employers, religious congregations, charitable organizations, and practically anyone, the safer legal move is often to keep a wide distance from anyone on the registry rather than take on a supportive role at all — which cuts directly against the reintegration outcomes the system claims to want.
That’s the reform conversation FAC keeps having. If states keep stacking barriers to housing, employment, and reintegration in front of registrants, successful reentry becomes impossible.
Discover more from Florida Action Committee (FAC)
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
At that point, why even take the chance. The registry is insane.
By making an extreme point of arresting the Pastors for doing Gods work they’ve let everyone know that under no uncertain terms is an RSO with striped pajamas allowed to be employed. I was laughed at a few months ago and chastised when I compared America today to Germany circa WW2. Still think I was wrong? The worst is yet to come..they are just getting warmed up and it won’t stop until it’s forced to stop..that’s a history fact.
Were you wrong to compare America to Nazi Germany? Not necessarily—- bad analogies are often harmless, and you are free to make them.
Wait so if you’re a musician, you can still get in trouble?
Im not a lawyer or anything but a musician is volunteering their time unless paid. So technically guess they can use that verbiage
It’s not against the law to be a musician.
I agree with you FAC but if they volunteer their time to the group could they not use this verbiage against you. Florida all about the loopholes
What verbiage?
If someone was a musician at a church and under same circumstances except being a musician in the church bang could this not be argued you volunteer your time at the church if unpaid ?
Perhaps but volunteering is not illegal.
Oh but it could be ….what say someone under the age happens to decide to listen….you may not even see them but if you play and they are in proximity do you honestly think you won’t go to jail? If someone decides to take offence against you or a cop fails to get his quota you can be sure being a musician is a crime…
It’s pretty clear that people under sex offender supervision should not be in positions of supervisory contact with children. No one should be in a situation with supervisory contact over children without a background check, so that shouldn’t be the case here. As a custodian, did he have direct access to unsupervised children? Was the school even in session when he performed his duties? Was this a real school, or ‘Sunday School’ which every church has? To me, allowing someone to volunteer as a custodian shouldn’t inflame the passions of parents, if appropriate boundaries are kept like performing his duties when the building is closed to the public. We just don’t know the details.
Churches have children everywhere. It is physically impossible to even be in most churches without being in proximity to children, so let’s just get that out in the open. If people are supporting enacting church bans, no lawmaker who cares about the Constitution should uphold that. Even prisoners have rights under RLUIPA to religious expression.
This case is troubling because it’s become a national headline with no important details whatsoever. On the surface, it seems that the public simply can’t tolerate anyone with that label being anywhere else except prison, which shows just how wicked and uninformed people have become. Judgement is coming… it’s just not for those whom the majority expect.
The spiritual depravity of the damaged people CONjuring up all these unconstitutional legal fictions is so severe and satanic it honestly hurts my mind.
What do the opportunistic monsters think is gonna happen when their constituents, who love their pastors and leaders who exemplify Christ teachings, are going to do when it’s time to vote? They’re not gonna vote for the monster that did such a horrific thing to their pastor.
The constituents who love and support their pastor…and some are quite fanatical about it just as there are fanatics on most issues…will demand laws be changed.
And those supporters who aren’t also spiritually and mentally depraved like the damaged politicians and their legal fiction enforcers will also see the need to back off the CONjurers’ current unconstitutional persecution and demand changes all around. History proves this happens.
When the weight of diabolical hateful oppression reaches the level of everyone fighting back, it finally gets terminated and evil politicians get caught in it too.
The opportunists have used every division and for-profit warfare on humanity they can CONjure.
I think most here remember the race wars in the 50s and 60s. That crap was still going on in my high school in the 70s.
The war on homosexuality sure has taken a turn. Research what was happening with idiot bigoted politicians who were horrible to humans diagnosed with AIDS, and now we know it isn’t passed person to person. That was another Fauci fraud.
In 1957 it was “illegal” for women to wear a bikini swimsuit. Research laws on swimsuits throughout the decades.
Every legal fiction that is repugnant to the Constitution has been CONjured up by some demented politician.l with a damaged soul. Some are bought off by profit-seekers.
And it doesn’t seem that any one of them has any knowledge and awareness of the Universal Laws, the first of which is:
DO NO HARM.
Period.
Universal law does not permit harm for harm cycling. That’s entirely man-made by opportunists and profit-seekers.
If our government was actually good, actually cared about children and humans, they would most definitely end all human trafficking. But the human traffickers own the government. The child predators run the government. The rest of us are just fodder for their corrupt machine.
I am placing a great deal of belief in the big lawsuit that’s about to be filed and the education efforts by FAC. Our daughter/our son’s sister, keeps saying people need to hear the stories about what’s really going on. Friends of hers, that she’s told about her brother, can’t believe the atrocities that are taking place. People that actually know our son are so shocked at the oppression and pure evil.
It is going to all end, it’s just a matter of effort and time and the more people getting dragged onto the registry, the more families and friends being impacted, the sooner it all collapses. Arresting pastors for living Jesus’ teachings and following the commandment to love thy neighbor, no if’s or but’s, should anger and alarm everyone.
Every politician who claims to be a “christian“ and yet who lives as a “satan“, should be put on a registry for hypocrites. Because a hypocrite is truly the most dangerous person on earth. A house divided against itself cannot stand.
“The object of all despotism is revenue.”
-Thomas Paine
Every sheriff, police chief captain, EVERY law enforcement officer should also be put on a registry and lose their jobs for violating the oath they took to defend and uphold the Constitution.
“All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.”
Marbury vs. Madison, 5 US (2 Cranach) 137, 174, 176, (1803)
What a cowardly statement by Sheriff Weaver (last paragraph of linked article).
Practically admitting that he doesn’t know how to keep the county safe without arresting people for hiring a guy to clean toilets.