Ex-choir Director, Minister Pleads Guilty to Child Molestation

By Ruth Ingram
The Clarion-Ledger
January 22, 2013

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John Langworthy (right) and wife Kathy walk into a courtroom Tuesday at the Hinds County Courthouse in Jackson. / Rick Guy/The Clarion-Ledger

Guilty pleas this morning by a former Clinton church music minister and school choir director charged with sexually abusing young boys brings full circle a two-plus year period of allegations, investigations and legal wrangling.

During a hearing this morning before Hinds Circuit Judge Bill Gowan, John Langworthy pleaded guilty to five felony counts of gratification of lust. As part of a plea agreement between Langworthy and the Hinds County District Attorney’s office, Langworthy will not go to prison.

Gowan sentenced Langworthy to 10 years suspended on each of the five counts, for a total of a 50-year suspended sentence. He also received five years of supervised probation, is forbidden to have contact with any of his victims, and must register as a sex offender.

The guilty plea comes on the heels of a Jan. 18 ruling by Gowan denying a motion to dismiss the indictment because too much time had passed since the crimes occurred more than two decades ago. It was a legal argument that prosecutors from the time of Langworthy’s indictment had said could put the case in jeopardy.

A Hinds County grand jury in September 2011 charged Langworthy with eight counts of felony gratification of lust. He was accused of sexually abusing five boys, ages 6 through 13, after meeting the boys through their families at Jackson-area churches between 1980-1984.

The indictment, and subsequent filings by the office of Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith, describe specific and graphic abuse in each situation.

The district attorney’s office also alleges Langworthy sexually abused another male child at some point between 1984 and 1989 when the two attended Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.

Langworthy was music minister at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton before his arrest in early September 2011 by both Clinton and Jackson police. Langworthy confessed to the Morrison Heights congregation during an August 2011 Sunday service that he had committed “sexual indiscretions” that were “ungodly” with young males in Mississippi and Texas, and that he moved back to Mississippi because of his actions at Prestonwood.

The indictment alleges the abuse occurred at the boys’ Jackson homes, Langworthy’s sister’s home in Jackson, or in Langworthy’s dorm room at Mississippi College.

Langworthy was a longtime Clinton district choir director, most recently director of the Clinton High Arrow Singers, before his confession and arrest. He did not return to the high school after the 2010-11 school year ended in May 2011, but remained in the classroom during that school year, which began in August 2010. Langworthy resigned as music minister at Morrison Heights in May 2011.

Amy Smith of Houston, Texas, who was on staff with Langworthy at Prestonwood, alerted clergy at Morrison Heights of Langworthy’s past at Prestonwood in early 2011, and called Clinton school district Superintendent Phil Burchfield and told him of her concerns in August 2010. Burchfield and state Rep. Philip Gunn, a member of the Morrison Heights board of elders, said in August 2011 that the school district and church had taken steps to protect children in the period following Smith’s contact with them.

Had Gowan ruled in Langworthy’s favor, Langworthy would have walked free despite his confession.

Langworthy’s attorney, Jeffrey Rimes, filed a motion to dismiss on Sept. 21, saying the state’s statute of limitations potentially affecting Langworthy “expired Dec. 31, 1986, nearly three years before the state’s statute of limitations was amended in 1989 to extend for a period of seven years.” The statute of limitations in effect at the time of the alleged crimes said prosecutors have two years to file charges, Rimes said.

Hinds County Assistant District Attorney Jamie McBride argued that a section of statute trumps Rimes’ argument. That statute says “a person shall not be prosecuted for any offense … unless the prosecution for such offense be commenced within two years next after the commission thereof.” However, it goes on to say “but nothing herein contained shall bar any prosecution against any person who shall abscond or flee from justice, or shall absent himself from the state or out of the jurisdiction of the court …”

Langworthy left the state for five years in 1984, attending seminary school in Texas and working in music ministry at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas, then moved back to Mississippi in 1989 and began work at Morrison Heights, then the school district.

“The statute of limitations in effect at the time of Langworthy’s crimes provided that should he absent himself from the state of Mississippi, then nothing would bar his prosecution,” Gowan wrote in part in his opinion. “Langworthy left the state of Mississippi to establish a residence in the state of Texas.”