Prestonwood Baptist Church: Perceived Vs. Actual Threats

Watch Keep
May 14, 2013

http://watchkeep.blogspot.com/2013/05/prestonwood-baptist-church-perceived-vs.html?m=1


lLastly, he comments how he feels like Luke Skywalker circling the beast as he approaches the Death Star. Sounds like an excerpt from a science fiction novel right? It's an actual statement from the Plano Police Department harassment complaint (embedded below) filed by Prestonwood Baptist Church executive pastor Mike Buster on longtime church member Chris Tynes. Prestonwood described Chris Tynes to the police as a "suspicious person" after he arrived in the church parking lot (see video) hoping to catch Mike Buster to ask Mike why he refused to meet with him regarding questions about the church's handling of  "past indiscretions by a former pastor."

Tynes had questions about the church's handling of child sex abuse allegations by former youth music minister John Langworthy who pleaded guilty in January 2013 in Jackson, Mississippi to child sex crimes there prior to his employment at Prestonwood.

Asking questions is the best place to start. Don't stop. Seek the truth. I was 20 and a youth staff intern at Prestonwood when Jack Graham fired Langworthy for sexually abusing boys, some of them my friends. I waited 22 years to speak up. I wish I had done so back then in 1989, though I was not powerful, wealthy, or an executive staff member...or an owner of a professional sports team in Dallas who come to pose for pictures with Jack Graham in his office. Langworthy was my youth music minister when I was in high school. He confessed to my dad, and to Neal and Jack. They fired him but failed to obey the child abuse mandatory reporting law in place in Texas since 1971. They have never called the police about Langworthy. 

I also know the names of 3 other Prestonwood child sex abuse perpetrators that the staff knew about but also have failed to report to police. Thus, kids are still in danger from these offenders, wherever they may be. Predators rarely have just one victim, and they never retire from offending, unless they are in jail or dead.

Prestonwood's egregious actions regarding Langworthy didn't end in 1989 when they fired him. They continue to wound victims and victims' parents to this day, as well as endanger more kids with their silence. After the first WFAA story, one victim's parents went to Prestonwood to seek a meeting with Jack Graham but he refused to meet with them. Also, another one of the Langworthy survivors, who recently came forward to the police, had never told ANYONE until a few months ago. This survivor may have had the courage to tell sooner and get help to heal had Jack and Neal Jeffrey not cowered in silence for 24 years. If one has suffered in silence alone for 24 years, are there others?

The tragic irony is so obvious, glaring in fact, that Prestonwood immediately reported the perceived threat of an executive staff member by Chris Tynes to the police, yet did not, and has never reported the acual threat, acted out, of child sex crimes by Langworthy against innocent children in the church. You can read here what he did to children, boys ages 6-13, in his Mississippi criminal case, also embedded below. These crimes were committed between 1980-84. He came to Prestonwood soon after and worked there until his firing in 1989 for sexually abusing more boys.