Alleged Victim Details Relationship with Adkins

By Wes Wolfe
Golden Isles News
April 6, 2017

http://goldenisles.news/news/local_news/alleged-victim-details-relationship-with-adkins/article_ec3bfeff-7416-501e-bb3c-6a24847f36a4.html

Wednesday at the Glynn County Courthouse, A.J. testified he and his girlfriend T.V. began being openly flirty at church after they had been romantically intimate for the first time. He said the Rev. Kenneth Adkins noticed this behavior, and that was when Adkins asked the then-15-year-old whether the two were having sex, and whether they were being careful not to get her pregnant.

A.J., who is not being identified because he is allegedly a sexual abuse victim, testified that not long after, Adkins offered up his office as a venue and offered to observe the couple, making sure that “they were doing it right.”

“It was awkward,” A.J. said, “but I felt it was the right thing at the time.”

Adkins is on trial on child molestation charges regarding alleged illegal acts conducted between him, A.J. and T.V. between 2009 and 2010.

Throughout his testimony, it appeared A.J. battled himself to stay composed on the stand, seemingly several times to be overcome with emotion. Several times A.J. appeared uncomfortable or unsure as to whether he should go into such explicit detail about the sexual encounters as he was asked by the prosecution, including how Adkins allegedly inspected T.V.’s crotch area after the first time they had sex in Adkins’ office.

When Adkins’ 50th birthday arrived in January 2010, A.J. testified he felt he owed Adkins something in return for providing his office and other places for he and T.V. to have sex, so he approached T.V. and Adkins separately, and they both agreed to her performing a sex act on Adkins.

A.J. said this incident, combined with other incidents between the three of them — and a time of him and Adkins performing the same act on each other — led to a lingering feeling of shame and embarrassment, so much so that he found it difficult to focus on his work at hand after going into the Army in 2013.

Indeed, A.J. said he maintained a sexual relationship with Adkins, in one form or another, from that first time in the pastor’s office until he was deployed to Germany at the beginning of 2014. Under cross-examination, he admitted that they continued to sext, however, with A.J. asking Adkins for photos of Adkins’ male anatomy, which Adkins emailed in November 2014.

A.J. went on to claim Adkins was well aware of their ages.

A.J. said this behavior weighed on him, as did Adkins helping him and his family out with groceries, rides and minutes for A.J.’s phone. A.J. testified one of the things that made him lose focus was trying to reconcile Adkins’ perceived good deeds with the other ones.

In 2016, well after reporting the alleged encounters to Army staff and speaking with Brunswick Police Department investigators, A.J. said he met with Adkins at a restaurant and later at Adkins’ residence with the intention of confronting him. A.J. said once in the situation, he could not confront Adkins like he intended, but that Adkins made an advance toward him and he rebuffed the reverend, and began to explain himself.

A.J. captured the conversation on his phone, expressing to Adkins how he became suicidal at one point, and elected to take the Army’s assistance and spend a couple months in a behavioral counseling center in Utah.

In the recorded conversation, Adkins acted shocked that A.J. would react so strongly to what he appeared in the recording to consider not such a big deal. And in regard to A.J.’s new marriage to another man, A.J. said that Adkins “didn’t disapprove of it” and all he wanted was for A.J. to be happy.

When confronted by defense attorney Kevin Gough about Adkins’ well-publicized opposition to gay rights and his social media statements following the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, A.J. said Adkins told him “he only did it for public relations.”

Later in the afternoon, Adkins’ wife Stormy took the stand, effectively refuting most of A.J.’s testimony. She said she had no knowledge of A.J. or T.V. before 2010. She noted, though, that T.V. did live at their residence for several months beginning in 2013 or 2014, but that they both moved around a month after law enforcement arrested Adkins, and that T.V. now lives with the family of A.J.’s former best friend, D.G., who was part of a witness-intimidation accusation until prosecutors agreed to drop the charge at the outset of the trial.

Stormy Adkins’ testimony continued past press time. The trial is set to resume this morning.

Contact: wwolfe@goldenisles.news