A pastor and businessman from the Corporate Area has been charged with five sexual offences in relation to a minor.

The accused is 55-year-old Kenneth Blake of a Kingston address.

Officers from the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) charged the minister with rape, forcible abduction, sexual touching of a child, sexual intercourse with a person under age 16, and grievous sexual assault.

The allegations are that he had repeated sexual relations with an underage girl between 2015 and 2017.

Blake is in police custody and is to appear in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court on August 22.

It is just the latest allegation of rape against a member of the clergy.

The Moravian church in Jamaica became embroiled in a sex scandal at the start of the year, after one of its pastors was allegedly caught having sex with a minor in a car. That spring boarded into other allegations of sex with minors being brought against more pastors and officials. All are still before the courts.

A Pentecostal pastor was also sent to prison for sex with a minor with the CISOCA coming out to say that high-profile perpetrators of this crime are pastors and police.