TULSA (OK)
Fox 23
Reported by: Adam Paluka
Email: apaluka@fox23.com
Days after the attorney for two Victory Christian Center staffers charged with Failure to Report Child Abuse filed a motion to dismiss those charges; a national group is slamming the employees. On Friday, the attorney for VCC Youth Ministers John and Charica Daugherty filed the motion in Tulsa County District Court. Monday afternoon, the Executive Director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests or SNAP, said the motion to dismiss was “ridiculous.”
Barbara Blaine, the Executive Director of SNAP, didn’t mince words.
“It’s disappointing that one more time, church officials are trying to weasel out their responsibility for their crimes,” she said.
The motion to dismiss the charges against the Daugherty’s says the two suspects in this case Chris Denman, who has been charged first-degree rape of a 13-year-old girl, and Israel Castillo, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of making a lewd proposal to a child and using a computer to commit a sex crime, have not been charged with child abuse. The attorney for the Daugherty’s says that means his clients can’t be charged with failure to report child abuse.
“I don’t understand what the technicality is that would somehow allow a child to be raped and then somehow say that wasn’t abuse of the child. That’s ludicrous,” Blaine said.
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