KENTUCKY
Times-News
By Associated Press
Published January 15th, 2013
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Five people have joined a Maryland lawsuit that claims a Kentucky-based evangelical church group covered up allegations of sexual abuse against children and failed to alert police and shield children from known sexual predators.
The new plaintiffs join three women who filed a civil lawsuit against Sovereign Grace Ministries in October. The suit accuses church leadership of encouraging parents of alleged victims to refrain from reporting abuses to police and creating “a culture in which sexual predators were protected from accountability and victims were silenced.”
The church moved its headquarters to Louisville last year after three decades in Maryland. The group has struggled in recent years with fractured leadership and criticism over its discipline methods. Leaders at the church must be men and women are not permitted to teach or to have authority over a man, according its website.
A message left at the church office in Louisville on Tuesday was not immediately returned. The church said in a statement about the suit last year that the suit contains “a number of misleading allegations, as well as considerable mischaracterizations of intent.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.