INDIANA
Chicago Tribune
By Andy GrimmTribune reporter
4:45 p.m. CDT, March 20, 2013
Jack Schaap, the former pastor of a 15,000-member northwest Indiana megachurch, was sentenced today to 12 years in prison for engaging in sex with a troubled underage girl who sought him out for counseling.
In a statement, the victim wrote that Schaap would text her from the altar during his sermons. In another statement, written as a letter to Schaap, she wrote: “When you first kissed me I was shocked. . .When I asked you if it was wrong, you said ‘No.’ You told me that I was sent you from God, I was his gift to you. You made me feel special.”
Schaap entered a guilty plea last September in a deal with federal prosecutors, admitting to allegations that led to his ouster from the highly conservative Hammond Baptist Church that his late father in-law, Jack Hyles, had built into one of the area’s largest churches.
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