MISSOURI
The Raw Story
By Travis Gettys
Friday, July 25, 2014
A sex abuse victim has sued a Missouri church that hired a convicted sex offender and allowed him to supervise children.
The suit claims officials with First Presbyterian Church of Fulton knew that Jack Wayne Rogers had been previously convicted on child pornography charges when they hired him as a lay minister but still placed him “in direct authority over minor children.”
Kristopher Schondelmeyer, who is now 30, said Rogers sexually abused him in 2000 during a Connection 2000 Youth Conference in Maryland, while the former Boy Scout leader accompanied him and several other teens from Presbyterian churches.
The suit claims Schondelmeyer and his family were taught by the church to trust and obey Rogers in his role as lay minister and chaperone, reported the Fulton Sun.
The lawsuit also names as defendants several national and regional Presbyterian groups, as well as Rogers and Bruce Berry, who appointed the sex offender as lay minister at the Presbyterian Church of Bellflower, California.
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