ALABAMA
AL.com
By Greg Garrison | ggarrison@al.com
on July 23, 2014
MUSCLE SHOALS, Alabama – A victim of former Highland Park Baptist Church Children’s Pastor Jeff Eddie, charged this year with 36 counts of child sexual abuse, has filed a lawsuit against Eddie and the church.
The lawsuit was filed in Birmingham July 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama Western Division. The plaintiff identified as “J.G.,” now living in Louisiana, seeks unspecified damages for the sexual abuse that he said began in 2001 when he was 11. The lawsuit states that Eddie pleaded guilty on March 7 to 16 counts of sodomy for oral sex, three counts of sexual abuse of a child under 12 and one count of possession of child pornography. Eddie, 41, was arrested Feb. 4.
Eddie was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Colbert County District Attorney Bryce Graham said the number of Eddie’s victims was in the double-digits.
Eddie was administrative and children’s pastor at Highland Park, a Southern Baptist Church in Colbert County, from 1998 through 2014. The lawsuit said that sexual abuse took place at Highland Park
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