ALABAMA
Associated Baptist Press
By Bob Allen
A victim of a former children’s minister sentenced to 30 years in prison has sued both his perpetrator and the church that hired him.
The victim, identified by initials J.G., filed a lawsuit July 22 in U.S. District Court alleging injury by Jeffery Dale Eddie, longtime associate pastor for children and church administration at Highland Park Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, Ala.
The civil suit claims Eddie, who pleaded guilty to numerous sex crimes in March, molested the man now living in Louisiana over the course of 12 years beginning when he was 11.
The lawsuit accuses Highland Park Baptist Church, a congregation associated with the Colbert-Lauderdale Baptist Association, the Alabama State Board of Missions and the Southern Baptist Convention, of failure to properly supervise Eddie, an employee from 1998 until he was caught storing child pornography on his church computer in 2014.
The lawsuit claims church leaders waited 10 days before reporting the incident to police, after an internal investigation, violating a state law that requires clergy to report suspected abuse immediately.
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