TEXAS
Dallas Observer
BY AMY MARTYN
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2015
The Baptist pastor with bright blonde hair was popular among preteen boys in the small town of Commerce, a former resident remembers. Pastor Billy Bob Burge worked in Commerce around 12 years ago, says the man, who asked not to be named. His son’s friends who were involved in the church youth group used to talk about going over to Burge’s house to play video games or have sleepovers. Though Burge had a wife, the arrangement still sounded suspicious to him. “I knew there is a basic rule that you don’t get one-on-one [time] with children,” the man says. At events held at the church, the man recalls seeing Burge in person occasionally. The pastor wore baggy pants and sounded like a teenager when he talked. The man says he confided in one close friend about his concerns and then tried to warn the father of one of the boys who spent time with Burge. The boy’s father was dismissive, “and that was the last I ever said to anybody.” He says he felt in his gut something was off. “In a small town like that, even if you think it, you can’t say it … all you’re doing is making yourself look like a dick accusing someone of that kind of stuff.”
Burge fell off the man’s radar as his son and his friends grew older and graduated from high school. At some point, Burge left town. Last week, the family of another one of Burge’s former young charges, in another town, filed a lawsuit against Burge in Dallas County. At the time the lawsuit was filed, Burge was employed as the “connect pastor” at the Grace Community Church in Greenville.
The lawsuit accuses Burge of sexually abusing a boy in the 1990s. At that time, the suit says, Burge was a youth pastor at the First Baptist Rockwall Church, which is also named as a defendant in the suit:
“In the early to mid-1990s, Billy Bob Burge a Youth Pastor at First Baptist Church of Rockwall engaged in repeated sexual conduct with John Jeremy Sweet-Gomez, a minor. This sexual conduct began when Mr. Sweet-Gomez was approximately twelve to thirteen years old. Pastor Burge’s sexual abuse of Mr. Sweet-Gomez included sodomy, oral sex, and inappropriate sexual touching. These abuses occurred at various locations and times: including on church property and during church-sponsored religious trips.”
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