MEMPHIS (TN)
The Huffington Post
January 7, 2018
By Dominique Mosbergen
Andy Savage acknowledged the 1998 encounter and said he remains “very remorseful” for “the pain I caused.”
Responding to a recent report that one of their pastors had allegedly sexually assaulted a 17-year-old girl while serving as a youth minister at his previous church, leaders of a megachurch in Memphis, Tennessee, said they’d long known about the incident.
“This information is not new to me or to our leadership,” Chris Conlee, the lead pastor of Highpoint Church, said in a statement Friday. Earlier that day, The Wartburg Watch, a Christian blog, had published the account of a woman who’d accused Andy Savage, teaching pastor at Highpoint, of sexually abusing her in the late 1990s when she was a teenager.
“On behalf of the elders, pastors, staff, and Trustees of Highpoint, I want to affirm that we are 100% committed to Andy [Savage] … and his continued ministry at Highpoint Church,” Conlee said, stressing his “total confidence in the redemptive process Andy went through” after the sexual encounter.
Savage, an author and podcast host, acknowledged the “sexual incident” in a statement of his own.
“I was and remain very remorseful for the incident and deeply regret the pain I caused her and her family, as well as the pain I caused the church and God’s Kingdom,” he said.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.