ALABAMA
AL.com
By Kelly Kazek | kkazek@al.com
on February 06, 2014
CHICAGO – The director of a nationwide support group for victims of sex abuse by religious leaders said he hopes the whistleblower in the case of a Muscle Shoals pastor will encourage others to come forward.
David Clohessy, director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, issued a statement this morning after reading about the arrest of Jeffrey Dale Eddie, 41, a children’s minister at Highland Park Baptist, on two counts of child pornography, 31 counts of second-degree sodomy, and three counts of sexual abuse of a child under the age of 12. He is being held in Colbert County Jail on $1 million bond.
It’s the second such case at a Colbert County church within a month. In January, Oliver Brazelle, 79, the former music director at the First United Methodist Church in Sheffield, was charged by Lauderdale County authorities with second-degree sexual abuse and one-count of second-degree sodomy.
In the case of Jeff Eddie, known to congregants as “Brother Jeff,” police received a tip from a church staff member, an act Clohessy praised.
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