Imagine being sexually assaulted as a teenager multiple times by a pastor and then watch him admit it and be forgiven because he’s a pastor.

I'm a Christian and this pisses me off. I was raised Baptist too. This is unacceptable

Imagine going to church one day and finding out that the Paster of your church is a predator...😅

This pastor needs to be held accountable for bis crimes

Pastors and other religious teachers tend to have the most to hide. They are worshipped a lot more than who they teach their followers to worship. I don’t trust them at all. The woman is very brave for speaking out against her abuser.

As a Christian it's sad to see that most of American churches have gone corrupt.

As a Christian, I believe that the Bible does teach to forgive others. However, I also believe that you need to show that you've changed from your ways in order to be forgiven, or at least made a good attempt to. This is disgusting, and I just hope that people realize that the horrors of the 10% do not describe the 90%.

I agree with you, 100% Optimus. There is NO punishment that is too severe for him.

As a Christian, I’d like to explain the biblical concept of forgiveness. As Christians, we are called to forgive everything. Including this. Jesus made that abundantly clear. However, forgiveness does not mean you are free from consequences. From a biblical perspective, that “pastor” should be forgiven. However, he should also face punishment for his crimes. God is a God of mercy but he is also a God of justice.

Pastor: "I've commit adultery." Everyone: "Woo!" Pastor: "With a 16 year old" Everyone: "That's illegal!" Pastor: "I'm sorry." Everyone: "Woo!

Man I feel terrible for the girl that was assaulted. Be praying for her

As a Christian, it's saddening to see the Christian name be destroyed because of people like this. Edit: thx for 1k likes

"She wasn't 14 she was 16" this is the equivalent of saying I didn't shoot him 11 times I shot him 10 times

Forgiving isn't bad, however you must take accountability, and punishment for them too. This Pastor should 100% go to jail, or whatever the punishment he gets will be, and then he can be forgiven. This isn't even taking into account the actual victim of the situation either, and that greatly saddens me.

coming from a baptist, adultery alone is enough to not only lose a position as pastor, but also get expelled from the church in particular. now the fact it was with a 16 year-old makes it all the bit worse. its a shame that this happened especially in a baptist church. we are better than this.

I’m personally not religious but that also means every word he spoke as a pastor was a lie coming from his mouth. There’s no way he truly believed in his religion when what he did goes against everything it stands for . Disgusting

As a Catholic, this pretty embracing to see. Sometimes religion can be excuse to practice disgusting acts smh

Predators don’t need to be forgiven they need to be erased from the face of the earth

I hate Pastors who make my religion look bad

He's not a Christian priest whatsoever to be doing this, I hope he changes his ways or has changed

people act like this is a one off thing unfortunately

I'm a Christian, an actual Christian that goes to church every Sunday and prays, not when it's convenient or to look good. And I'm disgusted. This is beyond hypocritical, I'd walk out immediately and call the cops. I don't care what those sheep, that's unforgivable for any member of the church

This looks like a mega-church esque environment. Those are almost always, in my personal opinion, terrible places to be.

As a pastor I want to apologize for anyone who has been hurt by someone claiming to be a teacher of Jesus.

I feel bad for anybody that have to go through such a thing, my heart go out to the victims

Genius move calling her 14, making him have to vocally admit 16. Before that moment he avoided saying the actual age even when confronted by the victim.

Everyone deserves a chance at redemption. Some just need that chance from behind iron bars or in padded rooms. I understand why the crowd gave a standing ovation: In their minds, their pastor was coming clean about something that is not normally spoken about in church. Then God decided to knock the pastor down a peg or ten. Children of God have *NO* excuse at all for stuff like this. As a child of God, this story deeply saddens me. I truly hope everyone involved gets the help they need.

As a Christian this is very sad and extremely hypocritical.. truly disappointing. People like this give religion a bad name and unfortunately, this happens to much and I’m not saying I’m perfect either, I’m far from that but none the less this incident is truly disappointing and shocking 😕

This really does happen in church where something terrible happens people turn the other cheeks or forgiveness them. My father family is like that unfortunately it’s sickening.

Being Christian doesn’t mean much to me these days with all the scummy things going on behind the scenes in and out of churches. Sometimes I feel better off staying at home, praying, and reading the Bible on my free time.

This man literally admitted to SA against a 16 year old girl and people in the church are group hugging him, absolutely disgusting.

I genuinely believe in my beliefs despite my disagreements on some of the beliefs that are in my belief however, the scariest thing about my belief in all honesty is how much people blindly follow without integrating any sort of common sense into our beliefs, this disgusting and should not be tolerated

As a Christian this is absolutely disgusting and he should be in jail

Whilst I'm not a Christian (I do believe in God tho) this just makes me feel bad for genuine Christians. Modern day Christians get so much hate because of the few bad actors. Most of these bad actors unfortunately end up also being the powerful talking heads and figures of the religion, so whatever they say/do most people from other religions/atheists will go on to make fun of the entire religion and community as well. From what I remember when I used to go to Church, everyone deserves forgiveness but that doesn't mean they can get away from the consequences. This pastor deserves to be behind bars.

All I can say as a Christian is that I hope he asks for forgiveness from God because what awaits him if he doesn’t is unimaginable.

Didn't realize EDP became a pastor

I have a friend who got assaulted. This absolutely disgusts me to my core. There are surely worse things that can happen in this cold world but being assaulted in such a way is defiling. Dehumanizing. It’s one thing to be physically assaulted with the intent to hurt you. It’s another with the intent to take advantage of you as a child. This is just my own opinion, and I have no problem with religion as a whole, mind you, but I became an atheist for reasons such as this. Unfortunately, religion, something that is supposed to bring people together and keep faith and order in the world, enables some people to commit horrific crimes and disguise to with excuses to cover it up and use the right to forgiveness to make it seem okay. I despise people like that. I’m glad that the people of the church, at the very least, saw how horrible this man was for committing such a crime with a child, even though he was forgiven for adultery as is. This truly, truly, sickens me. I hope all people who make this same mistake receive their karma.

I feel like it is always the "good" public figures who are the worst people behind closed doors

This is exactly like a Persona 5 villain confessing their crimes after you change their heart.

Being Christian means little, so does being a member of any religion. What distinguishes you is your morality and your actions. It actually disgusts me to see how some places of worship have been warped and corrupted in some places.

“Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”-Matthew 7:14. I’m a devout Christian, and we should have no fellowship with people like this.

Thank you for saying 16 year old child. I find a lot of media does this thing where little girls as young as 13 are called 13-year-old women which hearing the word women makes it seem like that underage little girl should’ve known better when in fact she’s a child and was probably groomed. And it makes people a lot less sympathetic and easier to victim blame because everybody’s referring these little girls that are under age as women. Women are adults, And hearing it over kid or girls seem like they should have a perceived maturity that makes it their fault. The English language most languages in fact have Words to distinguish between an adult and underage female. So many KZfaqrs also Do it because they’re citing sources and directly quoting. But it makes my skin crawl hearing people call little girls women.

Times like these makes me question if god is real or just an excuse for people to feel better about themselves, this isn't the first time this happened where a pastor abused his position and assaulted a underage girl, it hurts to know the people that SHOULD be guiding others to a path of hope are the same that commit these horrible crimes. To me i always saw confession as " get out of jail card " that anyone can use to comfort themselves to thinking they're still a good person that deserves to go to heaven. Yeah im a Christian, I've been baptized, finished all the my church classes but i frequently question the truth about god and how people use his name for thier own benefits.

He sounds like those rappers that snitch on themselves. I'm so sorry for that girl and her family. Hope she'll recover

This makes me worry for the future of religion, especially Christianity. As more and more Christians are exposed for corruption or just plain evil, I become more and more worried that Christianity will be targeted with more hate than normal. I’m a normal Christian. I go to church nearly ever Sunday (I got Covid, so not this week). I donate to my Church’s Ukraine charity fund, and my grandfather is the pastor so I know the money is actually going to Ukraine. I read the Bible daily. My greatest friends aren’t Christian, and that’s ok. I couldn’t ask for better friends, tbh. I live a mundane, normal yet Christian life. I hope I don’t lose it because the bad apples spoil the whole basket.

"No she wasn't 14, she was 16" Phew...good save dude..might have caused a little bit on controversy.

So funny story, something like this just happened at my old church back in April, our pastor pretended he was going to retired because he committed adultery (funnily enough 20 years ago), and so they brought in our state bishop to relieve him of his duties. Everyone in our church was forgiving and accepting of him, and his wife had forgiven him ages ago. We even had a petition to bring him back as our pastor. We all found out 2 weeks later in May, that his mistress was a 17 year old girl. My fellow church members forgave him, and it’s a reason why I no longer support or believe in the church.

The old saying "Do what the pastor preaches, don't do what the pastor does" has never been proven right to this extent

As a Christian, I remember I was taught that we shouldn’t act liked were special just because we have the title of pastor, or youth minister.

In defence of the people who cheered at first he said he cheated over 20 years ago not who he cheated with or how old they were. Although i find that guys actions disgusting and he needs to be in jail.

Yet another reason being a Christian is difficult. We get these horrendous excuses of human beings as the face of what we stand for and believe. It's messed up man

Let me tell you man...if this was my church this guy would've been stripped of his title and nearly exiled from the community (there's always room for forgiveness like you said). BUT, we would've never clapped for a sin like this insanity.

He's just one of many, and the tip of the ice berg. There are many other christian churches that abuse kids and send them off to concentration camps to be physically and psychologically tortured just for not wanting to be religious or christian enough. I was saved from going to one of those camps, and am a friend of a survivor who has been to one of them and endured the torture.

what a shock, a catholic pastor assulted a 16 year old.

I cant believe that after all of that some people decided fo hug the PASTOR instead of the actual victim next to him. This man took advantage of thier goodwill, trust and authority for his own gains

If I would've been at that church hearing the pastor admitting he had been cheating on his wife for literally 20 years, and see everyone clapping to his confession, I would've got up, left, and never looked back.

As someone whose (former) church is currently undergoing money fraud investigations, along with some other stuff coming out that I never would've suspected from that pastor, it's really sad to see an uptick in "spiritual leaders" turning out to be garbage humans. (Note, I stopped going to that church years before the scandal even came out. Something seemed off the minute the pastor claimed he saw Jesus and started doing less sermons.)

To put it bluntly YES he needs to be in jail and not clapped for and hugged

>I did very bad things, so I'm admitting to it & going away. >No, it's wrong to admit and willingly take social & judicial reaction. Keep it secret forever. What Highkey though, sounds like he's getting the exact opportunity he was preaching- the whole stretch, no skimping out hopefully.

Optimus, my take is that forgiveness means to suffer the consequences but to let it go. Forgive but never forget as I see it.

It breaks my heart that the real victim here is continuing to be victimized while this entire assembly embraces her predator. He is being hailed as a hero, applauded and praised. The victim received scorn… unbelievable

The fact that there are people who believe that this dude should be forgiven after what he did just pisses me off.

This is absolutely sickening, this guy deserves to rot in jail for all of eternity. My prayers go out to the victim as she heals from such traumatic experiences the so-called Pastor put her through

It’s always the “good” people that are the worst people behind closed doors

“For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing concealed that will not be brought to light.” ‭‭Mark‬ ‭4:22‬ As a Christian, it’s heartbreaking to see so many people within the church being affected by such disgusting behavior and actions. Please be in prayer for the victims and their families. May God forgive us🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

UMM was there a group hug for the actual victim?

The fact that the congregation is ready to throw a hootenanny because the pastor decided to come clean is just wild. That woman is probably feeling a bitter sting.

The first standing ovation was for being honest and doing the right thing- willingly stepping down. As for the jail time, I don't know what state this is, but many states have 16 as the age of consent, and 20 years is probably beyond the statute of limitations, so he probably won't see a cell.

Oh boy I'm not feeling very religious right now

Well the Bible does says that a lot of false prophets will rise. He’s one of them.

I went to this church years ago this guy was around he always gave me a weird vibe and me and my mom didn't feel a good feeling from him

10:48 shout out to the people who stayed seated

Hun correcting the age from 14 to 16 doesn’t make it “ok”, but it does make a difference “legally”, depending on the state her being 16 makes her of legal age, DOES NOT MAKE IT ANY BETTER, but it does make a slight difference legally, it’s still repulsive

Even in attempting to confess he tried to maintain a lie. Doesn't strike me as the the type who is sorry for his actions. We can pray for him and God may forgive him, but as long as he is on this earth he should spend that time in a cell evidently of his remorseless behavior.

This guy was absolutely terrible, and around the same time this pastor in Kentucky USA went on and said “that if you are democrat you are not a Christian” and then called one of the families there witches and said get out with there dog and if they came back next Sunday he would get brooms and beat them out so they would never come back it’s absolutely terrifying how people that are supposed to be a good example are being some of the worst but as they say power corrupts.

Bro if my pastor came out and said this you best believe I’m going up there and giving him a good Will Smith. I’ve been blessed with a pretty good church, but it’s so sad to see the corruption in a lot of modern churches.

Sad that people can be not as they seem even in the eyes of god

This is why I don't go to church anymore!!😑 Truly awful

I see a lot of discussion on forgiveness. I'm not religious and don't know what is taught about forgiveness in Christianity. I still want to speak about what I learned growing up; If somebody apologizes, they are not owed forgiveness. I feel that is completely selfish, to *expect* a person to forgive your actions even if the regret does exist. The offender should be willing the carry that weight without scrambling for relief. Also, to seek forgiveness from outside the discretion of the party involved shows no remorse. This is a very harsh take and I believe things are better when people can forgive eachother... But all wrongs are not made equal.

Sadly he will reserve zero punishment.

Really sucks what woman go through every day

I'm a Christian, and while we should forgive, you should not blindly forgive. I have known Pastors who have been in jail for crimes, usually involving money, and have been invited back into the church to preach after turning their lives around. But I think this is inexcusable. He didn't just cheat on his wife, but abusing a child isn't something to be applauded. He shouldn't be banned from church, IMO, but he should 100% be in jail for what he did. You can't show no remorse and beg for forgiveness and not be held accountable for your actions.

on the debate about "forgiveness" im seeing around here: whether to forgive that guy is the victim's decision *and ONLY the victim's decision*. Anyone who attempts to excuse the pastors actions and shame the victim using this as a reason is complicit and endorses it. The victim should be helped to move on and live her life without relieving that trauma, and as long as she doesn't tear herself or others apart, she can have whatever opinion she wants about the abuser.

Well said @Optimus, a church following can be discouraged by a sinful pastor very easily because they will think, "Well if even HE can't be sinless, then how can i?", and in thinking this they may turn away from Christ entirely due to this. By this man being a pastor in the first place without having repented before, he could in turn be inheriting someone else's hellfire by leading his congregation astray. If someone is to lead a congregation it is important they do not sin. You cannot fight the evil one with evil acts.

This preacher is a gods forsaken hypocrite.😤

Even as a Christian, this is why I don’t go to Church anymore.

The reason he was so insistent on "she was 16, not 14!" was because Indiana is one of those US states where the age of consent is 16. Though usually that does not count for those who have been given power and authority over the 16-17-year-old minor, like a teacher of their school. Or, you know... a pastor of the minor's church.

Nah I'm filming that sh*t and calling 911 asap

Just for your information, Optimus, that wasn’t actually a group hug (that’s okay that you didn’t know that! I’m assuming you may not have been raised in church, so don’t sweat that!). They were actually surrounding him to pray for him (and I assume the girl who was assaulted too?) and pray that he would repent and turn from his evil ways. That’s what I’m assuming. I wouldn’t necessarily take it as them having sympathy towards him, but maybe rather that God would deal with him.

Can’t believe this is surprising to people that this pastor did this. It’s been a thing forever he’s definitely not the only one

And that’s why I don’t wanna go to church school

I am so thankful that someone had a camera in that Church.

Creepy pastor: "God will forgive me" Me: * Loads 1911 * "Ight bet, let me send you to him"

What will never stop being shocking to me is in the morning you are having a service, preaching God’s word, in the ‘afternoon’ you are doing such a thing. I understand everyone in life is being tempted with bad but you my guy chose to be priest. You chose to live differently than everyone else, to be an example and ‘hope’ that certain way if life can be lived.

This pastor is quite literally the embodiment of the "SHE SAID SHE WAS TWELVE!" meme.

I deadass wanted to hit the griddy on stage.

(Grabs popcorn) This is going to be a wild ride.

Catholic churches be like:

Anyone that clapped for him needs to be put down

As a Christian myself they tell you to turn the other cheek and forgive one another but I don’t think you can be forgiven for this. In the LDS religion you’d be excommunicated and turned away from the church.