Joe.My.God. LGBT News
The Texas Tribune reports:
The Southern Baptist Convention and others have reached a confidential settlement in a high-profile lawsuit that accused a former leader of sexual assault, ending a six-year legal drama that expanded victims’ rights in Texas, helped prompt a broader reckoning over child sexual abuse in evangelical churches and showed that a prominent conservative activist and Texas House candidate repeatedly downplayed abuse allegations.
In 2017, Duane Rollins filed the lawsuit accusing Paul Pressler, a longtime Southern Baptist figure and former Texas judge, of decades of rape beginning when Rollins was a 14-year-old member of Pressler’s church youth group.
After disclosing the alleged rapes to a prison psychiatrist, Rollins filed the suit in Harris County against Pressler along with other defendants who he accused of enabling or concealing Pressler’s behavior — including the Southern Baptist Convention and Jared Woodfill, the former chair of the Harris County GOP and Pressler’s longtime law partner who is currently running for the Texas House.
Read the full article. There’s much more. Seven other men have accused Pressler of molesting them as teenagers. As I reported back in October, House Speaker Mike Johnson was once hired to head a law school that was to be named for Pressler. In March 2023, the above-cited notorious anti-LGBTQ activist Jared Woodfill testified that he knew about the allegations against Pressler and said nothing.
New: The Southern Baptist Convention and others have reached a confidential settlement in a high-profile lawsuit that accused a former leader of sexual assault, ending a six-year legal drama that expanded victims’ rights in Texas. https://t.co/DmMS756U6a
— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) December 29, 2023
“In 2015, Jared Woodfill & GOP power broker Steven Hotze led a campaign that said the LGBTQ Equal Rights measure would allow children to be sexually groomed/abused in bathrooms & compared Gay Rights movement to Nazis.” #RepublicansLie #Groomers #Projectinghttps://t.co/lLfLTN0K7T
— 💙🇺🇸 Believe in God/Family/Country/Constitution (@AlexGuzman_9) March 27, 2023
Johnson Once Led Christian Law School Named For Baptist Leader Now Accused Of Molesting Teen Boys https://t.co/o6kDSX971G pic.twitter.com/o4H5wdkqDF
— JoeMyGod (@JoeMyGod) October 26, 2023
In sworn testimony last month, former Harris County GOP chair Jared Woodfill said he knew since 2004 about allegations that Southern Baptist leader Paul Pressler had sexually abused a child. https://t.co/g5deKxzopd
— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) March 30, 2023
Woodfill’s deposition also provides new details on his decades-long relationship with Pressler, a massively important Texas political powerbroker, longtime Southern Baptist leader, one-time White House nominee and high-ranking member of the anti-LGBTQ Council for National Policy. pic.twitter.com/5N7qIo94yD
— Robert Downen (@RobertDownen_) March 27, 2023
Here is what First Baptist leaders wrote to Pressler about the incident, which they deemed “morally and spiritually inappropriate.”
“This kind of behavior, if brought to light, might distort your testimony or cause others to stumble,” they wrote. #SBCtoo #ChurchToo pic.twitter.com/CgcSKz0gg0
— Robert Downen (@RobertDownen_) March 27, 2023