I remember reading a news about a child rapist who wanted to become a church member a few years back?

I remember reading a news about a child rapist who wanted to become a church member a few years back This Child rapist found God in prison. Upon release he talked with the pastor of the church about his crimes and pastor believed his confession. Then pastor told about this guy to his congregation and Jesus's message of forgiveness.

However, majority of the folks did not wanted a child rapist in their church despite Jesus message of Love and Forgiveness. So, they told pastor either us or him. I always wondered how that story ended?

Asked by Faceless_Pisces 25 months ago Similar questions: remember reading news child rapist wanted church member years back Society > Religion & Spirituality.

Similar questions: remember reading news child rapist wanted church member years back.

reasonproject.org/newsfeed/item/Church_o... ordains sex offender as ministerPrint with commentsShare:del.icio.Us Favicon Digg Favicon Facebook Favicon Reddit Favicon StumbleUpon Favicon TwitThis Faviconby The Associated PressPosted: September 30, 2009. Published: 30 September 2009. Print: MSNBCLOUISVILLE, Ky.

- A tiny Louisville church’s newest minister is a gifted music leader and popular among its three dozen members. Mark Hourigan is also a sex offender. Almost a decade ago, long before he joined the flock at the City of Refuge Worship Center, he was convicted of sexually abusing an 11-year-old boy in central Kentucky.

Hourigan served a five-year sentence and the 41-year-old was placed on Kentucky’s sex offender registry for the rest of his life. A former leader at the church along with an abuse victims advocacy group say Hourigan is a risk to hurt another child and he should not have been placed in a position of authority. “He’s still a threat” to children, said Cal Pfeiffer, who was abused by a Catholic priest as a young student in Louisville in the late 1950s and early 60s.

Pfeiffer and experts on religion and sexual abuse believe it could be the first time a convicted sex offender has been knowingly ordained as a minister in a Christian church. “It sets a precedent,” said Pfeiffer, a member of a group that has protested Hourigan’s ordination. “It elevates him to an ordained minister which almost automatically conveys a level of trust and responsibility.”The church’s pastor, the Rev. Randy Meadows, ordained Hourigan during a service on Sept.

13. The self-described Pentecostal church, started by Meadows and a handful of other members six years ago, welcomes anyone “regardless of race, religion, culture (or) sexual orientation,” according to its Web site. It also has a Sunday school for children.

Keeping mumMeadows declined several requests from The Associated Press for an interview, but said in a brief phone conversation that the church has not experienced any backlash based on the decision to ordain a convicted pedophile. “We’re just finished with the whole ordeal with everything, so we’re moving on,” Meadows said. There was no phone listing for Hourigan and no one answered the door during a reporter’s two visits to the apartment listed on Hourigan’s sex offender registration.

Church members aren’t talking about it, either. Several calls to members listed on the church’s Web site were not returned; people outside the church declined to comment to reporters during two visits to the church as services were beginning or ending. But a pastor and friend to Meadows who attended Hourigan’s ordination said the church’s board gave Meadows and Hourigan its full support.

“It was a really beautiful ceremony,” said the Rev. Aletha Fields, a high school teacher and gay-rights activist. “The sanctuary was full because there were people from out of town. ”Fields, who sometimes serves as a guest pastor, said she asked Meadows about why he decided to make Hourigan a church leader.

“I asked him flat out about it because I wanted to get behind his thinking,” she said. Meadows believes firmly in the “redemptive power of Jesus Christ,” and told her Hourigan had served his prison term and completed probation. “I believe they followed Biblical principle,” Fields said.

‘An illness that you can’t cure’One of the church’s founders, Kevin Pickerrell, said he left last year over plans to ordain Hourigan. He said Meadows assured church members that Hourigan wouldn’t minister to children, but Pickerrell continued to balk at the idea of ordaining Hourigan. Pickerrell said Meadows believed that Hourigan had been reformed.

“He tried to convince me that Mark had changed,” Pickerrell said of Meadows. Hourigan said in an interview with CNN in September that wants to minister to others like him “who have been rejected. ” Hourigan said he has learned not to put himself in situations where he might be tempted and to seek counsel when he’s having “emotional problems ... so it doesn’t turn into something that it has in the past.”Pickerrell said Hourigan “has an illness that you can’t cure.

”Recidivism rates are high for sex offenders, with more than half reoffending, said Keith F. Durkin, a criminologist at Ohio Northern University who has studied pedophiles. He said that rate increases when the crimes involve prepubescent children, like Hourigan’s victim.

“I cannot possibly see him being reformed,” Durkin said. “(Sexual desire) is the most powerful drive we have as a human and (for a child sexual abuser) it’s kids.”Read further at:http://www.reasonproject.org/newsfeed/item/Church_ordains_sex_offender_as_minister/ Sources: http://www.reasonproject.org/newsfeed/item/Church_ordains_sex_offender_as_minister/ .

Backlash silences child-rapist Roman Polanski's Hollywood defenders Daughter Daena and I made it a point to stop by the Polish Embassy this spring during DC's annual open house of embassies. She's 50% Polish after all.polanski. JpgWhile waiting in line to get scrumptious pierogi, kielbasa, and?

Ywiec beer, we perused a display of renowned Poles. And there he was, Roman Polanski, famous film director. "But he's a child rapist!"

I exclaimed, embarrassing Daena, unaware of his past, to no end. But when a guy a few feet behind us pronounced the same indictment after spotting Polanski's picture, I felt vindicated. But the blind spot re: Polanski's sordid past was evident.

Youngsters in the crowd can read the New York Times PG13-to-R-rated backstory on page 2, including grand jury testimony from the 13yo Polanski raped and sodomized. That was in 1977. When Polanski realized he might end up in prison, he fled the country and has for 32 years not restepped foot back on US soil.

However, last week when the now 76yo ventured to Switzerland to receive a film festival award, he was nabbed....free polanski. JpgThat's where Hollywood comes in. Since then several of its liberal luminaries have signed a "Free Polanski" petition, and some have just offered support.

These include kindred spirit Woody Allen (having slept with his wife's 21yo adopted daughter before divorcing the former and marrying the latter), Jonatham Demme, Whoopi Goldberg ("It was something else, but I don't believe it was rape-rape. "), John Landis, Mike Nichols, Salman Rushdie, Martin Scorcese, Tilda Swinton, Diane von Furstenberg, and Debra Winger (pictured below right at a Zurich press conference stating, "The arrest is based on an... old case that is all but dead but for minor technicalities. ") Sources: http://www.jillstanek.com/archives/2009/10/child-raping_an.html .

1 Don't know, never heard the story, I'd like to know too. Just because one believes in God, doesn't make them perfect, I don't think child rapist's can be reformed. Just because you forgive someone, doesn't mean you have to be around them.

Don't know, never heard the story, I'd like to know too. Just because one believes in God, doesn't make them perfect, I don't think child rapist's can be reformed. Just because you forgive someone, doesn't mean you have to be around them.

2 The so-called "Christians" in that church weren't practicing Christianity. This user has been banned from Askville.

2 The so-called "Christians" in that church weren't practicing Christianity.

The so-called "Christians" in that church weren't practicing Christianity.

3 Reserve unto God what is God's and unto Caesar what is Caesar's. In other words, it's up to God to forgive child rapists, we don't have to. I also have to wonder about a belief system where repentant child rapists are going to enjoy eternal reward, while virtuous Buddhists are going to suffer eternal torture.

This user has been banned from Askville.

3 Reserve unto God what is God's and unto Caesar what is Caesar's. In other words, it's up to God to forgive child rapists, we don't have to. I also have to wonder about a belief system where repentant child rapists are going to enjoy eternal reward, while virtuous Buddhists are going to suffer eternal torture.

Reserve unto God what is God's and unto Caesar what is Caesar's. In other words, it's up to God to forgive child rapists, we don't have to. I also have to wonder about a belief system where repentant child rapists are going to enjoy eternal reward, while virtuous Buddhists are going to suffer eternal torture.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.