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952: William C. Robinson

Child Indecency, Child Molestation, Child Rape

William C. Robinson was a pastor working for Chi Alpha Campus Ministries in Corpus Christi. A young girl reported that he had continuously sexually abused her for five years, beginning when she was nine. The police said he wanted to confess to inappropriate touching. He is out on bond and has a hearing in June, 2023.

951: Robert Shiflet

Child Molestation, Child Rape, Trafficking

Robert Shiflet was a youth pastor in Denton, Texas, and in Little Rock, Arkansas. He took groups of kids on camping trips, crossing state lines. While camping, he isolated one of the children and sexually assaulted here. Another was assaulted on the field trip bus.

950: Conner ‘Jesse’ Penny

Child Indecency, Child Molestation, Child Rape

Conner ‘Jesse’ Penny was the youth pastor at Inspiration Church in Mesquite, Texas. Before that he worked as an aide in after-school program run by the Mesquite school district and as an aide at an elementary school. He has been accused by four children of continuous sexual abuse. They range in age from six to seventeen, though the abuse was when she was younger.

949: Gary Don Welch

Child Molestation, Child Rape

Gary Don Welch was a Baptist youth pastor at Northside Baptist Church in Corsicana, Texas. In 2012, he was arrested when a sixteen-year-old girl reported that he sexually assaulted her. She had confided in her aunt that Welch had been assaulting her since she was thirteen. He stepfather said he had been suspicious because Welch texted her all the time and even went to school to eat lunch with her. He told the pastor of his suspicions but was assured that it was only that Welch was kind and loving. He pulled the family out of the church/

948: Curtis Jene Smith

Child Molestation

Curtis Jene Smith was the choir director and lead youth Bible study at Waco Baptist Church in 2005, when he molested as twelve-year-old boy. The church put him in this position even though he had a 1991 conviction for molesting two children and another conviction in 2002 for failing to register as a sex offender. As a sex offender, he was prohibited from taking a job around children, but he lied to authorities and told him he worked as a night auditor at a hotel .

947: Benjamin Nelson

Child Molestation, Child Rape, Sexual Assault

Benjamin Nelson was the pastor of a small Baptist Church in Peoria, in Hill County, Texas. He was also a student at Baylor University, a private Baptist university. He used social media to draw a thirteen-year-old girl to meet him in a parking lot where he sexually abused her. Her mother found them and pulled the girl out of the car when Nelson reversed either accidentally or purposefully trying to hit them. For that he was charged with deadly conduct.

945: Sergio David Bezerra

Child Molestation

Sergio David Bezerra was a piano teacher at Waco Baptist Academy in Texas. In 2014, he was charged with sexually abusing two nine-year-old students going back to 2007. Four young women testified that he molested them when they were students. Another reported that he made inappropriate sexual advances toward. Then another two students reported that he molested them.

944: Brian Pounds

Child Molestation, Child Rape, Grooming, Menacing

Brian Pounds was a minister at First Assembly of God in Vernon, Texas. He was arrested in 2021 after the mother of a fifteen-year-old girl took her to the police where she reported that Pounds had been providing her with meth and sexually abusing her, including choking her one time.