Louisiana Voice

What’s it going to take to bring the child-abusing sexual predators under control?

I don’t mean men who are simply skirt-chasers, despicable as they may well be, I mean those who prey upon children for relief of their sexual urges—particularly those who call themselves men of God and hide behind a Bible and a pulpit even as they extol the virtues of abstinence.

These monsters—and between Catholic priests, Protestant ministers and youth leaders—literally number in the thousands just in this country and little is being done to stem the activity due largely to the separation of church and state doctrine that has been used as a legal shield against prosecution too many times to recount. That’s what protected people like Lester Roloff and Mack Ford, Bible-thumping preachers who abused girls in their private, church-run homes for so-called delinquent girls. Ford, you may recall from previous posts here, ran New Bethany Home for Girls in Arcadia in Bienville Parish for years.

That particular case has arisen again with the arrest of the husband of the assistant district attorney who supposedly “investigated” New Bethany several years ago. She is now running for district attorney but her campaign has been rocked with the arrest of her Christian school principal husband for sexual offenses against juveniles. It turned out that her family (the Gantts, who own and operate the Mt. Olive Christian School, employed some of Mack Ford’s family at the time Assistant DA Tammy Gantt Jump was conducting her investigation which ultimately failed to produce any indictments.

Apparently recent news of the arrest of Nathan Jump has produced some pushback and even veiled legal threats from the Gantts which, in turned, resulted in this Facebook post by a woman whose sister she alleges was targeted by Nathan Jump:

But the abuse of underage victims is not limited to New Bethany or Mt. Olive Christian School by any means.

A story in Newsweek noted that more than 600 children over a 60-year period were sexually abused by ARCHDIOCESE OF BALTIMORE clergy who told their victims the abuse was “God’s will.” The story was much the same in Louisiana—in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Lake Charles—and elsewhere.

But it wasn’t limited to the Catholic faith. The Bradenton (Florida) Herald notes that more than 50 SOUTHERN BAPTIST PASTORS in that state are on the church’s list of alleged sexual abusers. In Texas, the number was around 380 CLERGY AND LAY LEADERS who accounted for more than 700 victims.

Robert Morris, founder and senior pastor of Gateway megachurch church in Southlake Texas, resigned in 2024 after admitting to a past “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady.”

The “young lady,” it turned out, was 12 at the time. He ended up pleading guilty to five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child and in October 2025 and was sentenced to 10-years in prison, incredibly with all but six months suspended. He was required to register as a sex offender.

Even more incredible, he filed suit against Gateway Church for more than $16 million he said he was owed in retirement benefits. He eventually settled for $800,000 per year until he turns 70 and $600,000 per year after that for the rest of his and his wife’s lives.

Let that sink in. Eight hundred thousand dollars per year for the next six years and $600,000 per year thereafter for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl.

But the biggest mystery of all is PAUL PRESSLER, former justice of the peace, Texas legislator, judge, advisor to Donald Trump and moving force behind the Southern Baptist Convention, the second-largest religious denomination in the nation.

Pressler, who died in 2024, once decided the Southern Baptist Convention was infiltrated by too many liberals and he set about cleansing the organization of what he considered an unholy influence in the church only to eventually be accused of sexual harassment of a male assistant with whom he ultimately settled.

Even more radical in its belief, a belief that Southern Baptists were too liberal, is the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church, more or leas headquartered in Hammond, Indiana. That church preaches complete obedience to men by women and when an IFB preacher gets caught with his pants down with an underage girl or another man’s wife, it is the female who must stand before the congregation and beg to be forgiven for tempting the poor minister.

And now, coming full circle to the epicenter of abuse by Catholic priests in Louisiana, we have a protestant minister in the adjacent parish to Orleans, Jefferson, who has been convicted—for the third time—of molesting teen boys.

TERRY REED, 66, who cited biblical verses and scripture in order to manipulate and justify his sexual behavior with two minor boys, has been called by prosecutors as “the worst kind of predator.”

After his latest arrest, a jury deliberated less than an hour on May 6 before finding him guilty. Nineteen years ago, he pleaded guilty to indecent behavior with a juvenile in a separate case and he pleaded guilty again in 2017 to molestation of a juvenile after telling the victim that he had to submit to certain acts in order to “fight off demons.”

He received probation both the earlier cases and was ministering from his home in Terrytown when arrested in the most recent case.

It is long past time that we scrap the separation of church and state doctrine—after all, it’s what the evangelicals want when it’s to their benefit, like public aid to their private schools—and begin a serious crackdown on clergy sex abuse of children.

Perhaps chemical castration might be a good start.