Sexual Abuse at Bellevue: No Consequences"

by Christa Brown and David Clohessy | Aug 6, 2020 | Opinion

Good Faith Media

“Does it get any sicker than this?

At a flagship megachurch of the Southern Baptist Convention, church staffer James A. Hook sexually abused a 15-year-old church girl.

Hook sent the girl sexually explicit photos of her own mother – photos he had taken when he had an affair with the mother seven years earlier.

That’s just one of the details set forth in the complaint of a recently filed civil lawsuit in Memphis, Tennessee.

In a separate criminal case, Hook pled guilty to sexual battery by an authority figure. Police had found Hook together with the girl in a car.

The girl’s mother, identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, had first begun attending the church after the affair with Hook ended and after Hook himself suggested that Doe and her husband get counseling from one of the church’s staff pastors, Eric Brand.

As alleged in the lawsuit, Pastor Brand shared sexually explicit photos of his own wife during the counseling sessions and he encouraged Jane Doe to do what his wife did so that Doe would keep her husband interested.

When Doe’s husband asked Brand to stop sharing the sexually explicit photos, Brand explained the photos were “for ministry.””

Read the full piece at Good Faith Media: