Man files suit against former mid-state youth minister for alleged sex abuse
BY AMY LEIGH WOMACK
A man who attended Macon’s Mulberry United Methodist Church in the 1980s has filed a lawsuit against a former youth minister there, alleging that he was molested as a child.
The lawsuit, which names Perry Sandifer as the sole defendant, alleges that the man was 12 or 13 when Sandifer groped him and engaged in other “unwanted and non-consensual sexual contact.”
Darl Champion, the plaintiff’s lawyer, said his now 46-year-old client suppressed many of his memories from the alleged molestation, but they later resurfaced after he’d become an adult.
“It’s about accountability,” Champion said when asked why his client filed the suit.
Also, the plaintiff has reason to believe there may be other molestation victims and he wants others to know it’s OK to come forward, Champion said.
Until recently, the man’s claims would have been barred by a statute of limitations. Georgia law pertaining to childhood sex abuse now extends the deadline to file a lawsuit until July 1, he said.
The lawsuit alleges the abuse happened in multiple locations between 1982 and 1984, including Sandifer’s home, in Atlanta during a youth service project trip and during a youth service trip to Appalachia.
When confronted by an official from The United Methodist Church’s South Georgia Conference in December 2015, Sandifer “immediately admitted his wrongdoing,” according to a letter addressed to the plaintiff and signed by the church official in early 2016.
Sandifer told the church he entered a year-long treatment program in Atlanta 20 years ago and that he would immediately “remove himself from any continued exposure to children and youth through his mission interests and involvement,” according to the letter.
Contacted by The Telegraph Thursday, Sandifer, who now lives in Illinois, said he wasn’t aware of the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.
Sandifer declined further comment, citing the pending litigation.
The Rev. Rick Lanford, a district superintendent with the church’s South Georgia Conference, issued a statement Thursday saying Sandifer has surrendered his credentials and is no longer a minister or affiliated with the United Methodist Church.
Mulberry United Methodist Church’s senior pastor, the Rev. Jimmy Towson, also issued a statement and said Sandifer has not been a minister at Mulberry since 1984.
“Mulberry Street UMC is committed to providing a safe, christian environment for the nurture and care of children and youth,” Towson said. “We have stringent policies in place to ensure the safety of the children and youth that God has entrusted to us. Our prayers go out to everyone involved in this painful and difficult situation.”
After leaving Macon, Sandifer worked as an associate pastor at Wilmington Island United Methodist Church and Guyton United Methodist Church, according to the South Georgia Conference.
Lanford said Sandifer left the conference and the state in 1993 and has not been involved in area ministries since then.
The ministers said Mulberry and the South Georgia Conference “support the process of seeking the truth” about the allegations and “will continue to cooperate in every way.”
The plaintiff is seeking more than $75,000 in compensation for psychological treatment, therapy and counseling he’s needed for treatment of mental and emotional injuries, according to the suit.
He contends that he has suffered embarrassment, loss of self-esteem, humiliation and psychological injuries.
Dennis Hastert seeks repayment of $1.7 million in hush-money from sex abuse accuser
Christy Gutowski, Chicago Tribune
Imprisoned former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert has asked a Kendall County judge to not only reject a sexual abuse victim's breach-of-contract lawsuit, but also to make the man pay back the $1.7 million in secret hush-money payments.
In response to the lawsuit and in his counterclaim, made public Thursday and signed by Hastert, he denied that the oral pact is akin to a valid and enforceable contract and, if so, it would be the plaintiff who breached it when he spoke to federal authorities. Hastert also is seeking "reasonable expenses, attorneys' fees, and costs."
The lawsuit was filed in April by a now middle-age married man whom Hastert coached decades ago at Yorkville High School.
The man, known as Individual A in the federal case against Hastert, said Hastert had agreed in 2010 to pay him $3.5 million if he didn't disclose publicly that Hastert inappropriately touched him in the 1970s, when Individual A was 14, during a wrestling trip while the two stayed overnight in a hotel room. The boy at the time was not yet in high school, but Hastert was close friends with his parents.
The boy went on to become a standout student-athlete in high school. He later suffered panic attacks, unemployment, bouts of depression and psychiatric treatment, according to his lawsuit.
Hastert paid the former wrestler $1.7 million over 41/2 years through 2014, but he stopped making payments that December after the FBI questioned him in his Plano home about the large bank withdrawals. Hastert is serving a 15-month federal prison sentence in Rochester, Minn., for illegally structuring the bank withdrawals to avoid reporting requirements.
In his lawsuit, Individual A seeks the remaining $1.8 million.
At his April sentencing hearing, Hastert admitted to inappropriate conduct with the man and some of his former student-athletes before going into politics in the 1980s. In his response this week to the lawsuit, regarding the sexual abuse allegations, Hastert said he had "insufficient information with which to admit or deny the allegations."
Individual A's attorney, Kristi Browne, said the oral agreement with Hastert was similar to an out-of-court settlement had he filed a personal injury claim. In response, Hastert attorney John Ellis has argued the man would have been barred from pursuing such a claim due to the long-expired statute of limitations. So, Ellis said, the agreement dealt only with selling silence, which is not legally sound.
Ellis also raised several affirmative defenses in his latest response, including that any pact is unenforceable because Hastert would have been under "duress" at the time the contract was formed.
The lawsuit is due in court again March 8. So far, Kendall County Circuit Judge Robert Pilmer has denied Hastert's motion to dismiss the claim and temporarily allowed the man to file it as a James Doe.
Hastert had admitted in a plea agreement with prosecutors that he was making the withdrawals to pay off the man to hide wrongdoing from his past. The statute of limitations barred prosecutors from pursuing child molestation charges.
Browne said her client had asked Hastert if they should involve lawyers and put the agreement in writing, but it was Hastert who urged the man to keep their pact confidential and pledged to pay "every last dollar."
The FBI and U.S. attorney's office determined Individual A did nothing illegal.
Federal prosecutors said Hastert inappropriately touched at least five male students when he was a wrestling coach from 1965 to 1981. The statute of limitations to bring charges for sexual abuse had long since run out, and prosecutors said their best option for holding Hastert accountable was for banking violations. His bombshell federal indictment was made public in May 2015.
For nearly a year afterward, federal prosecutors kept any mention of Hastert's sexual abuse of children confidential in the proceedings. But a Tribune investigation uncovered the nature of the allegations and identities of most of Hastert's victims, including Individual A. The man, who retired early from his chosen profession, has declined requests for comment, but his wife has acknowledged to the Tribune that he is a victim.
The Tribune typically does not name victims of sexual crimes without their permission.
Another of Hastert's accusers was Scott Cross, a younger brother of former Illinois House Republican leader Tom Cross. Scott Cross appeared publicly during Hastert's April 27 sentencing hearing in Chicago and detailed a one-time incident in fall 1979 in which he said Hastert inappropriately touched him during a massage after wrestling practice. Scott Cross, 54, of Wheaton, also recently testified before an Illinois Senate committee in support of legislation to lift deadlines for prosecuting several felony crimes involving sexual offenses against children.
The case began to unfold after a Yorkville bank noticed Hastert making suspicious withdrawals. In December 2014, FBI agents confronted Hastert. He told them he was trying to keep his money safe, but he later alleged he was a victim of an extortion plot. At the request of authorities, Hastert secretly recorded two calls to Individual A to catch him making threats, but agents soon realized it was Hastert who was lying.
Hastert, 75, is due to be paroled in August.
Elementary School Didn’t Protect Third-Grader from Janitor’s ‘Extreme’ Sexual Abuse, $10M Lawsuit Alleges
BY KC BAKER
A young victim of sexual abuse is suing his school board and two of its employees in federal court, for $10 million, alleging they failed to protect him and other students from a sexual predator who worked as a janitor at their school, PEOPLE confirms.
The lawsuit claims the school board in Russell County, Virginia, and two principals at the district’s Lebanon Elementary School in Lebanon, Virginia — Phillip Henley and Kimberly Hooker — “turned a blind eye” to “blatant sexual misconduct” against the victim and other male students.
It was not clear if either still worked as a principal in the district. The victim is identified as John Doe in the complaint, which was filed on Dec. 8.
The suit also names Bobby Gobble as a defendant. Gobble, 42, was Lebanon Elementary’s former head janitor and was sentenced in 2014 to 100 years in prison after confessing to sexually abusing four boys ages 14 or younger over a four-and-a-half-year period, according to court records obtained by PEOPLE.
Gobble was reportedly arrested in Februrary 2014. He later pleaded guilty to 150 counts of aggravated sexual battery, forcible sodomy and attempted forcible sodomy and is serving a sentence of at least 70 years, according to records.
Attorney Jim Guynn, who is representing the school board and its employees, told the Washington Post, “I haven’t seen anything that indicates to me that any of the defendants had any idea that this was going on.”
Not so, according to the boy’s lawyer.
Monica Beck tells PEOPLE the defendants allegedly left John Doe and the other victims vulnerable to Gobble’s abuse — which, according to the lawsuit, was predicated on behavior such as Gobble spending long periods of time alone with children and appearing “obsessive” and “overly friendly.”
At one point John Doe lived with Gobble, though he had no legal custody of the boy. Henley, the school principal at the time, assumed Gobble was a relative or friend, the suit claims.
“The school had a duty to protect John Doe and other students from Gobble’s sexual abuse,” Beck says. “The school, which is federally funded, is obligated to comply with a federal law called Title IX, which prohibits sexual discrimination, which includes sexual assault.”
But school officials did not follow Title IX’s requirements, the boy’s suit claims, causing him to suffer “extreme and severe emotional distress” including fright, horror, grief, shame and psychological trauma.
Escalating Abuse: ‘The School Trusted Gobble’
Gobble began sexually abusing John Doe in 2011, when the boy was in third grade at Lebanon Elementary, the complaint states. The sexual violence was “so extreme in degree that it went beyond all possible bounds of decency.”
The abuse continued for almost two years, when Gobble convinced the boy’s grandmother, who had legal custody of him and his three siblings during the 2011-2012 school year, to allow the boy to come live with him, according to the suit.
As for why the child’s family allowed him to live with Gobble, Beck says: “My understanding is that the grandmother trusted Gobble because the school trusted Gobble.”
The boy lived with Gobble at his home for more than a year before moving to Gobble’s sister’s house, the complaint states. Gobble slept with John Doe, bought him extravagant gifts, drove him to and from school and took him on trips across state lines, during which he sexually abused the boy.
Gobble threatened to kill or harm the boy and his mother if he told anyone about the abuse, the complaint states.
Henley, who was Lebanon’s principal when John Doe was in third grade, knew that Gobble had the child stay at his house and took him on trips, the complaint alleges. Yet “he failed to take any action to protect John from Gobble’s sexual abuse.”
In the spring of 2013, when John Doe was a fourth-grader, Kimberly Hooker, who became the school’s principal, learned that a complaint had been filed with the Department of Social Services about Gobble sexually abusing the child, the lawsuit says.
The complaint was later dismissed as lacking evidence, after both the boy and Gobble denied any inappropriate behavior. Hooker was present when both the child and Gobble were interviewed by DDS, according to the complaint.
“Although DSS found the case unsubstantiated, Principal Hooker — who knew Gobble spent vast amounts of money on and time with John, both during and outside of school hours — failed to undertake any independent investigation, monitor Gobble or take any action to protect John,” the complaint alleges.
Once a school receives a report that a student is being sexually assaulted or abused, Title IX obligates that school to take action, Beck says.
“Russell County Schools did not investigate the report and took no action, other than to tell Gobble it would be a good thing if John would be in an after-school program instead of spending time with Gobble,” Beck says.
“But there is no indication that the school ever increased supervision or undertook any kind of disciplinary action against Gobble or made any effort to ensure that he wasn’t sexually abusing John.”
The defendants allowed Gobble to remove children, including John Doe, from classrooms, failing to bring them back for long periods of time, the complaint alleges. They also allegedly allowed Gobble to be alone and unsupervised with John Doe and other children during and after school.
They failed to provide training to personnel and parents about the sexual abuse of students by school staff, the complaint claims.
The abuse against John Doe began to decrease once he left Lebanon Elementary for middle school, according to his suit.
“During the summer between fourth and fifth grade, he had less contact with Gobble because his mother was concerned,” Beck says.
Helping Other Victims
Beck says she hopes the lawsuit helps other children who are left vulnerable to sexual abuse by adults.
“With cases like this, one of the things we always hope for is justice for the individual plaintiff, and that schools make sure that their administrators and staff are trained in Title IX and recognize signs of sexual abuse and receive grooming techniques that adult perpetrators use to gain the trust of children,” she says.
“Often times, predators like Mr. Gobble will threaten children and frighten them so they are afraid to report the abuse.”
Gobble’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.
“When there is a report, we want to make sure educators know what their obligations are and what the steps [are] to take to make sure a student is protected and that other students are not subjected to the same abuse,” Beck says.
“I also hope that this case helps initiate a national discussion on schools’ obligations in keeping our children safe from sex harassment and sex assault in school.”
A Nevada man accused of molesting two girls in 2012 in Burkburnett was re-indicted for 14 different counts of child sex abuse.
Clarence Homer Swegheimer, 59, of Dayton, Nevada, was scheduled to go to trial on Feb. 6 on two counts of continuous sexual abuse of a child. He was arrested on June 1, 2015 and remains in the Wichita County Jail in lieu of $150,000 total bail.
Court documents state the two cases were re-indicted into eight counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and six counts of indecency with a child by sexual contact.
According to arrest warrant affidavits:
In August of 2012, a woman reported to Burkburnett police that Swegheimer had sexually assaulted her two daughters, ages 14 and 10 during the initial incident. At the time, the girls didn't provide enough sufficient details to support probable cause.
In December of 2014, the 10-year-old was willing to provide more details to forensic interviewers at Patsy's House. The girl said Swegheimer sexually assaulted her many times but she remembered she was in first grade the first time something happened and described several different sexual acts.
In July of 2015, the older sister said she was now willing to provide detailed information about the incidents when Swegheimer sexually abused her. The 14-year-old said he abused her when she was 10 to 12 years old and more than once he placed her in his truck and "tried to have sex with" her.
The older sister said when she was 12, Swegheimer asked her and her sister to "put on a little fashion show" for him in her swimsuit. During the incident, the girl said Swegheimer began to touch her inappropriately.
Lebanon, VA
Nevada man reindicted in sexual abuse of two children
A Nevada man accused of molesting two girls in 2012 in Burkburnett was re-indicted for 14 different counts of child sex abuse.
Court documents state the two cases were re-indicted into eight counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and six counts of indecency with a child by sexual contact.
According to arrest warrant affidavits:
In August of 2012, a woman reported to Burkburnett police that Swegheimer had sexually assaulted her two daughters, ages 14 and 10 during the initial incident. At the time, the girls didn't provide enough sufficient details to support probable cause.
In December of 2014, the 10-year-old was willing to provide more details to forensic interviewers at Patsy's House. The girl said Swegheimer sexually assaulted her many times but she remembered she was in first grade the first time something happened and described several different sexual acts.
In July of 2015, the older sister said she was now willing to provide detailed information about the incidents when Swegheimer sexually abused her. The 14-year-old said he abused her when she was 10 to 12 years old and more than once he placed her in his truck and "tried to have sex with" her.
The older sister said when she was 12, Swegheimer asked her and her sister to "put on a little fashion show" for him in her swimsuit. During the incident, the girl said Swegheimer began to touch her inappropriately.
Dayton, NV
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