One Survivors Story About Her Youth Pastor's Child Sex Abuse

She was 10. The man she says abused her was no stranger. He was like family.

Sarah Fowler, Mississippi Clarion Ledger

Warning: This story contains graphic details of sexual abuse accusations.

On Saturday nights during the 1970s, LeAnne Kay's family had a routine. Her mom and dad would each sit in their respective chairs and Kay would lie on the couch situated between them. Together, they would watch "Saturday Night Live." But Kay wasn't on the couch alone. At the other end sat the youth minister from the local Methodist church. 

A frequent guest in their north Mississippi home, the 25-year-old quickly became like part of Kay's family. The physical abuse started when he moved in, Kay said, but the grooming began before that. She was 10 years old.

She didn't tell her parents at the time, only telling her mother a decade later. Over the years, she confided in multiple people, beginning in the 1980s. The Clarion Ledger spoke with three people who each confirmed Kay's story and shared intimate details of the allegations. 

The Clarion Ledger also reached out to the man Kay said abused her. He has not been charged with any crime relating to the accusations and is not being named in this story. 

Now 71, he denies the allegations but acknowledges something happened "one time," though he describes that one time as both an accident and the actions of a "curious" child.

In talking with the Clarion Ledger, parts of his story kept changing. Some details he provided from that time matched Kay's, nearly word for word.

"I can't prove I didn't, but I didn't," he said. "There's no Bill Clinton dress that I did but, god, what a horrible thing to have to say or reference."

While Kay has been trying to press charges against him for years, she's run into roadblocks and charges have never been filed. In March, she shared her account with a blog, naming him, and the news quickly spread in Iuka via social media. 

In the wake of the recent public accusations, he said, he attempted to take his own life.

"Hey, if I was dead, then, hey, she's got the payment," he said. 

Today, Kay is 54 years old and living in West Virginia. She's had a full, successful life, but what she says happened in her house all those years ago still haunts her. By telling her story, she's hoping to help parents recognize the warning signs of grooming and abuse.

'He really groomed my mother into feeling sorry for him'

In the summer of 1974, Kay was living with her parents and older brother in Iuka. Her grandparents had a grocery store in town, and her grandfather was a state park commissioner. Every Sunday, the family went to First United Methodist Church. For a time, Kay's mother served as interim youth director. 

Then, a new guy showed up. In his mid-20s, he looked more like the kids he was ministering to. He wore bell bottoms and had long hair. He liked to be called by a nickname. He talked about his life before he became a Christian — stories filled with the life he led as a musician on the road, playing with famous bands. He told the kids he had given up a gig playing with the Rolling Stones to become a youth minister.

"He tried to make it like it’s such an honor he chose us, that was the angle," Kay said. "That was always the story, that he chose us over the Rolling Stones. He came in like a hippie rocker. 

"His conversations weren’t your typical person trying to be squeaky clean, he was the opposite: 'I’m everything but squeaky clean, but I’m cool because I’m Christian.'"

He started a band with the church youth. Kay's brother sang in the band. Kay, a self-described "wallflower," was too young to join the youth group but would often tag along with her brother. Pretty soon, Kay's mother invited the youth minister to move in with the family in an effort to help him save money. 

He wanted to go to seminary, but with the cost of his education plus rent, it would have been tight financially. 

"He really groomed my mother into feeling sorry for him," Kay said. "He’d had a horrible life. ... She became like a mother figure to him."

The youth minister left the church and enrolled in seminary in Georgia, but when he came back to Iuka on the weekends, he was given Kay's room. She slept on a couch in a hallway that doubled as a TV room outside of her bedroom.

Her brother's bedroom was down the hall. Her mother slept in a chair in the living room, while her father's bedroom was on the other side of the wall of the hall. Her father was a functioning alcoholic, Kay said, and her parents never shared a bedroom.

The family's home became the man's "home base." He would go to seminary during the week, but on weekends and holidays he was at Kay's house. When he was there, kids were constantly coming and going from the house.

My mother 'had no idea what he was doing'

As part of his shtick, Kay said, the man would would make inappropriate jokes and comments. Soon, she was the target. He would tell her she would have to "use a stick to beat the boys away" and began to regularly comment on the 10-year-old's breast development — even doing so in front of her mother.

"That was not unusual for his type of conversation, and he was so slick at it," Kay said. "It would happen in front of my mother, and she was going along with it.

"She was duped. She had no idea what he was doing."

Neither did Kay. The comments made her uncomfortable, she said, but since her mom laughed and went along with the jokes, she thought, "it's pretty awkward, but it must be OK."

The comments progressed, but Kay's mother was no longer in the room when they were happening. She recalls he would walk by and brush against her breasts or place his hand on her waist, "just heavy ... not in a ‘you're a little girl’ way.'"

Still living with the family, he would ask her to come out to his car and listen to music. He would sit in the driver's seat with the door open, she said, legs splayed out of the car. Kay would sit between them on the running board.

The touching, and the frequency, intensified, she said.

"It just got more aggressive, basically, and more routine, more as if that’s just what we do," she said. "I would sit there, frozen, be real still because I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or do."

Kay provided the Clarion Ledger with a photo of her, her brother and the man from that time period. While her brother and the man are smiling, Kay is not. Her left foot is turned. 

His hand sits on Kay's waist. The tips of two of his fingers are visible, but the rest of his hand is hidden by her shirt. His hand and her arm were partially under her shirt, against her skin, Kay said. 

Kay said she sees the picture as "powerful." 

"My body language speaks volumes," she said. "I wanted to run away as far as I could because he had pulled me in so tightly. ... My foot tells the direction I want to go."

'I just froze'

One night, like usual, Kay's mother fell asleep in the chair in the living room. Her father and brother both closed the doors to their respective bedrooms. Kay was on the couch in the hallway, dressed for bed in her nightgown, watching TV. It was likely the weekend, she said, and the man went to the hall bathroom and took a long bath.

When he came out, he sat on the edge of the couch with Kay. He put her head in his lap. 

That’s when the fondling started. 

"He did that for a few nights just to get a routine and, I guess, feel out the environment," Kay said.

Looking back on those first few nights, she said “he was very patient. He would do this for hours. It wasn't a short thing."

Then one night, while he was taking a bath, Kay fell asleep on the hallway couch. 

She said she awoke to his penis in her mouth. 

"I just froze and pretended like I was asleep," she said. "There was no other choice."

She said she was forced to perform oral sex on him night after night, always on the hallway couch after his bath.

‘I felt powerless’

Then, Kay said, he became emboldened. 

One night when the family was watching TV together, Kay says he fondled her while her parents were in the same room. She was on one end of the couch and he was on the other, their feet stretching between them in the middle and covered by a blanket. Her parents were mere feet away. While he fondled her under the blanket, she said, he talked to her parents. They were oblivious, she said. 

"He was always working his feet, fondling me, while carrying on conversation with my parents," she said. "He even ran his toe in and out under the blankets. That's what frightened the most, when he was doing that."

The abuse continued for a year, Kay said.

"I was basically his puppet, that’s what it felt like," she said. "Whatever he wanted me to do, I felt powerless to not do it."

Then, one night, she said, the abuse abruptly stopped. Kay said she was being forced to perform oral sex when her father's bedroom door opened on the other side of the house. 

"You've never seen anybody move faster than he moved getting his penis in his pajamas and my head out of his lap," she said. 

Her father burst into the hallway and the two men stared at each other for what seemed like minutes, Kay said. Eventually her father turned around and walked away. 

The man left the hallway and went to sleep in Kay's room, she said. He packed his things and left the next day, she added.

'I'm not saying she's lying'  

In speaking with the Clarion Ledger, the man said, "it only happened once," before offering an initial description of the events. 

"I woke up with the feeling of warm breath in my very private area because that will wake you up and, when I woke up, I realized that she had her head down there and there did not appear to be anything happening but I could feel the breath," he said.

"So I reached down and got both of her shoulders and I lifted her to eye level and I said, 'LeAnne, you know, that can't be done. You can't do that, we can't do that but when you get a little older, like 17, 18, whatever, you're going to start dating and you'll find a guy —you guys might do that and you'll have a lot of fun with it and enjoy it but that's not something we can do."

He first said it may have happened on "accident." Then, he said, it may have happened because the child was "curious."

While he initially denied intimate physical contact, as he talked, he said it was possible his penis was in the child's mouth that night.

"It's a possibility that it may have touched her mouth, I can't deny that," he said. The child also may have touched his penis, he said, but he does not remember. 

"It could have happened, that's the thing," he said. "I'm not saying she's lying...I'm not calling her a liar, I can't say that. All I can say is it was not my intention, ever to have that happen as a volitional choice on my part. I did not chose to do that. It was that one time."

What parents need to know about child sexual abuse

One in three girls and one in seven boys will be sexually abused by the age of 18, according to Amy Walker with the Mississippi Attorney General's Office. Only one in 10 of those children will report the abuse, she said. While children are taught "stranger danger," the majority of abuse is at the hands of someone the child already knows and trusts, Walker said. 

Jay Houston, commander of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, said it's important that parents do not assume a person in authority is someone you can automatically trust. 

What's important to realize, Walker said, is that it's not just the children that are being manipulated — the parents are as well. 

"The thing with manipulation, you don't realize you're being manipulated until it's done and over," she said.