LARGO, Fl. -- Youth pastor Randy Lee Morrow lied all the time to the teenagers he says looked up to him as a father figure. He admits it.

Lies about being in a biker gang. Lies about serving prison time. Lies about having terminal cancer.

"I lied a lot more than I should have," he says.

But Morrow says he is telling the truth when he insists he did not have sex with three teenage boys he pastored at Countryside Baptist Church in Clearwater.

A Pinellas-Pasco jury deliberated for two hours on Thursday before deciding that was a lie, too. Jurors found Morrow, 42, guilty of nine charges involving allegations he had sex with three teens, ages 13 to 15, while he was their youth pastor.

Circuit Judge Phil Federico immediately sentenced Morrow to 135 years in prison for charges that ranged from sexual activity with a minor to lewd and lascivious behavior and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

"If I could give you more (time), I would," the judge said.

Federico said Morrow's was one of the worst cases of trust betrayed that he had ever seen in 19 years as a prosecutor and a judge.

Morrow, who had been free on bail, showed no emotion as the verdict and sentence were announced. He declined to address the court and avoided looking at the victims or their families as bailiffs led him off to jail.

"I just want everyone to realize what a sick and twisted individual Randy Morrow is," said one of the teenage boys, who now is 17. The three teens are not named because of the nature of the charges. "I just want everyone to realize that now."

Prosecutor Tim Hessinger told jurors that Morrow lured the three victims with cigarettes and alcohol, getting them drunk so he could take advantage of them by having sex in his RV, the church and local parks.

Morrow, who lived in Palm Harbor with his parents, told Pinellas sheriff's detective Matt Miller the day of his arrest, "I had bull-crapped (the teens) for a year . . . I had made up this other person that wasn't even me."

Morrow took the stand in his own defense and explained some of the lies as a result of him simply trying to make himself look cooler to the teens.

As for the cancer lie, Morrow said he told that one because he was tired and wanted to leave the youth ministry. He said he thought telling the boys he had cancer was a way to ease the pain of him leaving to become a pastor for the homeless.

"That's a real nice letdown," Hessinger told jurors during closing arguments.

Morrow had been a drug addict when he was younger. He got in trouble with the law by writing bad checks. But Morrow testified that he turned his life around and found success in several lines of work, including a job driving a taxi.

But he said he gave everything up for God and sold many of his belongings so he could devote his life to the church, eventually joining Countryside Baptist.

Morrow said he devoted almost all his time to teens after he became youth pastor. He denied allegations by the three boys that he gave them cigarettes and alcohol.

Morrow said that medication he took earlier in his life for asthma has left him impotent, making the boys' allegations impossible.

But Hessinger noted that police tests found Morrow's sperm on a church couch. Morrow, who described himself as a shy man, testified that he sometimes slept naked and alone on the couch.

Defense attorneys Larry Hoffman and Melissa Sharpsteen said the teens made up stories about Morrow because they were mad at his lies and angry he was leaving the church to begin a new ministry for the homeless.

The teens acknowledged that they tried to extort $1,000 from Morrow, threatening to report him to police if he didn't pay. He didn't pay. But neither did he call police.

In October 2000, one of the teens' mothers called the Sheriff's Office. A detective set up a taped telephone call between one of the youths and the pastor.

In the call, Morrow repeatedly apologized for his behavior, telling one of the boys, "I betrayed some people I consider the most-important people of my life and I have to live with that every day."

Later, he told a detective the allegations against him were unbelieveable.

"This is stuff you read about in the news," Morrow said

Baptist Youth Leader is sentenced for 33 acts of indecent liberties involving girls

ADAM L. CATALDO

GASTONIA - A former Baptist youth leader was sentenced Monday to up to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to 33 counts of taking indecent liberties with minors.

Marty Eugene Meadows, 34, of Bessemer City, engaged in sexual activity with seven girls aged 12 to 15 years between May 2001 and May 2002, said Gaston County Assistant District Attorney Mikko Red Arrow.

Meadows met his victims through a youth praise team he led at Sunset Lane Baptist Church in Bessemer City where he was a youth minister, Red Arrow said.

On about 10 occasions, Meadows tried to broadcast games of sexual truth or dare with up to five of the girls on the Internet using a Web cam in his home, Red Arrow said.

The games involved oral sex and other physical acts, Red Arrow said, and dares came from visitors to an Internet chat room.

It is unclear whether anyone was able to view those sessions, he said.

During Meadow's sentencing Monday, Gaston County Superior Court Judge Jesse Caldwell said the man's behavior demonstrated "a new low in our society."

"A man who was given a position of trust by parents, who want nothing but the best for their children, abused that trust in a shameful and wretched way," Caldwell said. "This is just despicable."

David Grigg, chairman of the church's deacon board, said Meadows was not a youth minister but an unpaid volunteer with the church's youth department. He declined further comment.

One of the victims' mothers said Edwards invited youth who enjoyed singing from West Fifth Avenue Free Will Baptist Church in Gastonia and South Point Free Will Baptist Church to join the praise team at Sunset Baptist. The group planned to perform at local churches but has since dissolved, she said.

"He's one of those people who give Christians and Christianity a bad name," she said. "They use God to do things like this."

Even before the nationwide sexual-abuse crisis shocked the Roman Catholic Church, congregations of all sizes and denominations faced problems ensuring the safety of their children.

Many Carolinas houses of worship now regularly conduct criminal background checks on prospective employees and volunteers who work with youth. There are new guidelines forbidding adults from being alone with children; prevention workshops for staff; and efforts to encourage members to report reasonable suspicions of abuse to church or civic authorities.

While the full extent of the problem isn't known, a 2000 survey of 1,394 U.S. churches found that 3 percent indicated they had responded in the past year to an allegation of sexual misconduct involving children.

No one knows exactly how many crimes never get reported: the U.S. Justice Department reports that cases of sexual assault are reported only 30 percent of the time.

The mother of the first victim to report Meadow's behavior said her daughter waited a few days before talking about her attack because she feared no one would believe her.

"I'm very proud of her for coming out with this," the mother said. "There's no telling how long this would've gone on and how many other girls would've been affected by this man."

Meadows lived at 2013 Puetts Chapel Road in Bessemer City when he was first arrested in June and charged with three counts of taking indecent liberties with a minor, according to court records. He was released after posting $3,000 bond.

When he failed to appear in court in July, Meadows was arrested again. A Gaston County Police investigation led to 40 additional charges of sexual misconduct. Those charges included two counts of first-degree statutory sex offense and eight counts of statutory sex offense.

The statutory sex offense charges were dismissed in exchange for Meadows' guilty plea, Red Arrow said.

On Monday, some of Meadows' victims and their families filled one side of the courtroom, with Meadows' family and friends on the other.

"I just want him to know, for another man to do this to children, whatever his punishment is, I can't believe an adult would do this to a child," said one victim's father before sentencing. "I was baptized as a Baptist and now I have my doubts."

Later, the mother of the victim who first reported Meadows to police said her family is trying to forgive the man they once believed was a Christian role model.

"People like that need a lot of prayer," she said. "We definitely don't blame God for this. You just have to go on and have faith."

Meadows apologized to his family in court Monday.

Baptist Pastor in three-way sex with Wife

BARTOW,FL. -- The Rev. Kenneth Baxley, a Lakeland minister accused of having sex with a teenager in his care, agreed to a plea deal Friday that would carry a 30-month prison term, but would drop similar charges against his wife.

Sentencing is set for Oct. 11.

Baxley, 38, who resigned in February as pastor of Central Baptist Community Ministries in North Lakeland, will likely serve only eight or nine months of the sentence.

That's because the plea accepted by Circuit Judge Ralph Artigliere gives Baxley credit for jail time served on an unrelated charge of failing to register as a sex offender.

Baxley has been in the Polk County Jail since May of last year, when he was sentenced to two years.

In his Friday plea, Baxley also agreed to two years of house arrest and 10 years' probation. He must be supervised while in the company of his two children from his previous marriage.

Baxley said little in court, except to acknowledge the plea.

Attorney John Kirkland of Bartow, who represents Baxley and his wife, Amanda, 23, said the plea was not an admission of Kenneth Baxley's guilt.

Rather, Kirkland said his client was not inclined to risk the consequences of a jury trial.

If convicted of all charges, Baxley faced a maximum prison sentence of 150 years, or 30 years for each of three counts of sexual activity with a child. Baxley originally faced five counts, but the state dropped two in its plea bargain.

Kirkland said Baxley also was swayed by the state's offer to drop the charge against his wife, who is taking care of his children.

"Had she been convicted, she'd have faced 30 years," Kirkland said.

Amanda Baxley spoke briefly with her attorney after the hearing, but declined to talk with a reporter.

In May 2001, Kenneth Baxley was sentenced to two years for failing to register his address, which is required of convicted sex offenders.

He'd fought the charge on grounds that he had successfully completed probation for a 1983 offense and had not been informed of the law requiring sex offenders to register their address each time they move.

Just weeks before Baxley was sentenced on the failure to register charge, he was arrested on charges of having sex with the then 17-year-old niece of his deceased first wife.

The teen told authorities she'd had an ongoing sexual relationship with Kenneth Baxley and that she'd had three-way sexual contact with Baxley and his wife, according to court documents

The Southern Baptist Sexual Cover Up

Dan Earl Allmond, Youth Pastor of Tampa Baptist Church, Tampa, a Southern Baptist Church, and a married man, suddenly resigned on December 9, 1998 and disappeared off the scene when the police were called in concerning a complaint made by a female high school student that she was having sex with the pastor as a minor.

Senior Pastor McCormick of Tampa Baptist Church denied all knowledge about the sexual activities and ordered the staff of Tampa Baptist Academy to stay silent on the whole matter and not to discuss Dan's previous sexual escapades with no one! McCormick's own daughter was sexually promiscuous and had to leave school for a while for fear of being pregnant.

The bible states that a Senior Pastor must be one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence (for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?). Hence Senior Pastor McCormick resigned as pastor in the spring of the next year when he sought to divorce his wife.

Dan Earl Allmond faced two counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor. Police said that the youth pastor had sexual relations with the girl on church property and at his home on W Paris Street. The sexual relations occurred between August and October, Cole said according to jail records reported the Tampa Tribune.

Allmond is a Sex Offender under Florida law and now the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Sexual Offender/Predator Unit has his picture pasted on the web at http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/sexual_predators/OffenderFlyer.asp?keys=26812

Most Southern Baptist pastors and preachers are hypocrites in that they don't practice what they preach. Take the case of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a Southern Baptist and religious right fundamentalist, who jumped on the media bandwagon about Roman Catholic pedophile priests and stated:

It is time for the Catholic Church to get serious about protecting children.

The fact is, any cleric - Catholic or Protestant - who molests a child to satisfy his own dark urges should be immediately dismissed and severely punished. Period.

However, church leaders have gone blind to their responsibilities. Revelations that top U.S. clergy protected pedophiles and failed to prevent them from interacting with credulous children is simply unforgivable. It is criminal! This is not the time for compromise, settlement or bargain. It is time for the church to attend to ridding itself of pedophiles and painstakingly ensuring that virtuous and honorable men are recruited to replace them.

President Bush has stated that any nation that harbors terrorists is guilty of terrorism. Similarly, any church leader who provides safe haven for a pedophile priest, pastor or rabbi is just as guilty. It is unthinkable that men who have yielded their lives to ministry would descend to such depths that they would sexually abuse little children. It is just as unthinkable that a church leader would protect these men.
( Catholic Church leadership must expel pedophiles By Rev. Jerry Falwell Worldnetdaily April 27, 2002)

But according to Southern Baptists own statistics and reports most of their pastors are sexual perverts and reality shows their church leaders protects their pastors and not the sheep.

Just as a hidden iceberg destroyed the Titanic after the crew had ignored multiple warnings, lives and ministries of pastors and other church staff are being destroyed at a remarkable rate by sexual infidelity, the president of the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board warned a group of pastors, missionaries and other denominational leaders.

Robert E. Reccord cautioned pastors, missionaries and other denominational leaders attending the April 10-13 Connection 2002 conference in Ontario, California, about avoiding temptations that lead to sexual infidelity.

Reccord cited survey statistics from the book "Men's Secret Wars" by Patrick Means that indicated 64 percent of pastors or church staff struggled with sexual addiction or compulsion. Twenty-five percent admitted to having sexual intercourse with someone besides their wife while married, and after they had accepted Christ. Another 14 percent admitted some form of sexual contact short of intercourse.

Reccord also noted the importance of every Christian leader having someone to whom he is accountable, someone who will ask him the hard questions about his personal life and thoughts. He noted research which found little in common among more than 200 fallen ministers except two things: all no longer had a regular quiet time in fellowship with God, and none had made themselves accountable to a person or group.

Ann Graham Lotz, the second daughter of Southern Baptist Evangelist Billy Graham, stated in Tampa, Florida in April 2002, ``I'm not accountable to my critics, I'm only accountable to God.'' And her father Billy Graham had tried to avoid accountability for his criticism of Jews that was caught on tape decades ago on his age and forgetfulness. The "I don't recall" technique was used often by former president Bill Clinton to avoid accountability concerning his sexual liaison with Monica Lewinsky in the White House.

Sexual involvement by Baptist leaders with others is a real problem in North America. A 1991 national survey of mainly Protestant pastors by a group at the Center for Ethics and Social Policy, Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley, California -- described by its researchers as "small and not scientifically controlled" -- uncovered similar findings: About 10 percent of those surveyed had been sexually involved with a parishioner. Another study published in the winter 1993 Journal of Pastoral Care found that only 6.1 percent of Southern Baptist pastor respondents admitted to having sexual contact with a person either currently or formerly affiliated with their church.

Surveys of ministers reveal the existence of a growing moral breakdown in pastors' lives. Almost one in four pastors answered yes to the question, "Since you've been in local church ministry, have you ever done anything with someone (not your spouse) that you feel was sexually inappropriate?" One in five pastors confessed to sexual misconduct of some kind, with one in eight admitting adultery, and only 4 in 100 were found out by their local church. (1988 survey in Leadership magazine).

On April 8, 2002 the Christian Science Monitor reported that 'Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers. These are findings from national surveys by Christian Ministry Resources (CMR), a tax and legal-advice publisher serving more than 75,000 congregations and 1,000 denominational agencies nationwide.

The CMR findings also reveal:
- Most church child-sexual-abuse cases involve a single victim.
- Law suits or out-of-court settlements were a result in 21 percent of the allegations reported in the 2000 survey.
- Volunteers are more likely than clergy or paid staff to be abusers. Perhaps more startling, children at churches are accused of sexual abuse as often as are clergy and staff. In 1999, for example, 42 percent of alleged child abusers were volunteers - about 25 percent were paid staff members (including clergy) and 25 percent were other children.

On March 25, 2002 the LA Times in an article by TERESA WATANABE, Times Staff Writer Sex Abuse by Clerics-a Crisis of Many Faiths wrote

The wave of clergy sex scandals now engulfing the Roman Catholic Church has battered other denominations as well, producing an uneven record of response that ranges from the Episcopal Church's aggressive and detailed policies to the Southern Baptist Convention's widespread lack of written standards.

Similar charges have been leveled against the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest of the Baptist bodies in the United States. Dee Ann Miller, a victim's advocate and author of books about the topic, said she had received complaints from victims in 30 states, half of them involving minors. She said church officials have not been responsive.

When she first told church officials about her own sexual assault by a Southern Baptist missionary in Africa several years ago, Miller said, she was told by two leaders that it was at least partly her fault.
In a 1993 survey by the Journal of Pastoral Care, 14% of Southern Baptist ministers surveyed said they had engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior, 70% said they knew a minister who had and 80% said they lacked written guidelines.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist ethics committee, said the convention's churches are fully autonomous and probably did not adopt written policies because it was obvious that sexual misconduct was wrong. He said training about sexual misconduct is conducted at Southern Baptist seminaries, which produce about half of the convention's clergy, and that the cases he knows about led to swift removal or resignation of the guilty party.

"Most Baptist ministers know sexual misconduct is a career-ending move," he said.

It's amazing that no one is alarmed that the survey reported that "14% of Southern Baptist ministers surveyed said they had engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior." But because Southern Baptist churches and Assembly of God Churches are fully autonomous it's very easy and convenient for these churches to bury a scandal as was done with Tampa Baptist Academy?