California minister charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse

We know that all our readers would fervently welcome the day when acts of child sexual abuse would simply cease to exist in California, nationally and across the rest of the world.

The victimization of young people — from toddlers and adolescents to teens and beyond — by adult sexual perpetrators is a stark and heinous wrong.

Moreover, it is often marked by calculated predatory behavior, with adults — who are often in positions of authority — cunningly manipulating far younger individuals who willingly posit trust in them.

Sadly, the reports of such conduct recur, and with relentless regularity. A recent media account chronicling the tale of an abusive clergy member from the San Francisco East Bay area is just a representative example of that.

In that matter, a minister was recently charged with myriad criminal counts relating to his sexual abuse of a minor female parishioner.

The charges are lengthy, with government attorneys stating that the minister engaged in unlawful contact with the juvenile nearly two dozen times. The charges include the commission of lewd acts, unlawful sexual intercourse and the sodomy of a minor.

No other victims were reported, at least as of the date of media accounts noting the story. One of those sources did state, though, that criminal authorities “have been conducting interviews to determine whether there were additional victims.”

That source further noted that the minister was suspended from his position and that, at the time the story was made public, he was being held in a detention center on bail exceeding $9 million.