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	Jury: Minister Abused Girl A Radford Jury Found Hawthorne Reed Jr. Guilty of Sexually Abusing a Girl in 2000 By Shawna Morrison Roanoke Times June 21, 2008 http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/166632 RADFORD — After a trial that lasted late into the night Friday, a jury found a minister from Radford guilty of sexually abusing a girl in 2000 when she was 8 years old. Hawthorne Reed Jr., 63, was found guilty on two counts of forcible sodomy and one of aggravated sexual battery. The girl said the events happened in 2000, but she didn't tell anyone until six years later. The Roanoke Times is not identifying the girl because of the nature of the case. She doesn't live in Virginia. Jurors on Friday heard from both Reed and the now-16-year-old girl. She was the first to take the witness stand. The soft-spoken girl told the jury of five men and seven women about how she often visited Reed at his home. One July afternoon, she said, he offered to massage her with baby oil. As he did, she said, he pulled her clothes off, kissed her neck and body, and performed oral sex on her. When he stopped, she put her clothes back on and went to another room to watch TV as if nothing had happened, she said. The same thing happened the next day, she said. When asked by Reed's defense attorney, Everett Shockley, why she let the incident happen, the girl said, "I guess as a child you're taught what an adult says is what you have to do." She said she finally told her mother about the incidents during a conversation about sex. At one point during her testimony, she began sobbing and asked if she could have a break, then retreated to a bathroom for several minutes. A little while later into the girl's hour-long testimony, Reed also began sobbing. Radford Circuit Court Judge Joey Showalter granted another recess. Shockley told jurors that in the 1960s, Reed was convicted of grand larceny and shooting into an occupied building, but that he had turned his life around. Reed said the vehicle he stole was his own car that had been wrongly repossessed. The shooting was in self-defense, he said. A man walked into a nightclub and began shooting, so he shot back. "He shot me five times and I shot him four," he said. In 1977, he said, he turned his life over to Christ. He has been an ordained minister for 12 years and is the pastor at First Baptist Church in Dublin. He has consistently denied inappropriately touching the girl. "I did not do anything to this child," he told the jury. "I'm not guilty of it." Reed said he remembered rubbing baby oil on the girl, but said he rubbed it only on her back because she couldn't reach it. Asked by Shockley why he wanted to testify, Reed said, "There's no defense against such allegations and if you can't defend yourself, you're just in trouble." Friday's trial began at 9 a.m. with jury selection, which lasted about an hour and a half. The case went to the jury at 8:20 p.m., and the jury came back with a verdict about 11 p.m. In asking for a conviction, Radford Commonwealth's Attorney Chris Rehak told the jury, "It's easy to say, 'I didn't do it.' That doesn't take guts." It takes guts, he said, to do what the girl did and come forward about the abuse. "This isn't fun for any teenager to go through." Shockley latched onto discrepancies between what the girl said in court Friday and what she said in a police interview in 2006. Then, she said her clothes were on when the massage started. On Friday, she said they were off. Then, she said the incident took place in June. On Friday, she said July. He said she cried on the witness stand as he pointed out those inconsistencies because "she'd been exposed." However, jurors apparently believed the girl's testimony. Reed began crying as soon as the guilty verdicts were read. Several supporters, including four people who had testified as to his good character, gasped and hung their heads. Shockley asked the judge to allow Reed to remain free on bond at least until Monday when the sentencing phase of the trial will begin. But Showalter ordered that he be taken into custody immediately. As deputies with the Radford Sheriff's Office led Reed out of the courtroom, he kissed his wife on the cheek.
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