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	Sex Abuse Suit Filed against Ex-Pastor Associated Press, carried in Tennessean September 29, 2008 http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080929/NEWS03/809290375/1017/NEWS01 LAFOLLETTE, Tenn. — A former pastor of an East Tennessee Presbyterian church is accused in a lawsuit of sexually abusing a mentally unstable young woman. Malcolm M. King III, his church, First Presbyterian Church of LaFollette, and the Presbytery of East Tennessee are defendants in a $40 million Campbell County Circuit Court lawsuit filed last month. Quantcast The lawsuit alleges the abuse began in July 2006 and continued through November 2007. No criminal charges have been filed. King, 58, admitted in a statement to the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbytery of East Tennessee to sexual misconduct with the woman, now 22, and resigned after serving 17 years as pastor. The woman's family members were longtime members of the church, and she had known King since she was 5, the lawsuit states. When she went to King in May 2006 for spiritual counseling, he knew she had been diagnosed with emotional disorders, was suicidal and would not have been competent to enter into a consensual sexual relationship, according to the lawsuit. The Presbytery of East Tennessee has removed King from its ministry for at least five years and ordered him to get counseling and rehabilitation. The lawsuit, filed by the woman's father and conservator, alleges church authorities initially did not take the complaints seriously and did not follow the Presbyterian Church USA policy on such situations.
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