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	Ex-Mobile Pastor Marshall Seymour Pleads Guilty in Florida Molestation Case By Dan Murtaugh Press-Register January 27, 2009 http://www.al.com/news/press-register/metro.ssf?/base/news/123305139496080.xml&coll=3 A pastor who once worked in both Mobile and Biloxi pleaded guilty or no contest last week to five felony charges in a child molestation case in Florida, according to news reports. Marshall Seymour faces as many as 65 years in prison at his March 12 sentencing hearing. Seymour worked as a youth pastor at the Parkway Assembly of God church in Mobile from 1995 to 1999. He was arrested and charged with sexual abuse in Mobile in 1999, but that was plea-bargained to a lesser assault charge, and he moved to Florida. Three years later, Parkway's insurance company settled a lawsuit with the boy's family. Police in Lakeland, Fla., arrested Seymour in 2007. A jury trial was supposed to start in Florida's 10th Circuit Court on Wednesday, but Seymour instead entered his pleas. According to Lakeland's newspaper, The Ledger, Seymour pleaded guilty to two counts of promoting the sexual performance of a child and one count of tampering with a witness. Seymour also pleaded no contest to one charge of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and to a third charge of promoting the sexual performance of a child, according to the report. Phone calls to the number listed for Parkway Assembly of God on Dauphin Island Parkway were not answered Monday afternoon. While the amount of the 2002 settlement was undisclosed, papers filed in Mobile County Circuit Court revealed claims that Seymour molested a B.C. Rain High School student nine times. The civil case file included testimony from a Biloxi pastor who said Seymour quit his post as a youth minister in Biloxi after being caught giving a back massage to a teenage boy. In Mobile, Seymour was a youth pastor at Parkway. A boy Seymour knew through the church said in a deposition that Seymour first propositioned him by offering him baseball cards if the boy would allow the youth pastor to measure his penis. The boy was 15 at the time. The boy detailed instances of Seymour either masturbating him or performing oral sex on him in the church's parking lot, at the minister's home and at another home. Parkway Pastor L.D. Henderson testified that he never suspected anything improper between Seymour and the boy. Henderson "says the church had no knowledge of the alleged acts until they had already been committed," court documents said. Henderson testified that when he hired Seymour in 1995, the youth minister had "good papers" from his church work in Mississippi. But Biloxi Pastor Jeff Fillmore said in a deposition that Seymour departed his Mississippi job just before revelations that he had been found alone with a boy despite warnings to avoid such encounters. Twice before, Fillmore said, Seymour had been in inappropriate situations with youths from the church, Northside Assembly of God. In the third incident, a Northside board member found Seymour alone with the board member's son, giving the boy a massage and rubbing his neck, according to a court motion. Fillmore allowed Seymour to leave in good standing, meaning he could remain a minister.
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