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	Hinds DA Office Probes Sex Abuse Claims against Former Clinton Music Minister By Ruth Ingram The Clarion-Ledger August 19, 2011 http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20110819/NEWS/110819021/Hinds-DA-office-probes-molestation-claims-against-ex-Clinton-teacher Accusations of child sex abuse lodged against a former Clinton High choir director are now being investigated by the office of Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith. A former metro-area resident who now lives in another state contacted Clinton Police Chief Don Byington on August 12 and told him he had been sexually abused by John Langworthy about 20 years ago in the Clinton area. On Thursday, the man met at the Clinton Police Department with Byington, Hinds County assistant district attorneys Jamie McBride and Shaunte Washington, and investigators from both departments. The Clarion-Ledger does not identify victims of sexual abuse. McBride and Washington assist in prosecutions involving victims of sexual crimes. The alleged victim has not yet signed an affidavit against Langworthy, McBride said. “These are very serious allegations,” McBride said. The victim has told police that he was molested as a boy of 10 or 12. “We’re going to thoroughly investigate it, and if the facts support it, then we will vigorously prosecute it. We’re in an investigatory phase right now.” Langworthy, who also is former minister of music at Clinton's Morrison Heights Baptist Church, admitted to the congregation during August 7 services to past sexual indiscretions with teenage boys in Mississippi and Texas. Langworthy told congregants he moved to Mississippi because of sexual indiscretions more than two decades ago when he was a music minister at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas. Langworthy resigned from his Morrison Heights position in May. He did not return to the high school this fall as director of the Arrow Singers choir at Clinton High. Houston, Texas resident Amy Smith, a ministry intern at Prestonwood during Langworthy's time there, wrote to Clinton school district and Morrison Heights leaders when she learned he was a Clinton district teacher and had daily contact with children. In a statement earlier this month, the Clinton district confirmed that Superintendent Phil Burchfield had known of the allegations against Langworthy since August 2010. The district "had no evidence, other than allegations, that the conduct had actually taken place, and the employee never admitted to the district that the conduct happened," its statement said. "It takes great courage, and it is very healing, for a victim to step forward," Smith, who heads the Houston, Texas, chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said Monday. "He sends a very strong message to any child being abused that it is OK to tell." McBride said his office is “dedicating serious resources to this. It’s a serious situation. “We do not have to have an affidavit” to prosecute should evidence support it, he said. “We could present it to a grand jury.”
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