Lake Jury Awards Molested Boy $12.5 Million in Verdict against Florida Baptist Convention
By Susan Jacobson
A jury in Lake County has awarded $12.5 million to a man who, as a child, was sexually abused by a Baptist minister, his attorney announced Monday. "It's one of the biggest [monetary awards] in Florida — maybe the most for a single victim," said the man's attorney, Ron Weil of Weil Quaranta McGovern of Miami. The jury agreed unanimously on the award Saturday morning after a six-day trial on the issue of damages. A separate jury in May 2012 held the Florida Baptist Convention liable in the case, saying the organization didn't adequately investigate Douglas W. Myers, 64, who previously had been accused of inappropriate conduct with children. "This was a long journey for this child who needlessly suffered because the institutions he trusted failed to protect him," Weil said in a statement. "In light of the evidence presented, the jury surely understood the devastating impact on this young man." A Florida Baptist Convention spokeswoman on Monday said she was unaware of the verdict, and attorneys for the group, which supports more than 2,900 congregations, could not be reached. The boy, now 21 and a college student, is still living with the effects of the abuse, Weil said. Myers recruited the youth as a volunteer to help start new churches and spread the faith, saying he wanted to be a mentor partly because he and his wife had lost a child, Weil said. Myers founded two churches in Lake County in the mid-2000s: Harbor Baptist Fellowship in Howey-in-the-Hills and Triangle Community Church in Eustis. Both have been disbanded. The first jury found that Myers was an agent of the convention in his "church-planting" efforts but not an employee. "The real truth of the verdict is that it's reaffirming," Weil said. "There's a great sense of vindication and justice. They should have protected him." Myers served a seven-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to lewd and lascivious molestation. He met the boy at Bay Street Baptist Church in Lake County and abused him over the course of six months while also taking him on trips to Walt Disney World, giving him money and driving him to school. During the trial, the victim testified that Myers "told me it was a normal part of growing up. He told me he had done it with plenty of other kids at other churches." Myers was accused of improprieties with children while he briefly served as pastor at Dunkirk Baptist Church in Dunkirk, Md., and Concord Baptist Church in Russellville, Ala., before he and his wife moved to Florida. The allegations included taking children skinny dipping and cornering a 10-year-old boy. After he was released from prison in December 2012, Myers faced charges in the old cases in Maryland. He entered that state's equivalent of a no-contest plea to three counts of custodial child abuse and was sentenced in October in Calvert County, Md., to 45 years in prison with 30 years suspended, news reports show. The offenses occurred in December 1997, April 1999 and March 2001. Testimony in the liability portion of Myers' Florida trial showed that the Jacksonville-based convention ran criminal-background, motor-vehicle and credit checks on Myers but failed to check his references or contact the churches where he previously worked. Contact: sjacobson@tribune.com
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