Sex Abuse Charges Dropped for Jehovah's Witness Elder

McAlester News-Capital
February 28, 2014

http://m.mcalesternews.com/mcalester/pm_113000/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=xXt2Ng1I


Charges have been dismissed for a McAlester church elder who allegedly molested, raped and sodomized three adults when they were children.

The charges were dismissed Wednesday for Ronald Lawrence, 76, of McAlester, an elder with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, according to court records. Associate District Judge James Bland dismissed the charges based on statue of limitation arguments from Lawrence’s attorney; the prosecutor in the case announced her intent to appeal Bland’s decision.

Lawrence had been accused of 11 counts of lewd molestation, five counts of forcible oral sodomy, two counts of forcible sodomy and one count of rape by instrumentation of three separate children from 1977 to 1982. The alleged victims in the case include a McAlester woman who was 8 to 13 at the time, a Muskogee man when he was 5, and a Haskell woman when she was 10 to 13, according to court records.

A court affidavit had alleged Lawrence was a church elder at the time of attacks that occurred at his home, in a pool and lake, and in a basement and janitor’s closet at a bank.