Lawrence, an elder at the Jehovah's Witness church in McAlester, was arrested after three accusers said he had abused them in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Associate District Judge Jim Bland dismissed the charges Thursday over the state's objections due to statute of limitations issues, Lawrence's attorney, Warren Gotcher, said Monday.

Court records show that Bland stayed the decision, pending prosecutors' appeal.

The state contends that the statute of limitations does not apply because the allegations were not reported to authorities until last year.

SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, issued a statement after the ruling, saying: "We are appalled that an allegedly spiritual man would seek to hide behind a technicality like this. If he wants to defend himself, let him do it on the merits, not on the technicalities."

McAlester police arrested Lawrence on Nov. 26 after a woman reported to them that she had been molested by him when she was a child.

Two other people spoke with police during the monthlong investigation about alleged abuse by Lawrence, police said at the time.

Prosecutors said Lawrence told police in October that he had been "disfellowshipped" from the church because of multiple sexual misconduct allegations and had admitted to the allegations in order to be reinstated to the church.

Lawrence told the investigator that he "did admit to his church that all the allegations brought against him by church members were true" and that "law enforcement was never informed of these allegations," the affidavit states.

Lawrence's defense had filed a motion stating that the statute of limitations — 12 years for rape or forcible sodomy, sodomy, lewd or indecent proposals or acts against children — had expired.

The state responded in late January that the statute of limitations clock begins at the moment of "discovery."

Prosecutors said that because there was a cover-up that reached to the upper levels of the church's national governing body, the crime had not been "discovered" until late 2013.

That was due in part because of "directives of the governing body toward the victims and their family members," as well as "further actions preventing the victims from reporting the crimes to law enforcement," prosecutors said.

The accusations were not reported at the time, according to the motion, because of concealment from "the entire church body, most especially the governing body of the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses."

In 2012, a California jury awarded a woman $28 million in damages after she said the Jehovah's Witnesses allowed her to be molested as a child in the 1990s.