Seaford Congregation Didn’t Report Sex Abuse

By Jessica Masulli Reyes and James Fisher
News Journal
August 5, 2015

http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2015/08/05/ag-claims-seaford-congregation-report-sex-abuse/31184877/

Katheryn Harris Carmean White is serving a six-year prison sentence for having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy. The Department of Justice has sued the Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation she and the boy attended for not reporting the abuse to the state.

A Delaware deputy attorney general will argue later this year that elders in a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation in Seaford failed to report that a woman and 14-year-old boy, both members of the congregation, were having a sexual relationship.

The Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against the Seaford Kingdom Hall and two of the congregation’s elders in May 2014.

A Superior Court judge in Wilmington is scheduled to hear the case Nov. 9.

Authorities claimed the elders, Joel Mulchansingh and William Perkins, did not report the sexual abuse when it was disclosed to them. Delaware law requires individuals and organizations to report abuse immediately via a 24-hour state hotline.

James Liguori, the attorney representing the congregation, could not be reached for comment late Wednesday afternoon.

A boy disclosed to his mother in January 2013 that he was in a sexual relationship with Katheryn Harris Carmean White, a fellow member of the congregation and a teacher’s aide at Seaford Middle School, according to the lawsuit.

The boy and his mother met with elders at the religious hall that same day. The elders said they would speak with Carmean White regarding the allegations, the suit said.

She confirmed the relationship when they met four days later, but the elders did not call the state hotline, according to the suit.

Carmean White was arrested in February 2013 and admitted to authorities that she had sex with the boy about 40 times over a 10-month period.

Carmean White, now 37, was convicted of third-degree rape, fourth-degree rape and child endangerment. She is serving a six-year prison sentence.

The civil case will likely raise questions about the constitutionality of Delaware’s child abuse reporting mandate. A Superior Court judge in a Sussex County trial recently upheld the mandate.

Eric Bodenweiser, a former political candidate charged with abusing a young boy in the 1980s, asked a judge to rule his pastor couldn’t give prosecution testimony because the conversation he and the pastor had was a ‘sacramental confession’ under the law, which is exempt from mandatory reporting.

Alternatively, Bodenweiser’s lawyers argued, the law was unconstitutional if it was read to allow Catholic confessions, but not faith leader-congregant talks in other faiths, to be privileged.

The judge in Bodenweiser’s case declined to interpret the law that way and the pastor did testify. That trial ended in a mistrial; Bodenweiser later pleaded no contest to a lesser charge.

Contact Jessica Masulli Reyes at (302) 324-2777, jmreyes@delawareonline.com