UNITED STATES
World
Warren Cole Smith
Last week, former youth minister Robert “Bobby” Price went to jail for 16 months for molesting two boys. In addition to the prison sentence, he must register as a sex offender for the next 30 years. His life, his family, and the church he served have been wrecked, perhaps irreparably. What is even more tragic, the two young boys he abused will be scarred for life.
And I can’t shake the feeling that if I had done my job, none of this would have happened.
Rumors about Price had circulated for years. In the 1990s, his father, Bradley Price, was pastor of Northside Baptist Church, a large independent congregation in Charlotte, N.C., my hometown. I edited a small Christian newspaper back then, and one of my reporters and I investigated financial and other improprieties at the church.
On one memorable day, after we published our first story, someone from Northside Baptist Church called to warn me—with the threat of a lawsuit—not to publish any more stories about the church. I told him our reporting was fair and accurate. I also told him I had heard from credible people about sexual impropriety at the church. He would not confirm what I was hearing, but he would not deny it either. We ultimately published more stories that helped lead to the resignation of Bradley Price and the departure of most of his family members from that church.
But the Price family moved a few miles up Interstate 85 into a neighboring county and started another church, King’s Way Baptist Church. Some years later, Bradley Price had a heart attack and nearly died. When he recovered, he called to invite me out to his new church for a meeting. I was surprised to receive the invitation, but I was glad to say yes and spend a pleasant afternoon with a Bradley Price who professed to be a changed man, a man whose recent experiences had humbled him and resulted in better physical and spiritual health. He even thanked me for the stories I had published, saying they had put him on a new path that God was blessing.
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