GREENSBORO (NC)
Washington Times [Washington, D.C.]
May 21, 2024
By Mark A. Kellner
A Southern Baptist pastor in Greensboro, North Carolina, was arraigned Tuesday in federal court in New York City on charges of falsifying records in a sexual abuse case, part of the Department of Justice’s probe of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
The indictment is the first involving an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention, which federal officials have been investigating since August 2022 following revelations of hundreds of abuse cases within the denomination.
In March, the interim president of the church’s executive committee said no indictment of the governing body was expected, although some entities were still being probed. Tuesday’s indictment involved a former administrator and professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
Matthew Queen, senior pastor at Friendly Avenue Baptist Church since March of this year, was previously the interim provost at the seminary, where he also taught, according to media reports. He left the school in 2023 after being suspended, the seminary said.
“All employees alleged to have acted improperly in this matter are no longer employed by the seminary,” the seminary said in a statement.
The Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said Mr. Queen was charged with falsification of records in connection with notes provided to the FBI and with obstructing the agency’s investigation.
No information on any plea entered by Mr. Queen before U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in lower Manhattan was immediately available.
According to The Tennessean newspaper, Mr. Queen allegedly was involved in the 2023 case of Christian Flores, a student at the seminary’s undergraduate college, on charges of felony sexual assault. That case is pending in Tarrant County, Texas, the newspaper said.
The federal indictment alleges that Mr. Queen was present when another executive at the seminary ordered a third employee to destroy a November 2022 document describing allegations of sexual abuse by Mr. Flores and the failure of the seminary to take action.
Last May, Mr. Queen met with authorities at the U.S. Attorney’s Office and an FBI agent, the indictment said. He is alleged to have falsely stated that, at the meeting in question, he did not hear an instruction to destroy the document. He later provided a copy of his “contemporaneous notes” of the Jan. 23 meeting that omitted any mention of an instruction to destroy the 2022 incident memo.
The school said Tuesday it had “repeatedly informed staff of their duty to fulfill the obligations of the [Justice Department] subpoena” requiring information.
“The seminary has and will continue to cooperate fully with the DOJ in its investigation of sexual abuse,” the school said.