TEXAS
Associated Baptist Press
An advocacy group says Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, should explain why in the 1980s it failed to report a confessed child molester who recently avoided prison in a plea bargain for similar crimes in another state.
By Bob Allen
A mother who says her son was molested more than 20 years ago by a then-staff member at one of the Southern Baptist Convention’s largest churches says the congregation’s leaders need to come clean about what a victims’ advocacy group calls a cover-up of child sexual abuse by clergy.
The anonymous woman said her family endured “indescribable” hurt after learning her son was molested for months by John Langworthy, a staff member at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas from 1984 until 1989.
Langworthy, who went on to serve 22 years as associate pastor of music and ministries at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Miss., recently received a 50-year suspended sentence in Mississippi for molesting multiple boys as young as 6 he met through local churches while a student at Baptist-affiliated Mississippi College from 1980 until 1984
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