CONNECTICUT
Patch
Posted by Aaron Boyd (Editor) , October 23, 2013
Walnut Hill Community Church in Bethel and several of its youth program coordinators have been named as defendants in a civil suit asserting their culpability in the 2009 sexual abuse of a minor by a member of the church’s youth leadership.
Former church member Matthew Anastasia was arrested in April 2010 and pled “guilty” to felony risk of injury to a child and misdemeanor sexual assault in the fourth degree. He was sentenced in 2011 to 10 years imprisonment, suspended after one year, and five years probation.
The civil suit filed in Danbury Superior Court claims that the church should have been aware of Anastasia’s “propensity to sexually abuse… minor females within the youth program yet failed to take steps to prevent his sexual abuse of the minor plaintiff.”
Along with the church, the complaint names Senior Pastor Clive Calver, Pastor of Community Life Scott Shockley and Youth Pastor Craig Mowrey as defendants, stating that their role as leaders in the church’s youth program at the time made them “responsible for the actions and conduct of all persons affiliated with the youth ministry programs and youth leadership of the church.”
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