Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!
Minister imprisoned
BY SHEILA MCLAUGHLIN
HAMILTON – A crowd of about 50 congregation members and relatives packed a Butler County courtroom and spilled out into the hallway as the pastor of a Hamilton church was sent to prison for 15 months for molesting a Fairfield teen.
The Rev. Bruce Curtis, 54, of Community Friendship Church was convicted last month of attempted sexual battery and sexual imposition involving the 17-year-old girl that he was counseling.
Curtis apologized to the girl and her family and asked Judge Keith Spaeth, of common pleas court, to consider his years of public service in Hamilton, where he was known to help people down on their luck.
Spaeth agreed that Curtis should get some credit for his life-long community involvement and for the respect shown by supporters who sent dozens of letters to the judge asking for leniency.
But he said Curtis deserved prison.
“You used your position as a pastor to prey upon a female put in your care to pastor because she was troubled,” Spaeth said.
He noted Curtis had tried to coerce the girl into touching him sexually by saying it was prescribed in a Bible covenant.
“The use of the Bible, your faith and the victim’s faith to perpetuate and facilitate the offense is utterly despicable,” Spaeth said.
He also said he considered Curtis a threat to repeat his crime because he had fathered a child with a girl who was 17 many years ago. Curtis was an adult at the time, Spaeth said. (more…)
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