Community | February 12, 2013 | 87 comments

Children Barred From Florida Church Where Sex Offender Preaches

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Vic_Romano

http://current.com/community/94047923_children-barred-from-florida-ch...

Darrell Gilyard, a convicted child molester, has been allowed to preach again, but his services have been deemed "adults only."

By Richard Luscombe

A Florida church has caused outrage by turning away children from its popular Sunday services to cater to a pastor who is a registered sex offender.

The decision to allow convicted child molester Darrell Gilyard into the pulpit has angered neighbouring pastors and members of the congregation of the Christ Tabernacle Missionary Baptist church in Jacksonville.

Gilyard, 49, is allowed no contact with minors under the terms of his release from a three-year jail sentence for abusing a 15-year-old girl at another church in 2009. As a result church leaders have made his services "adults only".

Parishioners claim security guards hired by the church have begun refusing admission to families with children, including a woman who tried to attend on Sunday with a two-year-old boy.

Instead, they say, children are directed to remain "off site" while Gilyard is preaching, and they accuse the church of dismantling its playground to keep them away.

Since Gilyard was hired last month, soon after his December release from jail, the church in Northside, one of Jacksonville's poorest, mostly black neighbourhoods, has become the scene of angry exchanges between protesters and his supporters.

A group of demonstrators calling itself the New Black Panther party clashed with churchgoers and promised to protest each time Gilyard led a service.

"We came because the children who we should be teaching and preaching cannot come out today," said Mikhail Muhammad, the group's leader.

"The black ministers in the city of Jacksonville ought to be ashamed of themselves. How can you say you're a follower of Christ but you won't stand up and speak out against this injustice?"

Despite the protests, the church appears to have benefited from Gilyard's notoriety. His first service in January drew an estimated 150 people, up from a regular attendance of only five to 10, with dozens attending the most recent service on Sunday.

Deacon Paul S Newman, chairman of the church ministry, said: "He was down on the ground, and the church was down on the ground, and we both needed to get up."

But fellow Baptist leaders have denounced Gilyard's appointment, saying he needs to apologise to his victims and the community before being allowed to preach to others.

"We love Mr Gilyard as a human being and have no personal animosity, but he is a very wicked sinner who has committed hideous crimes against women and children," said Pastor George Harvey of the nearby Mount Charity Baptist Church.

"Any minister who has done such evil should not be restored to the pulpit until his repentance is as notorious as his sin."

Before his conviction on two counts of molesting minors, Gilyard was a shining star in the Baptist community, having spent 14 years preaching to thousands at Jacksonville's Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church.

One mentor hailed him as one of the "most brilliant men in the pulpit" and he was also once praised by the noted evangelical Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority movement, in his video The Darrell Gilyard Story, which chronicled his rise from a teenage orphan living on the streets.

But Gilyard, once a protege of Pastor Jerry Vines, a past president of the Southern Baptist Convention, was no stranger to controversy. He was formerly pastor of a church in Texas, but left in 1991 following allegations of sexual misconduct.

When charged with sex crimes in Florida in 2008, Rev Vines issued a statement saying that he had previously forgiven Gilyard for his problems in Texas but could no longer stand by him.

"I extended forgiveness and mercy to him and evidently he trampled upon them," Rev Vines wrote at the time.

"No minister, if guilty of sexual improprieties, especially with underage children, should ever be allowed to stand behind the sacred desk again. Let the truth be found and let justice be done."

In 2004, Gilyard admitted that he had fathered a child with a woman who had accused him of raping her during a counselling session, according to court records. Gilyard has not been charged with rape.

Gilyard's public comments have been few and he has refused to speak directly with journalists, slamming a door on a television crew that confronted him at the hotel where he resides near Jacksonville International Airport.

But in a statement sent by text message to the Florida Times Union newspaper this month he remained defiant.

"Somehow I will prove that life isn't over when one has committed a crime for which he receives this heinous label," he wrote. "You don't have to languish on the fringes of society."

In earlier comments he described his church comeback as "refreshing and invigorating" but revealed that he had initially declined the offer of work because he knew that it might create controversy.

"I was scared to death," he admitted, adding that his probation officer had cleared him to work there and that he was a man reformed. "I'm happy to have that dark part of my life over," he told the paper last month.

Nobody from the church was available for comment Tuesday and a call to Gilyard's lawyer was not immediately returned.

Roger Oldham, spokesman for the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has more than 16 million members in the US, said it was not empowered to step into the dispute.

"We have taken a strong position on the protection of children and believe it to be of paramount importance in a local church setting but have no authority over the actions of any individual church," he said.
  1. groups:
    Community,   Vic Romano's Insane Asylum
  2. tags:
    Religion,  Christianity,  Sex Offenders,  Preacher
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87 comments // Children Barred From Florida Church Where Sex Offender Preaches

  • alexandrekBack
    • 0
      alexandrekBack  

    • Who will go to a service of Faith and religion, preaching the good of Gods, its morale and value by a child molester!
      now demission is on at church, firing should be too

    • 3 months ago
  • Tayllerand
  • Debrinconcita
    • +1
      Debrinconcita  

    • THIS IS JUST SICK, he shouldn't be teaching anyone anything but how to change his own ways? I wouldn't even want to be in the church with him myself!

    • 3 months ago
  • matka
  • Ricky84
  • artemis6
  • FreeSpiritMuse
    • +6
      FreeSpiritMuse  

    • What's really sad is that this is about money. He increased attendance from 10 to almost 200 people. If his message was that important, then let him hold a seminar outside of the church. Making a deal with the devil and people couldn't wait to pay admission to get in (or whatever it is when they take up collection)

      "This situation sounds bizarre only at first glance. From a distance, the situation is quite common. A church is willing to make a decision based on what's best for business. A congregation is willing to take any words as moral lessons as long as the speaker is wearing a robe inside a church."

      http://www.transcendinggod.com/2012/12/church-attendance-skyrockets-when-sex.htm...

    • 3 months ago
  • bailey78
  • ThirdSection
  • matka
  • bailey78
  • ThirdSection
  • ThirdSection
  • matka
  • ThirdSection
  • matka
  • keithponder
    • +6
      keithponder  
    • Image

    • Sexual predators are the SCUM of the Earth. The pulpit in all religions are full of them. If the truth about God is supposedly based in religion and found in the church, why are there so many of these rotten filthy bastards posted up on center square every Sunday morning all over the planet.

      People from all walks of life better start waking up and realizing that spirituality has nothing.., absolutely nothing at all to do with religion

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_%28demon%29

      Legion (demon).Legion are a group of demons referred to in the Christian Bible.

      The demons comprising the Legion are given the APPEARANCE of fearing Jesus in the King James Version, Mark 5:10:

      The Gospel of Mark, 5:9, describes the following in the country of the Gadarenes:

      And He (Jesus) asked him (the man), "What is thy name?" And he answered, saying, "My name is Legion: for we are many."[1]

      Webster's Collegiate Dictionary traces the word RELIGION back to an old Latin word religio meaning "TABOO, RESTRAINT." A deeper study discovers the word comes from the two words re and ligare. Re is a prefix meaning "RETURN," and LIGARE means "to bind;" in other words, "RETURN TO BONDAGE." Do you still want some of that "old-time religion"?

    • 3 months ago
  • ThirdSection
  • matka
    • +3
      matka  
    • keithponder:

      I have a friend who was sexually molested as a child. The damage done to these victims
      is beyond belief.
      Now an adult, he see's a psychologist, shrink, and attends a group, Male Survivors of
      Sexual Abuse.

      Guess who did the abusing? His old man ! He was also raping his two daughters ( my
      friends' father). The jerk abuser said, "I don't need any psychiatrist, Jesus is my
      psychiatrist." He had every excuse in the book.
      The guys down the road were doin' it ( out in Walworth on a creepy little Eddie Gein
      type farm), pornography was to blame, God put the 'urge' in him to be overly-
      sexed....
      He had been a 'fussy old bachelor' till he met a pregnant farm girl and married
      her. Abused her as a wife until she had several 'nervous breadowns' and told
      her spouse, "I don't care what you do to the kids, just leave me alone."
      The mom died on Mother's Day after a long period of mental illness and
      bearing her husband 11 kids.......1 of which was still born, and 2 only lived
      a few months.

      It was awful. My friend's youngest brother self-delivered due to that and the
      fact that his dad left the farm to the eldest bro, who 'read the Bible and was a
      church attender...... just like the molester himself, the dad !

      So even if religion has nuthin' to do with it....... it must've in this case.

      When the old abusin' father finally croaked, at his wake, one of the elder
      daughers (who rose above it all and became an M.D.), said she'd attend cuz
      the first three letters in funeral were "FUN".

      The brothers all said, "It's good they buried pa face down."

      But the church congregation were all convinced that the abuser father was
      such a 'good spiritual dude.' He hid behind the church; I hope he's worked
      it out wherever he is now...............

      "It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
      And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."

    • 3 months ago
  • artemis6
  • artemis6
  • matka
  • treewolf39
    • 0
      treewolf39  
    • matka:

      This stuff is exactly one of my giant problems with religion. It is laced with secrecy and denial. I had to Expose this in part of my family which brought out the others that had been abused in this way. The first molester that tried to get a hold of me was not in my family and I was 11. I never got to expose that guy while anyone knew where he was. It makes one feel so dirty. I never knew this had happened to my latest kids mother and when she told her mother she was not believed. I think it really explains her violent side and the need to resort to lies. I am so glad I let it out even though it was 10 years after. This was part of the darker side I was not sharing. I have seen a lot that is hard to put into the right words!

    • 3 months ago
  • matka
    • +1
      matka  
    • treewolf39:

      I had to do lots of personal research on this very thing you are relating here, as
      on other webpages, I've told of a young man I had met years ago who was
      suicidal from having been molested himself. His entire family was peppered
      with incest. His youngest brother, Russell, self-delivered from it all. Yet no
      one every talked about it.

      It's called a Multi-Generational tragedy...the 'dinosaur in the living room'
      theory where everyone involved knows of the skeletons in the closets, yet
      steps around the issue and won't open up.

      The damage done to the victims is enormous. Later in his life, this fella
      joined a group, Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse. It helped him get back on
      track, but took years,also seeing a personal therapist.

      The main molestor was this guy's father, who hid behind the church his
      entire life, having people think he was a 'fine, upstanding Christian man'
      while every Sunday afterward and whenever the notion took him, he was
      busily raping his two daughters AND sons.
      When one member told the molestor filther that he needed to see a shrink,
      his reply was, "Jesus is my psychiatrist."

      It was a big family......I'm surprised no one killed him. The mom was abused
      and driven insane by the old pa too.

      A lot of what you've said here sounds very familiar, i.e. , 'it makes you
      feel so dirty', and how one mom wouldn't believe her daughter....... that is
      called Betrayal of Innocence.

    • 3 months ago
  • treewolf39
    • +1
      treewolf39  
    • matka:

      That it is. Interesting it makes me happy to be the father of two girls so as to be able to share these disturbing behaviors with them so they are able to see the signs and even help protect their friends. I will find another partner someday and if not that will be alright as well. I do dream of an Indian princess who likes me for who I am. Now i am working on finding that out myself. Who am I? Goodness I hope I am worthy of being loved! I have been thinking about these things a lot.

    • 3 months ago
  • matka
  • keithponder
  • ThirdSection
  • ThirdSection
    • +4
      ThirdSection  

    • Hopefully, those families will find something better to do with their Sundays. A few hours in the morning that could be spent sleeping in is an awful lot to devote to a fictitious deity after all.

    • 3 months ago
  • bailey78
  • matka
  • jimstoner
    • +7
      jimstoner  

    • Just more special privileges for Christians.

      The pedophile got to keep his job as school principal, he just can’t have any contact with children.

      The pedophile in charge of the local charity gets to keep his chair, he just can’t have any contact with children.

      The pedophile got to keep his job as mayor, he just can’t have any contact with children.

      Right. Those kinds of things happen every day.

      How does that conversation go anyway? You tell your neighbor that someone on the sex offenders list and an admitted pedophile has moved into the neighborhood and she reacts with justified horror. You then tell her its okay, this sexual predator and pedophile is a Christian moral leader, so the special privileges given Christians overrides her fears for the community. Relax you could tell her. This is a person who teaches the morality of Christianity every Sunday. He may prey on our children, but he can pray for our children and that makes it okay.

      He was told he could not have contact with children.

      Why don’t we just tell all pedophiles that? Well, at least the ones that are not Christian moral leaders. They know they can get away with it. They just have to pull out the Christian card.

    • 3 months ago
  • treewolf39
  • Leen61
  • letsliveinpeace
    • +6
      letsliveinpeace  
    • Leen61:

      That's exactly what I was thinking, WHAT is going on?

      He’s an abomination to the human race. They set themselves up in churches to manipulate children; church is a trap for them to gain the parents trust, LIZARD, SPIDER and full of all abomination. They will never change so how can they escape damnation. He should be in prison for life; he’s a danger to society. And what amazed me the most is how some parents send their children back to these abuser.... Because they believe their crap!

    • 3 months ago
  • Leen61
  • letsliveinpeace
  • Leen61
  • treewolf39
  • MarshainFlorida
    • +6
      MarshainFlorida  

    • We need some good news here, and it has come from the Senate. They passed the Women's right against violence act - finally - by a vote of 78 to 22. Guess they feared they'd lose the women's vote in the next election so they finally decided to do the right thing. Guess they'll have to stop beating their own wives.

    • 3 months ago
  • FreeSpiritMuse
  • treewolf39
  • MarshainFlorida
  • MarshainFlorida
  • treewolf39
    • +3
      treewolf39  
    • MarshainFlorida:

      But I see that many of the democrat Senators are just as bad and only vote decently in a while when they think they will be caught. People need to learn to research and really pay attention to something besides a news anchor. I don't want the names my self just want them out in the open instead of just party numbers. I bet the Independent voted for it.

    • 3 months ago
  • artemis6
  • MarshainFlorida
  • MarshainFlorida
  • treewolf39
    • +2
      treewolf39  
    • MarshainFlorida:

      I would do that if we had a better government or decent TV stations that could speak truth. Misinformation seems to have become the norm. Shoot midnight! I better rest my head and get it ready for the new teeth. My last try at a real relationship ended me with a rather beautiful women who was violent. It was horrible and I had to kick her out cause there is no way I will raise a child around violence in the home. To make matters worse see then went and told everyone that I abused her which never happened even when she hit me. The first time I was holding the baby. I went to court cause she wanted to take away my parent rights using lies but a decent judge didn't buy it for a second. I got a little over half the week. I never even tried to hurt her that way cause she is the child's mother and the little one loves her mother. People can be so despicable at times and others just want control of everything but not to except their faults. Tomorrow will always be a new day with new adventures if it is allowed in ones mind. Night!

    • 3 months ago
  • MarshainFlorida
  • treewolf39
  • treewolf39
  • matka
  • MarshainFlorida
  • artemis6
  • MarshainFlorida
  • matka
  • Vic_Romano
  • treewolf39
  • Vic_Romano
  • treewolf39
    • +2
      treewolf39  
    • Vic_Romano:

      No kidding! Rapists and child abuser should never be free again. I am in no way for capital punishment. Prisons should be used to protect all not to give a smacking and then told to be good.

    • 3 months ago
  • MarshainFlorida
  • MarshainFlorida
  • Vic_Romano
  • MarshainFlorida
  • MarshainFlorida
  • matka
    • +2
      matka  
    • treewolf39:

      Sure they should....... but there are places where one can get any drug they desire,more
      than on the street, where inmates pay off guards to look the other way to murder or
      start a gang war.......not all prisons, not all guards are corrupt. But the D.O.C. has
      a lot to be cleaned up.

      Give em color TV, give em work out equipment to build big bods for thugs........ it's
      a big constrast as well. Depends on the state where the incarcerated are. Many
      innocent people there as well.

      There are warehouses < institutions) where they have inmates, hardened career
      criminals work with animals and they become more human.
      Then there are those who parole ( due to over-crowding supposedly) murderers,
      rapists, child molesters....it's crazy.

      A case recently where a guy pleaded with the parole board not to free him or he
      knew he'd kill again. Did they listen? Nope. The 'free man' that very day, raped
      and murdered a woman, then dragged her body to lay right outside the prison
      gates........ did they ever catch the mistake the Parole Board made?
      Naw, the guy's still out there..........who knows which victim will be his next.

      What a world. I worked for Probation/Parole, Feds, yuk.........and the Racine
      Correctional Instituion at one time during my career. Saw a lot that made me
      eventually resign........couldn't take it. Too, too ugly.

      Ever see The Shawshank Redemption, a movie adapted from a Stephen King
      novella? Morgan Freeman and a big cast, up for Academy Awards the year
      it was released.

    • 3 months ago
  • matka
  • matka
  • matka
  • matka
  • treewolf39
    • +3
      treewolf39  
    • matka:

      Great comment! Sounds like you have seen a lot of crap like I have. A memory I have was the first time a pistol was put to my head just cause I was a white boy in a black neighborhood. Thank goodness I was there with my beautiful black girlfriend and my black friend her cousin. It was cool he didn't shoot me but at first he sure wanted to. White boys just did not go down that street but not being racist I had no idea. I was 18 and had been on my own for about a year and a half. I spent 5 days in jail also with the really violent offenders accused of killing and all sorts of other heinous stuff. It was not bad and the stories were incredible. Lived with bikers for a half a year kind of a total accident. Walked quite a ways carrying all my stuff to escape and ended up dating the leaders sister for a very short time. She was really good in bed! Wow there is hell lot more and some kind of really scary. It teaches me a lot though about people and things that people hold on to inside.

      My father made me promise not to kill the man that raped two of my sisters right after they moved away from home. I am not sure I will keep that promise but I hear he is in jail right now. He is safe from me while my daughter is young but 13 years from now if he is on the streets I am not so sure. He killed his father and got away with it. F-uped world sometimes when you pay attention.

    • 3 months ago
  • MarshainFlorida
    • +3
      MarshainFlorida  
    • matka:

      How can a parole board release a man who swears he's going to do it again???? They should have been brought up on charges for causing the death of that woman. I hope the family sued the hell out of that parole board.

    • 3 months ago
  • matka
    • +2
      matka  
    • MarshainFlorida:

      How the hell did they do it? They did ! One summer several years ago, I wuz
      reading books on institutions & prisons and came across this case. I forgot the
      name of the book and the name of the institution, but this was all non-fictitious
      cases of how Parole Boards F up.
      The example didn't follow on whether the family sued or not, but I'll never
      forget it because it was so unreal. And this was only several years ago....
      this is our fine country's institutional crimes itself that they commit !

    • 3 months ago
  • matka
  • treewolf39
    • +2
      treewolf39  
    • matka:

      After I wrote that I remembered some of the darker shit that happen when I was young. It made me very aware and a voice for truth. No fear!! GLAD TO HAVE YOU AROUND. Have a good night and tomorrow. Peace

    • 3 months ago
  • matka
    • +1
      matka  
    • treewolf39:

      Sometimes, most times, recalling about past horrible times and then speaking of
      them, gets them "off chest" as they, which is rather foolish cuz it's off ones' "mind".

      But, all that aside, I'm happy you are not fearful any longer.

      Thank you for your kind words and PAX to you as well !
      ( "pax" Latin for peace ) ...... heh, dohn wanna sound like Berlitz School of
      Language. :)

    • 3 months ago
  • treewolf39
  • matka
  • matka
  • matka
  • matka
  • matka
    • +1
      matka  
    • treewolf39:

      See? And u had said on one webpage that you didn't think you were wise man.
      I wuz always interested in languages...... except the ones where their alphabet is not
      Roman letters. I mean like the beautiful, but squiggly Arabic

    • 3 months ago
  • treewolf39
    • +1
      treewolf39  
    • matka:

      They get to write it backwards to the way we write this one. It is like being able to use the brain in another way. I saw in my mind a new language using thoughts of pictures today while finding little beautiful pebbles at the river today. I want to see a way to send a complete view to another being without it being manipulated.

    • 3 months ago
  • matka
    • +1
      matka  
    • treewolf39:

      Well, I do know that Japanese has over 500 'picture word forms' < (cuniforms)? and
      they're written up and down, left to right.
      Your being able to use brain when by river with your desire to send to another
      being w/o it being manipulated is far beyond my comprehension. But it sounds
      very enigmatic/charismatic.

    • 3 months ago
  • treewolf39
    • 0
      treewolf39  
    • matka:

      I think we have to dream it, want it, and create it enveloping joy. Just done with the money game. No joy there. It is not real and it promotes the illusion of safety.

    • 3 months ago
  • matka
    • +2
      matka  
    • treewolf39:

      But treewolf, I thought you already nu that money, albeit a necessity to get by
      on, is superficial and we sure can't take it with us. ' your gold and silver will be
      cast into the streets, worthless'...... < ( I didn't say that, so don't quote me....LOL.

      Tak, it 'tis very illushionary. People create a lot of illushion that ends in
      their own demise. Some live like this their entire existance on this plane.

      The rest of your thoughts on all wot u say are beautiful though.

    • 3 months ago
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