Conservative Babylon

Black Collar Crime Round-Up: June 22, 2012

Michael Crippen • Antoine Johnson • Raymoind M. “Marty” Johnson • Ira Parmenter • Joseph Nnaemeka
Abraham Rubin; Jacob, Joseph & Hertzka Berger (Nechemya Weberman) • Michael Salman

Michael A. Crippen Sentenced: Michael Alan Crippen, 53, former pastor, First Baptist Church, Duenweg, Missouri, to three years and 10 months in federal prison without parole, reports the Western District of Missouri U.S. Attorney’s Office. “The court also ordered Crippen to serve a term of 20 years of supervised release following his incarceration. On July 20, 2011, Crippen … pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography. Crippen admitted that on August 23, 2009, he downloaded 10 images of child pornography from a Web site. He also admitted that he had viewed images of adult and child pornography on the Internet for several years. According to court documents, Crippen was identified during an investigation by the Dutch National Police into a Web site in The Netherlands that contained child pornography. Europol provided information to federal agents in the United States, who identified Crippen’s computer as one that downloaded child pornography. Law enforcement officers contacted Crippen at his residence on Oct. 13, 2010, and seized his laptop and desktop computers. Crippen told agents that he had deleted images of adult and child pornography earlier in the day to his recycle bin on his laptop computer and prayed for God to intervene with his pornography problem. More than 300 images of child pornography were located in the unallocated clusters of his laptop computer, including images of children under 10 years of age.” Story: Conservative Babylon, November 5, 2010; U.S. Attorney’s Office, June 21, 2012

Sentenced: Antoine Johnson, 29, former youth mentor, Hebron Baptist Church, Dacula, Georgia, to life in prison plus 60 years’ probation (in case he is ever paroled) following his conviction on three counts of aggravated child molestation, and his rejection of a plea deal that would have resulted in a sentence of only 20 years. Johnson was found guilty of sexually molesting two boys, 13 and 14 years old, and attempting to lure a 15-year-old boy, enticing the youths by posing as a 14-year-old girl named “Kristen” on MySpace. Johnson confessed to multiple felony counts, but later recanted, “saying he only ‘took the fall’ because he wanted to keep secret homosexual tendencies between the boys that they’d confided in him,” reports the Gwinnett Daily Post, which adds: “Johnson repeatedly dismissed his online behavior as altruism, saying the attention paid to the boys by who they thought was an attractive teen girl only boosted their self-esteem.” Story: Gwinnett Daily Post, June 20, 2012

United States Sued: Raymond Martin “Marty” Johnson, Jr., 80, former doctor; founder, World Affairs Council of South Texas; former volunteer, Beaverton Foursquare Church, Beaverton, Oregon; by one Matt Davis, who claims Johnson sexually abused the then-teen during the 1990s. According to the lawsuit, Davis “attended meetings and events with, and received religious instruction and direction from” Johnson, who “held bible studies and youth group parties at his home, and hosted [Davis] and other youths at his home for Church-approved or -sponsored activities or events. …Johnson befriended and gained the trust of [Davis] for one or more years through the Grooming process prior to abusing him. …” Davis is seeking $1,000,000.

The Corpus Christi Caller-Times notes that this lawsuit is the latest claim against Johnson, “who has a history dating back decades of allegations lodged against him by teenage boys, according to records and Johnson himself. Johnson… said in an interview a year ago that he is a reformed man, that he stopped all unwanted contact with teenage boys 30 years ago. He said his volunteerism in Corpus Christi is penance for his past. … [T]he Oregon Medical Board in 1971 placed Johnson on probation after he admitted to engaging in sexual activities with a teenage boy, according to the Oregon Medical Board report. From then, he remained under medical board restrictions for all but three years until he surrendered his license in 2004. … When asked how many victims there have been over the years, Johnson said, ‘I can’t say.’” Story: In the Matter of the Proceedings for the Revocation of the License of Raymond Martin Johnson, Jr., M.D., Board of Medical Examiners, State of Oregon, January 20, 1971; M.D. v. Marty Johnson, May 23, 2012; Corpus Christi Caller-Times, June 10, 2012

Nigeria Charged: Joseph Nnaemeka, 30, pastor, Christ Our Banner Ministries, Gwagwalada, Nigeria, with conspiracy, theft and “enticing a married woman.” allAfrica.com reports that “the pastor’s wife and the pastor were arraigned following a complaint lodged by the woman’s husband, Joel Aluku at Gwagwalada Police Station. He said the woman’s husband had in 2008 allegedly stopped the pastor from coming to his house to offer prayers for his wife, adding that on April 2009, the pastor conspired to cart away the woman’s husband’s property worth N3.2 million to an unknown place. According to the prosecutor, the acts were committed when the woman’s husband travelled to Enugu state. He said the case has been before the police since 2008.” Nnaemeka, free on N500,000 bail, has pleaded not guilty to all charges. The case has been adjourned until July 25, 2012. Story: allAfrica.com, June 21, 2012

Court date adjourned: Ira Parmenter, 33, former youth pastor, Colwood Pentecostal Church, Victoria, British Columbia; to September 13, 2012. Parmenter was charged in May with sexual exploitation of a teenager; i.e., allegedly engaging in a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old female congregant. Story: Conservative Babylon, May 16, 2012; Goldstream News Gazette, June 21, 2012

Charged: Four ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, “with attempting to silence an accuser” of Brooklyn rabbi Nechemya Weberman, currently on trial, charged with 88 counts of sexual abuse, including rape of a then-13-year-old girl; “by offering [the girl] and her boyfriend a $500,000 bribe, and threatening her boyfriend’s business,” reports the New York Times. Abraham Rubin, 48, has been charged with bribery, witness tampering and coercion; brothers Jacob, Joseph and Hertzka Berger are charged with coercion. The NYT reports that the Bergers are accused of “threaten[ing] and then remov[ing] the kosher certification of a restaurant run by the accuser’s boyfriend. The three brothers are sons of a local rabbi who issues kosher certifications to stores.” All four have pleaded not guilty. Story: Conservative Babylon, June 10, 2012; New York Times, June 21, 2012

Sentenced: Michael Salman, ordained Church of God in Christ (COGIC) minister; pastor, Harvest Christian Fellowship (also: Facebook); and owner, Mighty Mike’s Burgers, Phoenix, Arizona; to 60 days in jail and three years of probation for “representing as a church on his home property without securing the proper permits,” reports the Christian Post. azfamily.com reports: “Inside a back building on his property … is a pulpit and chairs — room for the 30 to 40 who gather here weekly. Still Salman insists this is no public church. … Inspectors say for what Salman was doing, he needed dozens of building and safety updates. All Salman says he was doing was practicing freedom of religion. The court disagreed. … The Maricopa County Prosecutor’s Office tells 3TV that this is not a religious freedom issue, but that Salman has consistently refused to comply with building codes and safety standards that are required by law.” In one of his protest videos posted to YouTube (under the alias “Kryptologos”), Salman declares: “I’m a criminal because I’m a Christian.”

The Christian Post also notes that “the Salmans have launched an online petition on Change.org directed to the ‘Mayor and City Council’ of Phoenix. So far, only 93 visitors have signed the petition, which needs 100,000 supporters.” That may be because angry neighbors are upset about his building a 4,200-square-foot structure up against the property line, according to a lengthy 2008 profile in the Phoenix New Times, which quotes several neighbors, including one who recounted a neighborhood meeting with Salman: “He gave us a lecture on the fact that all of us were going to make money on our property, and if we were true Christians, we ought to be willing to sacrifice a little bit. … That meeting is where the real animosity started. He made no effort at being conciliatory or cooperative. That really united the neighbors against him. He was his own worst enemy.”

The New Times also reports that Salman — who has been divorced, yet is reportedly vehemently opposed to marriage equality — is a former gang member with a prison record, and was once arrested for impersonating a police officer, purportedly in order to scare a boy who was “fooling around” with a girl in Salman’s church. Two years earlier, Salman, “hoping to scare the hell out of a kid who’d been messing with his girlfriend’s little brother,” reportedly “donned a Raiders T-shirt and fired five rounds from a .38 special into the kid’s house,” nearly hitting the boy’s mother. He was found guilty of aggravated assault and sentenced to six years in prison. Also: “In 1994, Salman had filed paperwork claiming that he belonged to the Embassy of God. That meant, the document claimed, that he didn’t need to follow United States law.”

Salman has not yet begun his 60-day sentence; when he surrended June 16th, jail officials “inexplicably” sent him home. Story: Phoenix New Times, January 17, 2008; Phoenix New Times, April 15, 2011; azfamily.com, June 19, 2012; Phoenix New Times, June 20, 2012; Christian Post, June 21, 2012. See also: “Dips— of the Week,” (language NSFW), an eye-opening video dissecting Salman’s video-sermons, which claims that Salman is in favor of “assassination” in some instances, and condones the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.

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