Black Collar Crime Round-Up: March 22, 2012
Grady Evans • Joseph T. Hackett • Donald Maus • Wendell Loy Nielsen
Expelled: William Watson “Billy” Birch, 43, from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, North Carolina, after being charged with sexually assaulting his 25-year-old roommate. Reacting to reports that seminary students were not notified of the alleged assault, school president Daniel Akin emailed all 3,000 students, and then, according to ABP, held a “special chapel service” and issued a press release “to clarify ’some misconceptions and misinterpretations’ resulting from early media reports suggesting that administrators were slow to notify the student body of the (more…)
Arrested again: Jimmie Blake, 47, former pastor, Morning Glory Missionary Baptist Church, Sanford, Florida, and special education teacher, Winter Springs High School, Winter Springs, Florida. Initially, Blake was charged in August, 2011, with sexually assaulting two boys, ages 12 and 18, between 1998 and 2003, “in Blake’s Sanford home that he shares with his wife, as well as inside Lyman High School, where Blake once worked as a teacher’s assistant,” reported WESH (which also noted: “Investigators say there was a third victim who came forward, but the statute of limitations 
Case to grand jury: Ann Adams, 63, organist, Exmore Baptist Church, Exmore, Virginia, charged with robbing a drycleaners of $184 the afternoon of February 1, 2012. Reports delmarvanow.com: “Police allege she stashed a knit cap, sunglasses, gloves and a bag used in the robbery in the restroom of a next-door beauty salon,” after entering Poulson’s Cleaners, where police say she threatened to pepper-spray the clerk as she demanded all the money from the cash register. Although the clerk complied, Adams reportedly shot pepper spray at her anyway. A Facebook page we believe 
Sentenced: Matthias Anderson, 41, former U.S. Marine; 2002 recipient of the City of Oceanside’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Civic Achievment Award (”
Sentenced: Jennifer Gomes, 42, former substitute teacher, Escuela de Guadalupe, a private Catholic school in Denver, Colorado, “to four years of mental health probation, with terms requiring her to serve 180 days of in-home detention,” reports KMGH, after pleading guilty to making a bomb threat to the school by leaving a note reading “There is a bomb inside.” At the time of her arrest in October, 2011, KMGH noted Gomes’s criminal history, which includes a 2009 guilty plea 
Charged: Kyley Jane Allworth, 29, basketball coach & lunchroom monitor, 
Sentenced: Paul Osman Barrie, evangelist, End Time Evangelical Ministry, a.k.a., End Time Evangelistic Christian Church, Kossoh Town, Sierra Leone, to 12 years in prison after being convicted of four counts of larceny; i.e., stealing audio-visual equipment (valued at some Le12.3 million, or about US$2,833) from his own church. Story: 
Captured: James Nana Kwasi Agyeman, 42, founder & general overseer (pastor), Church of Shiva Linga Prayer Group, Abidjan, La Cote d’Ivoire, and Dome, Accra, Ghana, “re-arrested at his hideout at Techiman in the Brong-Ahafo Region after absconding for almost four years whilst standing trial on charges of defilement involving eight children … ranging from three to 12 years old,” reports Peacefmonline.com. He is next due in court March 19, 2012. Story: 
Trial postponed: Gary W. Freeland, 60, former youth volunteer at several churches in the Chillicothe, Ohio, area, charged with multiple counts of rape and gross sexual imposition stemming from allegations of sexual abuse of children between the ages of four and 11 during the 1990s; at least one incident reportedly took place inside Tabernacle Baptist Church in Chillicothe. The Chillicothe Gazette reports that Freeland “found out during a status conference and hearing this week that he does not qualify for a public defender, which he had thought would be able to represent him at the multiple-day trial. … Freeland requested his $250,000 bond be modified so he could post bond to look for an attorney, but it was rejected. A new trial date has not been set pending Freeland retaining counsel.” According to 
New charges: Daniel Montague “Danny” Acker, Jr., 49, former youth pastor, Westwood Baptist Church, Alabaster, Alabama; former elementary- and middle-school teacher once named Teacher of the Year; and namesake son of Republican Shelby County commissioner Dan M. Acker; charged in January with sexually molesting at least 21 girls throughout his 25-year teaching career. Acker now faces “additional charges involving new alleged victims,” according to AP, for a “total of eight charges involving six victims.” Police believe there still may be other victims. Acker remains in custody. Story: 
Arrested: Barbara Williams Hatley, 48. treasurer, West Oakboro Baptist Church, Oakboro, North Carolina, on suspicion of embezzling an undisclosed amount of money from the church “over the course of several years.” Hatley is due in court March 12, 2012. Story: 
Sentence expected: Curtis Burkhardt, 44, volunteer youth pastor, First Baptist Church, Grand Blanc, Michigan, of one year in prison and five years’ probation after pleading no contest to “indecent exposure by a sexually delinquent person,” stemming from the accusation that Burkhardt had a “sexually toned” conversation with an 11-year-old girl and exposing himself to her while holding his own five-year-old daughter on his lap. The Detroit Free Press reports that Burkhardt “faces an odd penalty: one day to life in prison,” explaining: 
Arrested again: Erik Bjork, 17, charged with burlgarizing Morton Church of Christ, Morton, Illinois, where his father is pastor. Bjork pleaded guilty in January to an earlier theft from the church, for which he was sentenced to two years’ probation; on February 17th, Bjork was arrested a second time for breaking into the church; he faces felony charges of burglary and theft. Currently being held on a $100,000 bond, he is due back in court March 22, 2012. Story: 
Charged: Samuel Cobbina, 44, pastor and overseer, Nazareth Prayer Ministry, Sapeiman, Accra, Ghana, with the attempted rape of a 28-year-old female hairdresser. According to Ghana Nation: “Pastor Cobbina invited Eze into his room under the pretext of giving her divine direction to solve her problems. Cobbina, knowing what he was up to, intentionally delayed Eze till 10:30pm when she could not get access to transportation to her house. He started fondling and caressing her and demanded to have sex with her but she refused, asking him to stop because she was married. … 
Charged: Reuben Bynum, 61, former CFO, Trinity Baptist Church, Pontiac, Michigan, with embezzling some $650,000 from his church. Story: 
Extradition set: Gary Joseph Doby (a.k.a. “Uncle G”), 65, former professor, 
Sentenced: Mark Archibald, 57, of Red Deer, Alberta, former pastor, Evangelical Free Church of Canada and former manager, Canadian Sunday School Mission’s Camp Silversides, Gull Lake, Alberta, to one year’s house arrest followed by six months’ curfew, after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting three boys, aged 14 to 15, between 1978 and 1979. Archibald’s victims are quite displeased with his no-jail-time sentence (”I don’t know what a person has to do to a child to receive jail time in this country,” said one to the Edmonton Journal, noting that he “worries the sentence will discourage people who have suffered from other historic sexual offences from coming forward”), and with the assessment of of Archibald by Judge Thomas Schollie: “I’m satisfied he is not a pedophile. For a short period of his life, his brain wasn’t working too well.” Story: 
Arrested: Ricardo Aldana, 37, Spanish teacher, JSerra Catholic High School, San Juan Capistrano, California, and charged with “seven felony counts of lewd conduct with a 14-year-old female student.” The OC Register reports that officials “say they did not know” Aldana “had years earlier been suspended from a job at a public high school in Los Angeles County after claims of inappropriate behavior. … Aldana had taught Spanish and coached soccer at Hawthorne High School in the Centinela Valley Union High School District until Feb. 5, 2003, when district officials became aware of ‘allegations of misconduct and/or inappropriate behavior’ and placed him on paid administrative leave.” Aldana has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Story: Orange County Register, 
Guilty plea: Barry Caudle, 39, former youth minister, First Assembly of God, Marengo, Illinois, and former children’s pastor, Harvest Chapel, Sandwich, Illinois, to six felony counts involving the solicitation of a child for sex, including grooming and providing harmful material (”over a webcam while in the [Marengo] church,” reports the Northwest Herald). Caudle, who reportedly thought he was chatting online with a 14-year-old girl who turned out to be an undercover cop, was arrested at the First Assembly of God church. Sentencing is scheduled for April 10, 2012; in exchange for his plea, he will face no more than two years in prison and ten years’ registration as a sex offender. Story: 