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EMarshallBuckles
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| Joined: | Mon Nov 19th, 2007 |
| Location: | Rockville (Near Richmond), Virginia USA |
| Posts: | 565 |
| First Name: | Marshall | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Christian Church,Episcopal Church,Baptist denomination,learning about RCC |
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Posted: Sat May 17th, 2008 07:10 pm |
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Minister arrested in sex sting
By MATTHEW WATKINS
Eagle Staff Writer
By MATTHEW WATKINS
Eagle Staff Writer
A minister at a Plano megachurch was arrested in Bryan early Thursday after he drove more than three hours to have sex with a person he thought was a 13-year-old girl, police said.
The person with whom 52-year-old Joe Barron had been chatting online was a Bryan police officer conducting a sting operation.
He was one of two men arrested in a 48-hour period on charges of online solicitation of sex with a minor after investigators posed online as young girls. The crime is a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
The other arrest was made Tuesday when 34-year-old Bryan resident Christopher Scott Kazmierski tried to make the same connection as Barron, authorities said.
Five other men were in touch with officers pretending to be teens over the past week, but they never showed.
Barron serves as a minister at the 26,000-member Prestonwood Baptist Church. He is not the church's main pastor, but he has counseled married couples and was planning to lead a mission trip to Bogota, Colombia, in August, according to the church's Web site. The church has at least 20 ministers on its staff, according to the site.
Messages left at the church elicited no response Thursday evening.
Police said they began chatting with Barron online about two weeks before he made the drive to Bryan. During that time, he told "the girl" he wanted to have sex with her and requested that she skip school Thursday and meet with him.
Undercover officers arranged the meeting at a predetermined location in Bryan on Thursday morning.
"He said that he had moved around his work schedule so he could come to town," said Sgt. Shane Bush, who leads a vice unit called the Directed Deployment Team that runs the stings.
Police inconspicuously surrounded the lot with surveillance vans and unmarked trucks, then waited nearly two hours for him to arrive. In the meantime, the man was chatting online with the undercover officer on his phone while he drove.
"It's like hurry up and wait when you are investigating these things," said Sgt. Sharean Gideon as she waited for more than an hour in a van across the street from the meeting point.
Barron arrived about 10:30 a.m. in a different car than the one he had described during his chat, and he went to a lot adjacent to the arranged meeting point.
After brief confusion because he parked in a different spot than he had said he would, officers swept in to make the arrest.
An officer approached the man's car with his pistol pointed while Barron fiddled with something in the center console. Barron, dressed in a blue striped golf shirt and blue jeans, quickly lifted his hands in the air and surrendered to police without incident. Barron was handcuffed and escorted to a patrol car as his eyes welled up with tears.
Officers searched his car and found a computer camera that they later said he was going to give the girl as a gift. They also found 10 condoms folded inside a golf ball box in the back, officers said.
He's expected to go before a judge for a bail hearing Friday.
The investigation involving the Bryan resident earlier in the week went more quickly.
Bush said Kazmierski contacted an officer who was online using a screen name that suggested he was a young girl. Within a half-hour, authorities said, Kazmierski arranged to meet the girl at a specific location. Officers said they scrambled to get in place before Kazmierski arrived.
When he did, police arrested him and found condoms in his car, with a receipt saying he had bought them 10 minutes earlier, according to court documents.
"Please, God, let me go home," he said as police pushed him into a squad car, according to officers and court documents. "Please have mercy."
He remained jailed late Thursday in lieu of $9,000 bail.
"the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour"
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Kim M.
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| Joined: | Mon Feb 11th, 2008 |
| Location: | Georgia USA |
| Posts: | 442 |
| First Name: | Kim | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Baptist, Assembly of God, Church of God, Assembly again, PCA, ... |
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Posted: Sat May 17th, 2008 07:48 pm |
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Ugh! So disgusting! He was planning to go on a MISSIONS TRIP?????  You kind of expect (hope?) that Christians going on missions trips would be slightly serious about their faith. Lord, have mercy on the man!
Last edited on Sat May 17th, 2008 07:50 pm by Kim M.
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"A joyful heart is the health of the body, but a depressed spirit dries up the bones." Proverbs 17:22
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Steven Barrett
Member
| Joined: | Tue Nov 14th, 2006 |
| Location: | Hadley, Massachusetts USA |
| Posts: | 804 |
| First Name: | Steven | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Catholic, Episcopal communicant, Baptist, Catholic |
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Posted: Sat May 17th, 2008 09:49 pm |
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Kim,
The guys who pull these stunts (boy am I being charitable for "mixed company"!) are far more clever than we'd like now to believe. The good news is that for some bizarre reason, they reach a trip wire and instead of pulling back from it, they jump over knowing full well there's some risk they'll get caught--but take the chance anyway for the sheer high of beating the system again, but THIS TIME they get caught.
They know there are plenty of detectives working overtime and a half just to bag them, yet they still keep pushing that damn envelop. THis time the good guys and that Prestonwood Baptist Church, a biggie in Baptist circles in a very high end zip code area simply got lucky. Thank God this guy never made it on that big trip the church planned.
Rest assured heads will roll, procedures will be checked, double-checked, and so forth. I've heard of this church before and it plays a prominent role in conservative evangelical megachurch culture. And it's a shame that something like this embarrasses the rest of the church.
One step some churches and even dioceses might consider would be requesting passports to be held in lieu of pre-trip investigations. Sure, the ACLU will scream, chew rugs and fulminate. Too bad. But let them face any parent, or themselves in the mirror moments after any of their kids gets taken for a ride, molested and/or worse--killed due to an over concern for the rights of perverts.
What amazed me is the stupidity and chutzpah of the perverts who showed up at the house used by NBC's Chris Hansen over and over, knowing full well either Hansen or a local reporter might be working with the locals, staties or feds. Like dogs they all return to their vomit. They deserve it.
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For anyone suffering from a mental illness or has a loved one with a mental illness, my book "Lead kindly Light: A Devotional For The Mentally Ill" might be of some help: http://www.lulu.com/ (Use search box at the top of page.)
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True Image
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| Joined: | Mon Apr 7th, 2008 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 68 |
| First Name: | Anne | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Lifelong devout cradle Catholic |
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Posted: Sun May 18th, 2008 04:23 pm |
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I pray for the people in his church and for those whose faith will be weakened by this scandal.
The devil tempts priests and ministers, knowing that their fall will weaken the Christian faith.
I am saddened by this latest scandal.
Anne
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Steven Barrett
Member
| Joined: | Tue Nov 14th, 2006 |
| Location: | Hadley, Massachusetts USA |
| Posts: | 804 |
| First Name: | Steven | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Catholic, Episcopal communicant, Baptist, Catholic |
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Posted: Mon May 19th, 2008 01:30 am |
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Anne, you are so right. These tragedies hit all of us, and they hit hard and the effects last for years, if not generations. This cuts across all church and denominational lines. Pray for everyone involved and affected by this event, either directly down in Plano, or simply by reading about it in the Forum or press reports.
As Catholics and people moving towards full membership in the Church, our hearts have to go out to that congregation in Texas, for we really know how deeply hurt their members must feel and the shock they must be feeling at this moment.
As a former court official, my heart also goes out to the law enforcement officers. It's one thing to perform one's professional duty in the line of work, there are some duties that I can truly say I'm thankful I wasn't assigned to handle, even as a prob./parole officer for a prostitute. No matter how much personal satisfaction any individual officer can take for professionally handling such cases, conducting the investigations and making the necessary arrests, it must've been both emotionally and spiritually difficult for them as well.
I bet there wasn't any of the usual (and understandable) amount of bravado in the station house after the arrest. It's one thing to arrest a routine pederast (what a term, "routine pederast"), but this was a darker matter, just as it was for the many local and state police officers up here in Massachusetts who had to arrest so many priests up here during our clerical scandals.
These officers not only deserve our gratitude, but our prayers as well. Especially our prayers for their long-term well-being and gratitude for what they've done to protect us, our children especially, and unfortunately, for what they might have to continue doing.
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For anyone suffering from a mental illness or has a loved one with a mental illness, my book "Lead kindly Light: A Devotional For The Mentally Ill" might be of some help: http://www.lulu.com/ (Use search box at the top of page.)
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