Youth Pastor Charged With Nearly 200 Sex Crimes Going Back Decades
The New York Times
Many of the victims were the West Virginia pastor’s relatives, the police said, including five nieces who filed a complaint against him in 2004.
The state police in West Virginia are continuing to investigate a longtime youth pastor who has now been charged with nearly 200 counts of sexual abuse crimes involving children, many of them his relatives, dating back more than three decades.
The pastor, John W. Radcliff II, was arrested a second time last week after officers investigating a complaint filed against him in September revisited a case from 2004, when five of Mr. Radcliff’s nieces told the police that he had abused them.
“I have no idea what happened, but we never saw charges pressed,” said one niece, Carla Rinehart, whose mother is Mr. Radcliff’s sister.
Ms. Rinehart, 38, said that growing up, she did not know that her relatives had endured the same type of abuse that she says her uncle had committed against her. But when Ms. Rinehart was hospitalized at 17 after a mental breakdown, she began to share her story with family members. Her sister recounted a similar experience at the time, and then their cousins did the same.
A local TV station, citing court documents in Lewis County, W.Va., on the 2004 case, reported that Mr. Radcliff had forced the girls to perform sexual acts on him from 1987 to 1996, and sexually assaulted them in other ways until they were about 12. The victims are all now adults, the news outlet reported.
Lewis is one of four counties where Mr. Radcliff has been charged with abuse.
