I can hear the Kentucky dueling banjos really going strong now. And people think us rednecks from Georgia are backwoods…
41-year-old Mark Hourigan from Kentucky was convicted in 1998 of two felony counts of sexual abuse of an 11-year-old boy. He served a little over four years in prison and has to register as an offender for the rest of his life.
There are plenty of places where sex offenders who have supposedly paid their debt to society (I won’t get into that bullshit right now) can’t go. Schools, parks, can’t drive ice cream trucks, can’t get on MySpace or Facebook, etc…but Kentucky doesn’t have any kind of law prohibiting sex offenders from being ordained ministers.
The City of Refuge church in Germantown, Kentucky has decided that it’s OK for Hourigan to be a minister at the church. I sure hope folks start taking their kids elsewhere. It’s bad enough that they have to listen to all of that religious claptrap without adding a convicted pedophile into the mix.
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Pedophiles ARE NOT CUREABLE/Reformable…end of story!!!!! The pedophile in my church was a Christian, was born again, had a tremendous faith in God but it didn’t prevent him from molesting my children and 21 others…and I was the only one who reported it!!! He was sentenced to 3 yrs., served 1 yr. and 2 mos., returned to church remorseful, wanted to help others like him, even wrote an article for the church paper about forgiveness and redemption and the church welcomed him back with open arms over my objections, claiming I was wrong and he was changed and I should be more forgiving, even wanting me to come talk with them and be counseled by them. Fast forward to last year, almost 20 yrs. after he molested my children…he hung himself because the police were getting ready to arrest him again for molesting and who knows how many counts they had against him this time!!! I think the church should have been charged as an accomplice! Can pedophiles be forgiven and changed by God? Yes. Does that mean we put them in positions of power or influence especially where children are concerned? ABSOLUTELY NOT! God forgives and restores, however, we are still sinners and human, and as such we are ALWAYS subject to temptation until the day we die! And ONLY God knows the true nature of the heart. We say alcoholics are always alcoholics. Does that mean we make them bartenders? No. Do you give the keys to the drug cabinet to the ex-drug addict? No! Churches are the BEST places for pedophiles and they can go YEARS, even a lifetime, without being caught or punished because of Christian belief systems. In my experience in working with a child molestation prevention program after my kids were molested, religious people are some of the most naive and usually don’t/won’t report and want to believe God will change the pedophile and usually refuse to believe that it even happened because most pedophiles are so likeable. There is such a thing as the law of nature-cause and effect. Even God allows consequences (the law of nature) but somehow Christians think we should forgive, forget, and move on without any consequences. God gave us brains and expects us to use them and not be like the girl who used prayer for birth control!! After becoming involved with a child molestation prevention program after my kids were molested, one of the common beliefs I heard was a comment made by my own mother…”can’t you have the pastor talk to him and he won’t do it again?” Mind you, this is the same woman who was told by a former girlfriend of a boy I was dating at 16 that he raped her and not to let me go out with him. But no, he came from a fine Christian home, and she was probably mad because she was the jilted girlfriend, all unbeknownst to me. I didn’t learn this until my children were molested and my mom didn’t want me to report. I was so infuriated that I KNEW I had to report it because I’d be damned if I’d do that to my children! And yes, that guy did rape me months later! Let me and my children serve as a warning to the rest of you Christians who think it’s OK to ordain this man and allow him to get close to your children!