Fundamentalist Pastors, Principal, and Teacher Arrested In Connection With Child Sexual Assult at Colorado School

Apparently if you’re the pastor’s niece and the associate pastor’s daughter, a little sexual assault on ar student is easy to sweep under the rug at Hilltop Baptist Church and School.

Huffington Post reports:

According to the indictment, the teacher, 32-year-old Terah Allyn Rawlings, has been charged with eight counts in all: four counts of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust-pattern of abuse (a class 3 felony), four counts of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust (a class 4 felony), and obscenity promotion (a class 2 misdemeanor).

KRDO reports the teacher allegedly had a relationship with the boy for two and a half years, beginning when he was 15. Anonymous sources told the station the school covered up the relationship until a staff member called the sheriff against the school’s permission.

Hilltop Baptist School’s senior pastor, 63-year-old Franklin “Wayne” Knight, was also arrested. Knight is Rawlings’s uncle.

Rawlings’s father, 57-year-old Raymond “Alan” Knight, the school’s former athletic director and associate pastor, has been arrested as well and charge with failure to report child abuse or neglect. The school’s Facebook page boasts Alan was the 2011 Division 1A coach of the year.

Jan Ocvirk, the school’s former principal, was also arrested. She faces two counts of failure to report child abuse or neglect.

It is interesting to note that Wayne Knight is also the President of Patriot Bible University, the institution responsible for granting tax evader Kent Hovind his doctorate.

10 thoughts on “Fundamentalist Pastors, Principal, and Teacher Arrested In Connection With Child Sexual Assult at Colorado School”

  1. This one really should wake a few people up – though if they’re not a “big U” church and in the “notwork” the rest of the “notwork” will just say “they’re the crazy ones.” So sick. So very sick!

    PS for when you have a minute: it’s “principal” in this situation.

    1. Since it’s a woman charged with the actual abuse, they’ll just use it as an example of how power (being a teacher) turns godly ladies into perverted harlots.

  2. What did the mailroom manager do wrong to be the only person on Patriot Bible University’s staff without an honorary doctorate?

      1. Kay Curtis
        Office manager, Mailroom production

        Not very ambitious there Kay, all you have to do is intercept one outgoing envelope and fill your name in on the enclosed certificate.

    1. Thanks for posting that, you may also want to post that information in the forum.
      I suspect there was some teacher/student affairs going on in my old fundie school as well. There were two teachers who married former students shortly after each student gradulated.

  3. There’s much more to this story then the press/media/police are telling. The pastor, Wayne Knight, was first notified by a parent that the teacher had had sex with the student back in 2008/2009. The pastor met with both the student and student’s parents who denied that there had been any sexual contact. The teacher also denied it. In 2011, another set of parents, this time school employees, brought the allegations to the pastor again. He again asked the questions and was again told nothing had happened. He fired the teacher who had brought the info to him as they continued to spread what he thought at the time was a rumor amongst church members after he had warned them to stop. Later that year/or early 2012, other members brought information to the pastor which led him to believe that he had not been told the truth. He then notified authorities and told the church what he had learned. He did not attempt to cover up the info or otherwise mislead law enforcement. He took the plea bargain because it was obvious to him and his lawyers that the local DA was out to get him and would continue to pursue his arrest and jailing.

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