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| Paul Pressler Liked Boys in the Baptist Church |
Paul Pressler, a former judge and Texas legislator and a key figure in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), has been sued for allegedly abusing a minor in the 1970’s and 1980s.
The suit brought by Duane Rollins says that Pressler, 87, met the teen at the First Baptist Church in Houston in the 1970s. At fourteen, Rollins was enrolled in Pressler’s Bible study class, and the older man allegedly began molesting and raping the teen regularly in his master bedroom study.
The suit says that Pressler told Rollins that he was “special” and that the sexual contact was a “God-sanctioned secret.” The abuse happened several times a month when he was in high school and continued even when he went away to college. Rollins said that he suppressed the memory of the abuse until he worked with a prison psychologist in 2015. A psychiatrist who has worked with him for a year wrote a letter supporting the suit, saying that he is a “reliable historian for the childhood sexual trauma to which he was repeatedly and chronically subjected.”
Pressler’s attorney pointed to Rollins’s long criminal record as a reason to doubt his story. His has been convicted of possession of a controlled substance, burglary, forgery, and several DUIs.
Rollins’s attorney Daniel Shea, though, said that the abuse pushed Rollins to drug and alcohol abuse. The psychiatrist’s report also says that Rollins is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder due to years of abuse.
Pressler says that accusations are false and that the lawsuit is an attempt to extort money, but he doesn’t deny knowing Rollins. In fact, when Rollins was eligible for parole after spending a decade in jail for burglary, Pressler wrote letters in 2000 and 2002 to the parole board promising to be “personally involved in every bit of Duane’s life with supervision and control,” which included employing Rollins as an office assistant at his law firm.
In 2004, Pressler settled a civil lawsuit with Rollins for battery stemming from an incident in a Dallas hotel room. The details of the settlement are not public, but court records reference an agreement.
The lawsuit also names Pressler’s wife, his law partner, and his law firm as defendants, alleging that they knew what was going on but did nothing.
The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, its president, and the First Baptist Church are also named as defendants because they “fraudulently misrepresented to the public in word and deed, including to Plaintiff Rollins and his mother, that Pressler was a Godlike, sexually safe, moral, and great person of the earth who, as a Magistrate, worked God’s wisdom and thus would not be sexually dangerous to minors.”
Rollins seeks damages of $1 million.
Since the lawsuit was filed last week, Shea says that he has been contacted by others who say they were abused by Pressler. “I’m getting a lot of responses from a lot of people,” he said.
He said that he plans to disclose the names of other alleged victims if they want and that he’s open to other victims adding themselves to the lawsuit.
Pressler is a well-known figure in Texas’s religious rights movement. He was a key strategist in the SBC’s “Conservative Resurgence” in the 1970s and 1980’s, a movement within the SBC that ousted liberal and moderate church leaders from office.
He started his career in politics as a state representative from 1957 to 1959 and was a state judge from 1970 to 1992. He publicly supported Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Fred Thompson for president.
Pressler has served on the Texas Republican State Executive Committee, the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, and the Free Market Foundation, as well as several other organizations.
In 1989, President Bush considered appointing him to the Office of Government Ethics but changed his mind after an FBI background check. What that background check found is private knowledge.
More light on this subject. This Former Judge had helped as is usual in cases in which someone of power wants what they preach against. There are usually the suppliers of the goods that make this function possible. When boys or young men are being brought in under false pretenses to bring sexual gratification to someone who has some power over some. Why post a story from a few years back? This is because a new email has been unearthed which it opens the story up for public scrutiny and explains what really went on.
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| Attorney Jared Woodfill (R)Texas candidate Jared Woodfill (R) is a prominent anti-LGBTQ+ activist and is running for office with the support of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) |
A recently unearthed email from 2017 is shedding new light on the role a prominent lawyer running for the Texas State House played in the ongoing Southern Baptist sexual abuse scandal.
The explosive email accuses attorney Jared Woodfill (R) – a prominent anti-LGBTQ+ activist running with the close backing of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) – of providing access to young men for former Texas judge and Southern Baptist leader Paul Pressler to sexually abuse.
RELATED:
Conservative Christian leader accused of using Bible study to molest a teenage boy
He allegedly told the teen that when they had sex, it was a “God-sanctioned secret.”
The email, from one of the young men recruited by Woodfill’s law firm to serve as a personal assistant to the then-octogenarian Pressler, was filed in connection with the massive lawsuit accusing Pressler of years of sexual abuse of young men and boys.
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The suit named the Southern Baptist Convention, Pressler’s longtime church First Baptist in Houston, and Woodfill as co-conspirators.
The years-long lawsuit filed by Duane Rollins, a former member of Pressler’s church youth group, attracted six more victims over the years as it wound its way through Harris County district court. It was settled late last year for an undisclosed amount not long after the personal aide’s email was filed.
Pressler, 93, has not been criminally charged.
“There is a serious issue at hand,” the unnamed aide wrote in the email, adding that Pressler had recently touched him and bragged about being naked with young boys. “I do not think Paul should be around small children or have male assistance of any kind.”
The young man resigned as Pressler’s personal aide and asked that Woodfill stop paying him immediately.
“My conscience dictates that I step away,” he wrote of working for Pressler in his Houston mansion. “Please take me off the payroll. If I am to continue receiving paychecks from Woodfill in the continuing weeks, I will send them back.”
In March, The Texas Tribune reported that Woodfill had recently testified he was aware of claims of child sexual abuse brought against Pressler in 2004, when he and the church leader were law partners. Yet Woodfill continued to supply Pressler with potential victims.
The email details a litany of episodes illustrating Pressler’s obsession with young men and boys and sex.
“He talks way more about nudity, the male body, being naked in spas in Europe, being naked in general than God, or his Baptist background,” the aide wrote.
“For as long as I can tell, Paul has fostered inappropriately close relationships to the young men who work for him,” he wrote. “I have both heard stories of and personally witnessed Paul getting young men who work for him to give him full-body massages, with all present parties in the nude. Especially recently, a young man’s willingness to perform this act seems to be the main reason he hires them.”
The aide also described Pressler bragging about being in a hot tub naked with three boys under the age of 10 and their dad.
“After bragging about this hot tub experience, Paul told me, ‘You seriously need to get over your phobia of taking off your clothes with me,’” the aide wrote.
The day before the aide sent the email, he wrote he was repeatedly caressed by Pressler, who told him, “’I really need this.’”
That incident coincided with Pressler taking advantage of a 20-year-old young man who had called Pressler for help, the aide wrote, saying that over dinner, during which Pressler repeatedly kissed his guest, he offered him $100 for a massage, during which both men would be naked.
When they emerged from a locked room, the aide recounted Pressler told the young man, “Next time I’ll massage you when you massage me.”
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