Youth leader at Texas megachurch charged with child porn

A younker person astatine an Evangelical megachurch successful west-central Texas has been arrested and charged with kid pornography, authorities said.

Charles Goff, who served arsenic a younker unpaid astatine the Beltway Park Church successful Abilene for astir 3 years, reportedly told a subordinate of the religion helium was struggling with his tendency to ticker kid pornography — specifically videos of teen girls betwixt the ages of 14 and 15.

The unnamed religion subordinate then contacted Abilene Police, according to section presumption KTXS.

During an investigation, Goff reportedly admitted to utilizing aggregate societal media platforms to inquire teenage girls for nude pictures and videos.

Investigators besides recovered three graphic videos of underage teens connected Goff’s cellphone, KBRC reported citing documents filed successful court.

Goff was arrested Wednesday and charged with possession of kid pornography. He was past booked into the Taylor County Jail, wherever he’s being held connected a $100,000 bond.

David McQueen, Beltway’s pb pastor, said successful a connection sent to the assemblage Wednesday nighttime that religion officials were archetypal made alert of “a superior matter” involving a now-former-volunteer successful June 2024.

Without mentioning Goff’s name, McQueen said that “a former unpaid with our younker ministry confessed to soliciting inappropriate photos and videos of minors online.”

Authorities were notified “immediately,” McQueen said, adding that “currently there’s nary denotation that immoderate minors from our religion were progressive successful immoderate inappropriate activity” with Goff.

According to the pastor, Goff passed a inheritance cheque connected 2 antithetic occasions, arsenic portion of the church’s “normal information protocol.” Once successful 2022, earlier helium became “an progressive volunteer,” and past again successful 2024, “as portion of our modular unpaid protocol,” McQueen said.

Beltway Park Church, a multi-site religion affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, has a play in-person attendance of astir 4,900 people, with different 3,600 radical attending its services online.

More than 2,500 kids, from 8 weeks to 5th grade, are ministered to each week, and astir 280 teens from 6th to 12th grades attend the church’s Wednesday nighttime activities.

According to the church, it is “God’s plan that intersexual relationships beryllium strictly heterosexual, and that each expressions of sexuality beryllium reserved for a matrimony relationship betwixt a antheral and a woman.”