Louisiana Voice

…And it’s not just in Louisiana that white supremacists are resurrecting Jim Crow

What’s it going to take to bring the child-abusing sexual predators under control?

I don’t mean men who are simply skirt-chasers, despicable as they may well be, I mean those who prey upon children for relief of their sexual urges—particularly those who call themselves men of God and hide behind a Bible and a pulpit even as they extol the virtues of abstinence.

These monsters—and between Catholic priests, Protestant ministers and youth leaders—literally number in the thousands just in this country and little is being done to stem the activity due largely to the separation of church and state doctrine that has been used as a legal shield against prosecution too many times to recount. That’s what protected people like Lester Roloff and Mack Ford, Bible-thumping preachers who abused girls in their private, church-run homes for so-called delinquent girls. Ford, you may recall from previous posts here, ran New Bethany Home for Girls in Arcadia in Bienville Parish for years.

That particular case has arisen again with the arrest of the husband of the assistant district attorney who supposedly “investigated” New Bethany several years ago. She is now running for district attorney but her campaign has been rocked with the arrest of her Christian school principal husband for sexual offenses against juveniles. It turned out that her family (the Gantts, who own and operate the Mt. Olive Christian School, employed some of Mack Ford’s family at the time Assistant DA Tammy Gantt Jump was conducting her investigation which ultimately failed to produce any indictments.

Apparently recent news of the arrest of Nathan Jump has produced some pushback and even veiled legal threats from the Gantts which, in turned, resulted in this Facebook post by a woman whose sister she alleges was targeted by Nathan Jump:

But the abuse of underage victims is not limited to New Bethany or Mt. Olive Christian School by any means.

A story in Newsweek noted that more than 600 children over a 60-year period were sexually abused by ARCHDIOCESE OF BALTIMORE clergy who told their victims the abuse was “God’s will.” The story was much the same in Louisiana—in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Lake Charles—and elsewhere.

But it wasn’t limited to the Catholic faith. The Bradenton (Florida) Herald notes that more than 50 SOUTHERN BAPTIST PASTORS in that state are on the church’s list of alleged sexual abusers. In Texas, the number was around 380 CLERGY AND LAY LEADERS who accounted for more than 700 victims.

Robert Morris, founder and senior pastor of Gateway megachurch church in Southlake Texas, resigned in 2024 after admitting to a past “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady.”

The “young lady,” it turned out, was 12 at the time. He ended up pleading guilty to five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child and in October 2025 and was sentenced to 10-years in prison, incredibly with all but six months suspended. He was required to register as a sex offender.

Even more incredible, he filed suit against Gateway Church for more than $16 million he said he was owed in retirement benefits. He eventually settled for $800,000 per year until he turns 70 and $600,000 per year after that for the rest of his and his wife’s lives.

Let that sink in. Eight hundred thousand dollars per year for the next six years and $600,000 per year thereafter for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl.

But the biggest mystery of all is PAUL PRESSLER, former justice of the peace, Texas legislator, judge, advisor to Donald Trump and moving force behind the Southern Baptist Convention, the second-largest religious denomination in the nation.

Pressler, who died in 2024, once decided the Southern Baptist Convention was infiltrated by too many liberals and he set about cleansing the organization of what he considered an unholy influence in the church only to eventually be accused of sexual harassment of a male assistant with whom he ultimately settled.

Even more radical in its belief, a belief that Southern Baptists were too liberal, is the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church, more or leas headquartered in Hammond, Indiana. That church preaches complete obedience to men by women and when an IFB preacher gets caught with his pants down with an underage girl or another man’s wife, it is the female who must stand before the congregation and beg to be forgiven for tempting the poor minister.

And now, coming full circle to the epicenter of abuse by Catholic priests in Louisiana, we have a protestant minister in the adjacent parish to Orleans, Jefferson, who has been convicted—for the third time—of molesting teen boys.

TERRY REED, 66, who cited biblical verses and scripture in order to manipulate and justify his sexual behavior with two minor boys, has been called by prosecutors as “the worst kind of predator.”

After his latest arrest, a jury deliberated less than an hour on May 6 before finding him guilty. Nineteen years ago, he pleaded guilty to indecent behavior with a juvenile in a separate case and he pleaded guilty again in 2017 to molestation of a juvenile after telling the victim that he had to submit to certain acts in order to “fight off demons.”

He received probation both the earlier cases and was ministering from his home in Terrytown when arrested in the most recent case.

It is long past time that we scrap the separation of church and state doctrine—after all, it’s what the evangelicals want when it’s to their benefit, like public aid to their private schools—and begin a serious crackdown on clergy sex abuse of children.

Perhaps chemical castration might be a good start.

Well, it took only seven years, a pack of lies, an incredible, incredulous attempt at a clumsy, coverup, fumbled prosecutions of the perpetrators, no telling how much in legal fees, the empaneling of a legislative investigative committee that we said would do nothing (and we were right) for the Louisiana State Police (LSP) and the Louisiana Attorney General’s (AG) office to finally admit legal responsibility in the Ronald Greene matter.

Did I mention coverup? That, of course, is always—ALWAYS—the tactic of choice in official misconduct and it seldom works, and in the end, didn’t in this case.

But covering up its mistakes is what LSP seems to do best, aided and abetted by a reluctant governor’s office, an INEPT DISTRICT ATTORNEY, recalcitrant state troopers and an indifferent legislature—the same indifference, by the way, to the fate of its Black citizens as is presently being shown by the legislature in its redistricting fiasco.

Now we learn that the state has reached an agreement with the Greene family to SETTLE A CIVIL WRONGFUL DEATH LAWSUIT over the beating death—after criminal prosecutions flopped miserably—for $4.85 million.

As bad as the Greene beating and subsequent death was, it was FAR FROM AN ISOLATED INCIDENT involving State Troopers and Black motorists.

For years, former Baton Rouge Advocate reporter Jim Mustian (he’s now with Associated Press) and I dogged LSP for public records of incidents involving misconduct of LSP officers and leaders, from troopers engaging in sex in their patrol cars while on duty to troopers attempting to sneak an underage woman (not his wife) into a Mississippi casino illegally to beatings of Black motorists to taking state vehicles to San Diego with a side trip to Vegas and the Hoover Dam to falsification of records and cheating on time sheets to making illegal contributions to political campaigns.

Through it all, LSP officials were unapologetic and, in many cases, downright arrogant about it all, never once showing any evidence of remorse.

The crowning blow came almost exactly seven years ago, on May 10, 2019, when five state troopers and a Union Parish sheriff’s deputy beat, kicked, choked and tased a handcuffed and unresisting Ronald Greene until the life literally left his body. That was followed by the coverup in which LSP delayed investigating the incident for more than a year, insisting all the while there was no body cam footage of the event. That was a lie.

State police also informed Greene’s mother that he had died as the result of his car striking a tree at the conclusion of a chase that began in Ouachita Parish and ended in adjacent Union Parish. Another lie. The “accident” was when his vehicle simply brushed a tree, causing no extensive damage to his car. Troopers then dragged A STLL VERY MUCH ALIVE and apologetic Greene from his vehicle where they began working him over physically even as he begged for his life.

So much for that lie. Then, miraculously, A BODY CAM VIDEO SURFACED —nearly two years after the incident and denials of the video’s existence. Another lie debunked.

The entire sordid Greene affair, it seems, is a microcosm of how video evidence seems to be nonexistent—UNTIL IT SUDDENLY APPEARS—and how JUSTICE IS ADMINISTERED in Louisiana.

One thing has changed at LSP, however, and it certainly isn’t for the better. When Mustian, Robert Burns and I initially set out on our separate but dogged investigations of LSP, public records were relatively easy to obtain (with the exception of that trooper and the underage girl in the Vicksburg casino; the LSP document was so heavily redacted as to be useless. I had to travel to Jackson for an unredacted copy of the report).

Today, obtaining public records from LSP is worse than the proverbial pulling of teeth. A public records request is met with an automatic reply that an official response could take up to 45 days. Of course, when one is writing on a deadline, a wait of 45 days is tantamount to an outright denial. Then, to add insult to injury, LSP conveniently “forgets” about the request so that the 45 days pass with on response.

Such is the evolution of the spirit of cooperation from the agency charged with protecting Louisiana’s citizens.

That Jackson Parish sheriff’s race is turning out to be quite the typical Louisiana political campaign as Interim Sheriff Brent Barnett faces opposition for the office is seeking for a full four-year term.

It seems that former Sheriff Andy Brown may have hired Theresa Burris who stole more than $50,000 from the Town of Arcadia while she was employed by the city as a clerk.

Brown pleaded guilty to felony theft in 2014, the same year she was hired by Brown. In 2017, while working for the Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Office, she was sentenced to four years in prison with three years suspended, and was ordered to pay restitution.

Ms. Burris confirmed to LouisianaVoice that she is the same Theresa Burris who worked for the town of Arcadia “many, many moons ago.”

She continues to serve as an administrative assistant to Barnett.

Those who read this post regularly know of my disdain for candidates for judge falling back on party loyalties and devotion to partisan politics as qualifications to wear a black robe, sit on an elevated platform looking all-wise as they decide the fate of those appearing before them—based largely, by the way, on which attorney involved kicked in the biggest campaign contribution.

I’ve harped ad nauseam on the lack of commitment to the rule of law in favor of trying to convince voters that being “a Republican longer than Donald Trump” and dedication to conservative principles were somehow qualifications for a judgeship–as with the case of First Circuit Court of Appeal Judge Blair Downing Edwards who is seeking promotion to the Louisiana Supreme Court in this Saturday’s primary.

I have also written extensively about the national problem of child sexual abuse, even to the point of authoring a book about the epidemic entitled The Dinosaur Club. No one, it seems, is immune from the scandal which seems to be growing exponentially: priests, preachers, deacons, cops, celebrities, politicians, even judges–everyone, curiously, except the LGBTQ crowd which tends to mind its own business and asks only to be left alone.

In Amite, for example, a judge last year awarded full custody to a man who had raped the child’s mother, impregnating her, when she was a minor. Moreover, the child told a teacher that her father, John Barnes, had abused her both physically and mentally.

Despite all that, 21^st Judicial District JUDGE JEFFEY CASH awarded Barnes full custody of the child.

Now, let’s jump over a couple of parishes to the west where one West Feliciana Parish judge, Sydney Picou Walker, inexplicably removed a “no contact” bond condition for a man, Jacob Mansell of St. Francisville, accused of sexually abusing a juvenile and later that same day, a second judge, Kathryn Jones, granted Mansell immediate TEMPORARY SOLE CUSTODY of three juveniles in a civil suit involving his ex-wife.

What in the name of convoluted, ass-backward reasoning is going on with these judges? Whatever it is, I sure as hell don’t want what they’re smoking. It was almost as though the two judges were working together in Mansell’s defense.

Along with these two cases, LouisianaVoice has been fielding an increasing number of complaints about family courts all over the state. The problem, it seems, is no matter what testimony may reveal to the contrary, judges are consistently disregarding or even disallowing testimony by one parent while blatantly favoring the opposing parent. Often times, the prevailing parent just happens to have the financial resources to simply outlast the other one, often forcing them into financial ruin while attempting to protect the children.

Making matters worse, family court records are usually sealed, preventing independent investigations of proceedings.

Only two days ago, LouisianaVoice published a story about a judge in TERREBONNE PARISH who, in his desire to hurry things along, simply refused to allow one side’s witnesses to testify and ruled in favor of the other parent.

LouisianaVoice will be taking a much closer look at family courts and readers are invited to relate their experiences for investigation. But please: no innuendo. Everything MUST BE SUPPORTED by documentation. That will be a difficult task, considering the practice of sealing records, but provide whatever documented information you can.

Send your information to: louisianavoice@outlook.com