Posted on 06/24/2011 11:24:19 AM PDT by Cronos
The poor girls came to the centre to study, but were abused by the person in charge of their teaching and protection. Over 25 minor girls, who had been visiting the Bethel Student Centre since they could not afford the high cost of education, were sexually exploited by 45-year-old pastor K. Shantharaju. The fear of reprimand by the church made them keep quiet and suffer the ignominy in silence.
The pastor's shameful behaviour came to light recently after his wife Priyalatha made the shocking discovery. She has filed a police complaint against him and accused him of being a paedophile. The accused, who was on the run, was arrested on Saturday. "Pastor Shantharaju of Bethel Church, who has been absconding after his wife Priyalatha registered a complaint against him, was apprehended while he was in transit," the police said. Shantharaju was the pastor of the Bethel Church in Jalahalli, north Bangalore. The church was established 20 years ago by Shantharaju's father. The first such reported incident in Bangalore has left the Christian community here shocked.
"This is a serious case. He has denigrated the noble profession of teaching. Besides, he is a priest. How could he exploit young children? We will take action against him," Karnataka's Home Minister R. Ashoka said. Shantharaju allegedly sexually abused more than two dozen minor girls since 2004. Priyalatha claimed that though she had brought the matter to the notice of the eminent people in the Christian community, no action was taken against her husband. "I was compelled to approach the police after he threatened me and my daughters with dire consequences if I revealed anything about his misdeeds with the minor girls to anyone," she added.
Three girls have admitted to the police that they were sexually abused by Shantharaju. A girl, who has studied at the centre, made a statement to the police that the pastor would take a few girls to his chamber after the evening class ended around 8.30 pm. "He would spend some time inside with a girl, having instructed the others to stand guard. We knew what transpired inside but were afraid of taking on the pastor," she said. Another 17-year-old girl told the police that she stopped visiting the centre after Shantharaju tried to molest her. She even told her parents of the pastor's behaviour, she said. According to the police, Shantharaju was in the habit of taking pictures of the minor girls on his mobile phone. "There are several photographs of him posing with the girls. We are summoning these girls as part of the investigation," a police officer said.
The Christian community leaders are planning a series of actions as part of the damagecontrol exercise. "We will conduct an independent investigation. This incident has seriously dented the community's image," a parish priest said.
Yes, we need to all work together against this
What denomination, I wonder?
Why?
It's like when the born-agains in Mangalore published and distributed pamphlets that called hindu deities demons. The hindus extremists then targetted the Christian houses of worship -- you got it, Catholic Churches...
Curiosity. It seems like a basic detail that got left out.
Evidently, since it is a native Christian in India.
I’m not sure you guys are doing the Lord’s work to bring up every obscure Christian negative from all over the globe and spread it onto the internet here.
Hold the feet to the fire, and publish the name of every person who refused to do anything BEFORE the law intervened.
If the faithful do this, ecclesiastic hierarchies who should have been doing the right thing anyway will come back in line.
These people should have been moving on their own to make these girls (and boys evidently from another article) whole.
I don’t know know, which global church is this story about, is it like the Italy based Catholic church under one leadership, and a single authority, in other words a single organization, or is this just posting about Christians in general?
The press is in a quandary. They "know" that there is a "culture of corruption" in organized religion but every teacher offender is an "isolated case".
Don’t start stalking me, all of a sudden you slammed posts to me on 6 different threads and a freepmail, four of those threads, I never even posted on.
Just post to me on this thread if you have something to say.
“Damagecontrol exercise” doesn't quit sound like a good thing to me. It seems to me the bigger concern here is the image of the Christian community rather then the plight of the girls.
You are saying its “obsure†and thus should not be worthy of mention on the Internet because it happened somewhere far way in India? We should speak of such negatives only if it is committed by people of other religions? Isn’t that hypocrisy?
That’s what I said, do not stalk me, I will choose my own threads to post on.
The moderators have already spoken.
You mean attacking Islam and not attacking Christianity is hypocritical? For who, and why is that a problem for you anyway?
This is about a Born-Again pastor.
Then your posts are hypocritical — they appear on this thread but not on the previous. I really did think you were different, ah well..
So this is just a negative story from India about Christianity in general, not about a member of the leadership of a specific international church with a single authority that can change a policy, or procedures for their global leadership personnel.
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