Police say Texas minister caught in Internet sex sting

BRYAN, Texas — A minister at a Dallas-area megachurch was charged with online solicitation of a minor after police said Friday he was caught in an Internet sex sting.

Undercover officers posing as a 13-year-old girl communicated with 52-year-old Joe Barron of Plano for about two weeks. The online conversations were sexual in nature, police said.

On May 6, Barron suggested meeting the girl in person. He eventually made the nearly 200-mile drive to Bryan on Thursday, where he was arrested. The Bryan-College Station Eagle reported for its Saturday editions that police surrounded the site of the suggested meeting place for two hours before Barron arrived.

Police said they found a web-cam and condoms in Barron’s car.

Barron was released from the Brazos County Jail on Friday night on $7,000 bail. Police were unsure if he had an attorney.

Barron is a minister at Prestonwood Baptist Church, one of the largest churches in the country with 26,000 members and 40 ministers. Mike Buster, executive pastor, said in a statement that the church had no record or knowledge of previous improprieties or saw any inappropriate behavior in the 18 months Barron was on the church staff.

Buster said church officials are fully cooperating with police.

“We are disturbed and saddened by the reports we have heard and we are praying for the Barron family,” he said.

Barron is a minister to married adults.

Bryan police had run six similar sting operations in the past two weeks and only one other person arrived at the meeting site and was arrested, the newspaper reported.

 You know, this sort of story really pisses me off. WHERE THE HELL IS THE OUTRAGE FROM CHRISTIANS? Why aren’t they demanding for their church to do something about a very serious and rampant problem with their pedophile priests? Fucking subservient douchebags.

Man: Girl, 4, provoked me

WOODSTOCK – A retired Canadian pastor likely on track to leave a McHenry County courtroom Friday with probation for sexually abusing a 4-year-old girl instead found himself behind bars after he told a judge that the girl acted sexually provocative toward him.

“I tried to avoid the encounters. On a couple of times, I thought I was being sexually harassed,” Kenneth R. Cooke, 73, told a judge. “I think there is psychological evidence today that children, even in their younger years, could become interested in sex.”

After listening to Cooke’s statements, Judge Joseph Condon sentenced him to three years in prison. Condon said the sentence was based partly on Cooke’s attitude.

“That just boggles my mind,” Condon said to Cooke. “You are willing to say whatever is convenient to you and what is most likely to release the pressure of these proceedings against you.”

Cooke pleaded guilty in November to aggravated criminal sexual abuse for abusing the girl in a Lake in the Hills home in 2003 while visiting from Canada.

“She will never be the same, naive, innocent child she was before the crime,” the girl’s mother said in court.

“She feels guilty and the sense of being a bad person because she has done things that she knows are wrong modeled after Mr. Cooke.”

Before Cooke ever appeared in a U.S. courtroom to answer to the charges, he fought his extradition from Canada for years, prosecutors said.

What is becoming a weekly event, we must now all together do a collective slap of the cheek and make a shocked face. Ready? Go!

US ‘Godtalk’ host arrested over child porn

A popular US radio DJ and host of the Godtalk program has been indicted on two counts of child pornography using the internet.

A self-described progressive and former Catholic priest, Bernie Ward works for San Francisco radio station KGO, hosting a night-time chat show and Sunday morning religious program, Godtalk.

KGO’s website today reported that Ward was indicted in the US Federal Court on two counts of child pornography using the internet.

The report quoted Ward’s attorney as saying the incidents were from more than four years ago and were a part of research for a book.

KGO’s Operations Director Jack Swanson said: “Bernie Ward has been a valued, long-time employee of KGO Radio.