ChristianShame.com

HOLLIDAYSBURG – A former Roaring Spring church counselor will be on probation for 12 years after entering a no-contest plea Friday morning to molesting a 14-year-old boy in 2005.

James “Jay” Kirkman, 63, of New Enterprise also was ordered to undergo a sexual offender evaluation. He must have no unsupervised contact with related children and no contact with nonrelated children.

“It essentially takes him away from counseling children,” Blair County Chief Deputy District Attorney Jackie Bernard said.

Kirkman was scheduled to go on trial for the second time next week on charges of indecent assault, corruption of minors and endangering the welfare of children. The incidents were to have occurred between October and December 2005 at Faith Assembly of God. Kirkman’s June trial ended with a hung jury.

In court Friday before Judge Hiram Carpenter, the boy, now 16, said nothing. His mother said her son’s grades had fallen and he’s now being home-schooled, Bernard said. The youth also is afraid of counseling because of what happened when he was with Kirkman, Bernard added.

Attorney Tom Forr said Kirkman maintains his innocence but entered the plea because it assured him of probation. If Kirkman had been retried and convicted, he could have been sent to jail.

Forr said Kirkman wanted to avoid that because he wants to assist with handling health problems within his wife’s family.

Bernard said she agreed to the probation-only sentence because if convicted by a jury, probation could have been the punishment. Another factor was that it kept the victim from testifying again.

“It is very difficult to expect any kid to testify about this once, let alone twice … and that was a huge consideration for us,” Bernard said.

In the first trial, the boy told the jury that “Pastor Jay” came up behind him, put his arms around him and fondled him while he was playing the church keyboard. He also accused Kirkman of taking him in a prayer room, where he molested him and told him not to tell. The incidents reportedly occurred between October and December 2005.

Bernard praised the youth for telling what happened.

“It takes a lot of courage to talk in public about being sexually molested by a man whom you were taught to respect,” she said.

She also praised state trooper Charles Aungst of the Hollidaysburg barracks because his investigation was a key factor in bringing the case to court.

For the second trial, Bernard asked Carpenter for permission to allow testimony from two North Carolina men, now 37 and 38, who said they were sexually abused in the mid-1980s. Carpenter declined the request, saying there were some differences in the cases.

Cited From:

http://www.altoonamirror.com/page/content.detail/id/512277.html?nav=742