MESQUITE, Texas — The lead pastor at a Mesquite church has been arrested on charges for failing to report an assistant youth pastor's alleged sexual relationship with a teenage girl.
MESQUITE, Texas — The lead pastor at a Mesquite church has been arrested on charges for failing to report an assistant youth pastor's alleged sexual relationship with a teenage girl.
Open Door Baptist Church's lead pastor, identified by police as 70-year-old Robert Arnold Ross, was arrested earlier today and charged with one count of persons required to report, time to report, which is a class A misdemeanor.
The assistant youth pastor, identified by police as 33-year-old Steven Aaron Winn, of Crandall, Texas, was arrested in February on six counts of sexual assault of a child in connection with a 14-month sexual relationship with a girl that begin when she was 15 year old.
According to Mesquite Police Department spokesperson Lt. Brian Parrish, Ross discovered Steven Winn was having a sexual relationship with the teenage girl and failed to immediately report the incident to law enforcement.
Days after Winn's February arrest, his father, Larry Winn, was also arrested and charged with sexual assault of a child in a separate incident. Larry worked as a bus driver for the church.
In 2011, Matt Jarrell, the church's pastor at the time, was being held at a West Virginia jail on rape charges when he committed suicide.
In 1988, a church bus driver, Donald Lewis, pled guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a child.
Last month, a Sunday school teacher and volunteer at Parkside Baptist Church in Mesquite was arrested for continuous sexual abuse of a child. He was identified as 23-year-old Benjamin Baldiviez of Dallas, Texas. These charges stem from incidents between March 2017 and October 2017 on church property and church events.
Police say there may be multiple victims in each of the latest incidents and urge anyone with information to contact the Mesquite Police Department at (972) 285-6336.