Former youth pastor claims ‘innocence’ after being charged with nearly 200 sex crimes
A longtime former youth pastor from West Virginia who has been charged with nearly 200 sex crimes involving several young girls, including multiple nieces, has claimed his innocence and vowed to defend it in court, according to his attorney.
John W. Radcliff II, 57, was arrested in late November and charged with 190 counts of sex crimes, including sexual assault, sexual abuse and incest, a press release from the West Virginia State Police said, according to The Associated Press. His 52-year-old wife, Kathy, was charged with knowing about the alleged abuses as they happened in Braxton, Lewis and Harrison counties.
Court documents filed in Lewis County and cited by WDTV said Radcliff began abusing the girls when they were 3 and 4 years old. The girls, all of whom are now adults, told police they were abused many times in Lewis County, where Radcliff made them perform sex acts on him while he sexually assaulted them in other ways throughout their childhoods.
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In one encounter, one of the victims said Radcliff and his wife called her and her cousin to their bedroom and then made them watch pornography while the adults had sex with each other. The girl reported that she ran out of the couple’s bedroom and Kathy later asked if she was OK.
Five of Radcliff’s nieces had reported the abuse in 2004, but no charges were filed. The case was reopened in September after a complaint was filed against Radcliff.
“I have no idea what happened, but we never saw charges pressed,” Carla Rinehart, 38, one of Radcliff’s nieces, told The New York Times.
Rinehart said she wasn't aware that other family members were abused when she was growing up, and it wasn’t until she suffered a mental breakdown and was hospitalized at age 17 that she began sharing her abuse with family members. She soon found out that her sister and some of her cousins were also abused.
While she doesn’t know who filed the most recent complaint in Nicholas County against her uncle alleging abuse between 2018 and 2019, Rinehart told the NY Times that she, her sister and cousins went to the police to support the victim.
“West Virginia is a small state; word gets around very quickly,” Rinehart said. “We didn’t want anyone to push her statement aside like ours was. We were, ‘This happened to us. You have to believe her.’”
Radcliff served as a youth pastor at four churches in West Virginia, the NY Times added, noting that his court-appointed lawyer said the charges were unrelated to his work as a pastor. The alleged abuse accusations occurred from 1987 to 1996.
Radcliff and his wife are both in custody at Central Regional Jail. His bond is more than $1.7 million in Lewis, Harrison and Braxton counties, while his wife’s bond in Lewis County is set at $75,000.
James Hawkins, Radcliff’s court-appointed lawyer, told the NY Times that almost all the charges against his client are unrelated to his work as a pastor and are related to incidents from 1987 to 1996.
“What I’m saying is there’s nothing new — they’re still uncorroborated statements of the alleged victims,” Hawkins said. “They were investigated in 2004, and it was determined there was not enough evidence to proceed with a criminal prosecution. We’re looking forward to our chance to answer these uncorroborated statements.”
The case is expected to go before a grand jury in 2025. Radcliff is facing more than 100 years in prison if he is convicted on all counts.
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