A South Carolina Church Let a Registered Sex Offender Work Around Children for Years. Now Parents Are Suing

Reviewed by Abuse Justice Center · Updated 2026-07-21

What the Lawsuit Says Happened

A proposed class-action complaint filed in Georgetown County accuses a Pawleys Island-area church and the K-5 Christian academy it runs of allowing a 70-year-old registered sex offender to work on campus for roughly six years, three of which came after his sex-offense conviction. The academy serves close to 300 students across preschool through elementary grades, and the complaint says the man worked as a custodian with ordinary, largely unsupervised access to school buildings, classrooms, and children throughout that time.

The case became public after a concerned parent reported the situation to the county sheriff's office. Investigators found that the man had allegedly been in violation of the terms of his supervision by having contact with minors and by entering areas he was restricted from, and probation agents arrested him within days. Parents filed the civil complaint shortly after, on behalf of their own children and, they say, on behalf of other families whose kids may have had similar contact with him.

How Leadership Allegedly Responded to a Warning

The complaint says the risk was not a total surprise to everyone at the school. At least one teacher raised a concern directly with administration about a known registered sex offender working around students. According to accounts of the internal exchange, administrators responded that the man had turned his life around and that continuing to judge him for his past "was not a Christian thing to do."

Parents say they were never told any of this while their children were enrolled. The complaint frames that silence as a choice, not an oversight - arguing that church and school leadership had specific information about the risk and decided, repeatedly, not to pass it along to the families paying tuition and trusting the campus with their kids.

Resignations and Criminal Charges Followed Within Days

The fallout moved fast. Within roughly a week of the parent's initial report, the church's longtime senior pastor and his spouse, who had served the congregation together for decades in ministry and guest-services roles, both resigned. The academy's director resigned the same week. Weekend worship services were canceled while the congregation absorbed the news.

Separately, county prosecutors brought criminal charges against several of the same former leaders, including obstruction, criminal conspiracy, and unlawfully placing a child at risk. Those criminal charges move on an entirely different track from the civil lawsuit and do not need to result in convictions for the civil claims against the church and school to succeed.

What Families in Similar Situations Can Do

This case is unusual for how quickly it became public, but the underlying pattern is not rare: a church, school, camp, or daycare has specific knowledge of a risk to children and does not disclose it, sometimes for years. If your child had contact with a known or suspected abuser at an institution that failed to warn your family, you may have a civil claim against that institution regardless of whether any criminal case was ever filed or resulted in a conviction.

A civil claim against a church or school does not require your family to still live in the same state, does not require you to join an existing class action, and does not require the harm to have been physical for you to have suffered real damages. A free, confidential case review can walk through what your family experienced and explain, plainly, what options may still be available.

Questions to Ask If a Church, School, or Daycare Knew About a Risk

Cases like this one usually turn on what the institution knew and when, not just on what a single abuser did. These are the questions attorneys typically ask first when a family suspects a school, church, or daycare failed to disclose a known risk.

1. Was the person a contractor, vendor, or volunteer rather than a formal employee?: Institutions sometimes argue that contractors and volunteers are not their responsibility, but courts frequently disagree when the institution controlled access to children and failed to screen or supervise that access.
2. Did any staff member raise a concern that was dismissed?: An internal complaint that went nowhere is one of the strongest pieces of evidence in an institutional negligence case, because it shows the organization had notice of the risk.
3. Was a background check ever run, and how recently?: A one-time background check performed years earlier, with nothing since, is a common gap plaintiffs' attorneys look for in these cases.
4. Did the institution have any written policy on notifying parents about a known risk?: The absence of a notification policy - or a policy that exists but was ignored - can support a negligence claim even without proof of a specific cover-up.
5. Have there been earlier complaints or lawsuits involving the same institution?: A documented history of prior concerns raises the bar for what an institution should have done differently this time.
6. Did leadership only act after media attention or a law enforcement report?: Resignations or policy changes that happen only once a story becomes public can suggest the institution knew earlier and chose not to act.

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