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Truth Be Told: Due Penalty

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WORLD Radio - Truth Be Told: Due Penalty

Part II: WORLD Senior Correspondent Kim Henderson continues her investigation into a shocking case involving a minister who thinks he’s above the law


KIM HENDERSON, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Previously on Truth Be Told . . .

DARLENE LAMB: We all was told it was lies at the time . . .

JOANNA GIPSON: I sold candy from the time I was 8 ’til 20 . . .

LEAH GIPSON: My mom literally gave him to King when he was 10 years old.

DARLENE LAMB: I was determined I was fixing to find out something before that night was up.

BILLY WAYNE THORNHILL: I thought we might have something if Nathan Lamb and the Lambs would help us.

This is Truth Be Told.

THEME

THORNHILL: We walked down into the woods about a hundred yards from their house. And Nathan said, “David Earl King had gave me this to use.”

This podcast is about a shocking criminal case . . .

TONEY RUSHING: We never did catch her, and the money was gone.

One that involves religion...

BILL GOODWIN: You know, you don’t mess with the preacher. People hate to believe that a man of God could do such a thing.

...power...

LEAH: I will refer to him as King. I won’t ever say his whole name . . .

...money...

CLERK: I started reading it and reviewing the court records, and I couldn’t put it down.

...violence...

NATE: Now I'm not only keeping a secret from my family, but I'm dealing with the guilt of what happened.

...and abuse.

ANDREW SCHMUTZER: This is not stranger danger. That was common when I was a kid. That mantra is baloney. Most perpetrators are people the victim knows, because that's how they have access to them.

Nate Lamb and his family spent the dark, early hours of March 1, 2001, fearing the retaliation of David Earl King. But dawn came, and with it, resolve. Darlene took Nate to the sheriff’s office in Tylertown. She remembers being there for hours. Officials called for a victim assistance coordinator to come in, along with someone from the Department of Human Services. Investigator Toney Rushing took Nate into a private room.

DARLENE: He told him everything and  I was watching Toney Rushing typing stuff and I said, “Tony, are you not telling me something?” And this was like getting toward the later part of the evening time. And he said, “Ms. Lamb, Nathaniel has told us things not to tell you.”

When they were done, officers advised the Lambs against returning to their home. At least, not until King was in custody. Crime Stoppers paid for four nights at a hotel out of town.

DARLENE: We had an unnumbered suite. They did not want us to go anywhere and DHS people came and brought us bunches of groceries.

Meanwhile, Toney Rushing and other officers were preparing for a raid at Valley of the Kings. They grabbed bullet-proof vests and long guns, and made sure they had enough manpower to secure the perimeter of the property. Officers would end up remaining in those positions throughout the night and into the next day as others executed the search warrant.

Former Compound
Former Compound. Photo by Kim Henderson.

It was dark when their convoy of cruisers headed down Enon Sartinville Road. All their radios were noticeably silent. They made sure of that. They were determined to surprise David Earl King.

The group that night included Assistant District Attorney Bill Goodwin. He’s nearly retired now, but back then he was in the thick of a career that would encompass 150 criminal jury trials. Goodwin says he never doubted that Nate was telling the truth.

GOODWIN: We had another case in youth court involving David Earl King, and the system failed that child.

King Arrested
King Arrested. Photo by Aaron Rhoads.

Officers arrested King and the Gipson sisters’ brother without incident, but King’s family members and followers prayed and chanted against them while they searched the house.

The raid gave Assistant DA Goodwin another reason to believe Nate. The 13-year-old knew things he shouldn’t have known.

GOODWIN: Nathaniel was able to tell us certain facts and where certain things were. So when the search warrant was ran, we were looking for very specific items. One in particular was what is called an emasculator that's used to castrate steers. King would use that emasculator to threaten the children, and Nathaniel knew where that emasculator was in the bedroom. If he hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have known that. It was exactly where it was reported to have been.

Investigator Rushing found another surprise during the search.

RUSHING: . . large sums of cash, large sums of cash within his room. Sure did.

What the officers didn’t know was that additional money was stashed in the cellar. Minutes after they returned from the raid, Rushing got a call.

RUSHING: He said y'all had missed this. And so we immediately went back. But they had taken their stairwell up, going down to the cellar part area. There was the tire, just like he described down in there, uh, and the money was gone. They said she ran out the back of the cellar with the money, and it was storming. We chased, but we never did catch her.

You may recall it was church members like Edward Lamb—Nate’s father—who built the sprawling brick home at the center of the compound. It was big enough for not only their pastor, but also for some of his adult children and their families. Assistant DA Goodwin noticed that and more during the search.

GOODWIN: When we were walking through the house, there was a bedroom and there was a little bed beside their bed. And I asked one of the daughters, I said, “Who’s bed is this?” And she said, “That's my son's bed.” And I asked her, I said, “Well, why does he sleep in here?” And she said, without missing a beat, “Because I want to know where he is at night.” And she didn't have to explain it. I knew exactly what she meant.

Goodwin says that was the only way she was free to tell him. He says he had sympathy for the Kings’ children and the difficult position they were in.

GOODWIN: They had seen their father do things and get out of it before, like this case I'm telling you about earlier, uh, that the system failed this other child. So they were in an awkward position, but I made it very clear to all of them, from his wife down to his youngest child, that not helping me was one thing. Actively working against me would be viewed very differently.

But once family members realized King was being held in jail without bond—that he wasn't getting out anytime soon—they were more willing to help with the investigation. Even King’s wife, Ruth, gave prosecutors helpful information.

GOODWIN: I promise you this, if any of them would have got in that jury stand and lied for him, they would have gone to the penitentiary. I would have sent them to the penitentiary, because I could have proven by that point that they would have been lying.

Goodwin believes Ruth King was a battered wife. Maybe that’s why Darlene Lamb says she never blamed Ruth King.

DARLENE: I think she knew things were going on.  I even told her before, “Why don’t you leave?” And she said, “He said he’d kill me if I left.”

Darlene’s friendship with Ruth King didn’t keep the Lambs from proceeding with the case. But it was very hard on the family. They lost their church. The kids couldn't go back to school. And all the while, Nate was gradually letting things out.

Captain Thornhill returned to the Lamb residence two days after King’s arrest.

THORNHILL: We walked down into the woods about a hundred yards from their house. And Nathan said, “David Earl King gave me this to use.”

It was a device. More evidence. Darlene lost 21 pounds in about as many days.

DARLENE: And they was so worried that I was going to back out, you know, that I was going to get under stress and just drop it. And I looked at Bill Goodwin and I said, “I ain’t doing it. We are going to go through this.” Oh, it was tough.

And at the Walthall County Sheriff’s Office, Toney Rushing was reaching an unsettling conclusion.

RUSHING: You kind of get a grasp of, you know, the possible things that were happening to these other young men that were running away, which is very disturbing and brought a lot of concern.

Investigators soon realized the abuse trail went back decades, beginning in Baxterville, where King started his first church and school. They found victims scattered from California to Texas, Arkansas to Virginia.

RUSHING: Once we started digging into it--a lot of this was not admissible in court because it didn't have anything to do directly with that young man's case, but it was more or less the history of this individual perpetrator--it's got many legs, this case.

He’s right. This case did have many legs. Rushing recalls how the list of victims started snowballing once they got a name or two from the Baxterville school rolls.

RUSHING: They would tell who was along with him as another victim that actually witnessed at that time, when they were children.

Rushing remembers one interview in particular. They tracked down a possible victim at the shop where he worked.

RUSHING: And he pulled us in his office. He said, “My family doesn't know about this part of my life. I’d just as soon them not to know.” He just kept saying, “If y'all got him, that's good. If I have to, I will, but I don't want to testify” The shock of him living with that closed up—when he had kids, doing well, seemed to be—was just how he kept it in that long. You know, he said he hadn't told anyone.

Bill Goodwin
Bill Goodwin


Assistant DA Bill Goodwin also remembers those interviews. He believes social media would help in this sort of investigation today, but in 2001, it required street-level, door-knocking kind of work to locate victims.

GOODWIN: Some of them were 40 years old by the time I interviewed them who had been molested by King when they were 7 or 8 and cried like it happened yesterday. And I had two or three of their wives tell me that it was like war wounds. It was that deep, you know, what had happened to them. One in particular I can remember whose wife wanted to have children and he didn’t because he said people hurt children. Oh, it's heartbreaking. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

Goodwin interviewed some 50 victims. About half of them were willing to be identified as potential witnesses for the prosecution.

You know, I've dealt with some vicious murderers in the course of my career. And I mean, I have prosecuted some men that did just horrible things to children, murdered them. And the difference is King's victims. I mean, they were just out there suffering. And a lot of them had told their parents what King had done, and they didn't believe them. And, you know, all these men just went into their adulthood wounded and bitter. I will never mention these men's names, except for Nathaniel. I've spoken to him, and he's given me permission to discuss his case.

To this day, Nate has only praise for Goodwin and others involved in the case.

NATE: The district attorney’s office in Southwest Mississippi and the Walthall County Sheriff’s Department were extraordinary. They were absolutely amazing—the investigators, the counselors, the victim assistance people, the DAs.

But Nate is candid about the aftermath of his accusations.

NATE: Now we're in front of judges. Now we're in front of a jury telling them what happened to us. "Hey, that's not supposed to happen to me. That's not supposed to happen to you. But no, it happened to me and my family, in my church."

NEWSROOM AMBI

WILLIAMSON: My name is Matt Williamson. I'm the managing editor of the Enterprise Journal in McComb, Mississippi, and at the time of the David Earl King trial. I was a cub reporter. I was green as they come.

Matt Williamson
Reporter Matt Williamson. Press Photo.

The Enterprise-Journal is a rarity in the current newspaper landscape. It still has its own large office building with quiet cubicles and a smiling secretary that greets you at the door. It still has loyal print-edition subscribers. And it still has Williamson, and a host of other longstanding employees.

They are busy, these news people. It takes me a few weeks to get Williamson to schedule a time to talk, but he eventually carves out an hour for me between deadlines. He’s a Chinos kind of guy with a scruffy beard. Back in 2001, he had the police beat. McComb is about 20 miles from the compound at Jayess, so he covered the King story, from when it broke to events as recent as 2017. Williamson has covered a lot of stories over the course of his career, but none like that one. It ranks right at the top of his most noteworthy.

WILLIAMSON: I would say, you know, Valley of the Kings, Hurricane Katrina.

When I explored the Enterprise-Journal’s archives, I found more than 20 pieces related to the David Earl King story.

WILLIAMSON: The bond hearing, the preliminary hearing, the arraignment, this is when everything became apparent. Yep, everything that everybody thought was going on out there—there was definitely something to it. And there was a lot of other stuff that was really interesting leading up to the trial. It was kind of local legend that this guy had piles of cash out there, And he kept bees . . . They were looking in bee hives for cash. 

Williamson also points out King was focused on protecting his assets, even in jail.

WILLIAMSON: On, I think it was March 6, the day after his arrest, he had deeded all his property to his daughter, LaDonna. I guess that was a pre-emptive move in case he did get convicted so the state wouldn’t seize his assets and the church would stay in his family.

Williamson’s articles during that time paint a fuller picture of the troubled religious enclave at Jayess. Officials actually arrested three individuals on charges pertaining to Nate’s sexual abuse. One—a drifter from Louisiana who happened to be staying at the compound—turned state’s witness. The others were David Earl King and the Gipson sisters’ brother, Shawn, also known as King's adopted son, Nathan Paul King.

Williamson admits it was sometimes hard to know what to print. It’s the only time he’s ever been called to a judge’s chambers. Judge Mike Smith asked him and another journalist to show some decency.

WILLIAMSON: We sanitized it as much as we could for a small town, daily newspaper, but at the same time, we’re the paper of record. This is what’s being said. These are what the allegations are. We have no control over what’s introduced as evidence.

Williamson remembers watching the DA, Dunn Lampton, in action.

WILLIAMSON: Dunn was a spectacular district attorney--they just don’t make DAs like that anymore. I mean, he was a shark with blood in the water.

He also remembers what it was like to be near the defendant, David Earl King.

WILLIAMSON: I’m young, and I’m a reporter and I want to be fair. I want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, but there’s just something you can’t shake, you know? It’s kind of like when you’re hanging out at the river, and you see a cottonmouth snake. You know (laughs) you best stay away from that.

Williamson was at the trial when Nate took the stand.

WILLIAMSON: He was real country. He had a thick drawl. I mean, he just looked like any regular country, Mississippi kid, you know? There wasn't anything that really kind of stood out about him, and that was what was kind of scary about it. He looked like any other kid. I mean, like this could happen to any other kid and they can cover it up and wear it well, just by going on about their daily lives and stuff.

Williamson said his personal views about the case changed when Nate started answering questions.

WILLIAMSON: Before the victim took the stand, it was just what we're reading from an affidavit. This is what we’re reading from an indictment. This is what an investigator says. This is what a prosecutor says. This is all a bunch of lawyers talking. But when the victim took the stand, the scope and the breadth of the abuse became very real.

He says the interrogation—at times—was hard to watch.

WILLIAMSON: The defense attorney -- I mean, they were brutal on this kid. He would say things like, “When you and Brother King were riding around in the truck and he supposedly did this to you, you know, do you remember what day that was?” And he says, “No, I don't.” And he says, “Well, I bet you try to remember, don’t you?” And he was like, “No, actually I try to forget.” I get he's a defense attorney. I mean, that's what you’ve got to do--go for the jugular--but the way the kid answered it, it was just, you could tell that he was being sincere. There was nothing for him to gain by doing this. There's no way anybody could fabricate this.

But not all the action was in the courtroom. When rumors circulated that King had stashed millions in a crypt he’d bought for the future, Williamson reported the result—robbers vandalized the burial vault, and found nothing but cobwebs. Later, when a subsequent trial handed King a tax evasion conviction, Williamson was on site to watch the state tax commission auction King’s cars, trucks, and farm equipment. And early on, he watched the paper’s photographer grab an unforgettable shot.

WILLIAMSON: It was tough for him to get a picture of David Earl King when he was coming out of the jail. His family would always shield him, basically kind of jump in front of the lenses and stuff. And after a couple of attempts, he just wasn't getting what he wanted. So he came up with a plan that, you know, for a photographer was kind of a gutsy move. He slapped a 300 millimeter lens on his camera. There was a breezeway connecting the Sheriff's department to the courthouse, and it's only about 25 feet maybe between there. And so with that lens, he only had like one opportunity to get the shot. And that was basically when David Earl King was coming through the threshold of the door.

King Arrested
Photo by Aaron Rhoads.

The photographer—Aaron Rhoads—got the picture. Tight. Up close. And worth a thousand words. It shows King shielding his face with a Bible. It also shows King’s quote “adopted” son, Nathan Paul King, the one he took from Adra Gipson and abused. The photo shows him literally following in King’s footsteps. His head is ducked. They’re both in prison garb.

You’ll remember that Shawn Gipson grew up at the compound with his sisters Joanna, Leah, and Tablitha. He went to live with the Kings, but Bill Goodwin says he never could find any proof of an adoption. Shawn became known as Nathan Paul King. And here’s something else—Nathan Paul King married one of the Kings’ daughters.

From this point on, I’ll refer to Shawn Gipson as the court documents do—as Nathan Paul King. You may hear some others call him Dooley, but that’s a negative nickname according to his sisters.

He’s in the court documents because he’s a co-defendant in this trial charged with sexual battery. But everyone I talked to about this story—from the victim’s mother to the arresting officers—expressed sympathy for Nathan Paul King.

His sisters remember when they were young, Rev. King would use their brother as leverage to keep them at the compound.

But things quickly changed. Their brother had privileges at Valley of the Kings because of his relationship with the preacher. Sometimes he’d spy on his sisters. Even so, it seems like today the sisters cling instead to their early memories of their brother.

SISTERS: He didn’t have a choice. I mean, it wasn't his fault. I never blamed him for that because, as we were sent out, he was closed in. We were sent out into the world to sell peanut brittle, he was closed in.

Assistant District Attorney Bill Goodwin says Nathan Paul King was brainwashed.

GOODWIN: He had his own separate counsel. And I tried working with that counsel in every way to help him, because I viewed him as a victim. He became a perpetrator, but he was also a victim.

As part of the investigation, Goodwin and his team interviewed family members of Nathan Paul King—even his dad, who he hadn’t seen much since his parents’ divorce. 

GOODWIN: I can remember like it was yesterday—right down at the courthouse, in the breezeway down there interviewing his father who had been out of the picture for a long time. KH: Was he sad? BG: incredibly sad to see what was happening to his son. Of course he was. And I think Dooley's perspective on that would be that his father didn't protect him. But boy, these things get, they just get incredibly complicated.

Walthall County Courthouse
Waltham County Courthouse. Photo by Kim Henderson.

After some initial interviews by phone, I met Bill Goodwin at the historic courthouse in Tylertown—in the actual courtroom where King’s initial hearings took place. It’s a sobering kind of space. Dark wood panelling lines walls that stretch at least 14 feet from floor to ceiling. We set up at a conference table in front of the jury box.

GOODWIN: This is where a lot of the hearings were. The bond hearings and all of the pretrial hearings were right here. The trial moved over to Franklin County because of a change of venue, you know? And, um, that was kind of interesting. If you ask the defense attorneys about the change of venue, they will tell you, “Oh, that was just a horrible place to go because the people over there are so conservative” I've always thought the flip side of that. I worried as the prosecuting attorney that going over there might actually aver to the defendants benefit because we were dealing with a minister and in some very conservative fundamentalist areas the preacher carries a lot of weight. It worked out fine, but it was by no means, uh, a gift to the state of Mississippi to move it to Franklin County.

Goodwin says the trial’s sensationalist nature attracted attention. Still, at its core, it involved basic crimes.

GOODWIN: The reality of it is, this is a case about power and violence against children.

News that Goodwin had managed to get one particular witness to testify about the crimes came like a bombshell. King’s son, Glen, agreed to testify against his father. Glen King was also Nate Lamb’s teacher at the church school.

GOODWIN: Glen was, uh, aware of exactly what was going on out there. He had told his dad in exacerbation, that it was all wrong and leave him out of it. You know?

Officer Billy Wayne Thornhill was there for King’s initial appearance in the Walthall County courtroom. I asked him about King’s followers, the ones that filled the courtroom and protected him from the press when he was walking inside.

THORNHILL: Evidently from what he had him doing--from the old ladies selling peanut brittle and all that, he was more or less the Messiah, a cult leader. Did Tony tell you about some of the snapshots they found in the compound in the house? There was a snapshot of Mr. King and Jim Jones.

No one I contacted had an explanation for the photo of King and mass murderer/cult leader Jim Jones.

After their arrest, the two men were held at a jail in a neighboring county. Thornhill was in charge of transporting them back and forth to the courthouse during the pre-trial hearings, and later, the trial.

THORNHILL: There wasn't any conversation, because as a law enforcement officer, you just don't want to do anything that might cause a mistrial. And the Kings didn't talk very much.

Franklin County Courthouse
Franklin County Courthouse. Photo by Kim Henderson.

On the opening day of the trial, August 27, 2001, Judge Mike Smith barred anyone under 16 from entering the courtroom. He warned others that they shouldn’t consider the proceedings as entertainment.

King’s victims—20 of them—came from Mississippi and neighboring states to attend the trial. Some of them brought their families, too. They saw David Earl King in the courtroom, but King did not take the stand.

The trial lasted just three days. Here’s Nate, remembering what it was like the last day.

NATE: We were in to hear the verdict of the jury. All the way around the building was surrounded with law enforcement. They were all in the courthouse, shoulder to shoulder. There were tremendous threats--law enforcement had a sense--people were going to try to come free him on the verdict day.

The jury deliberated for less than an hour. They found the defendants guilty of sexual battery, conspiracy to commit sexual battery, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Reporter Matt Williamson describes the reaction.

WILLIAMSON: Stunned silence. Everybody was just motionless. It was like this big weight had been lifted. It was like a big collective exhaling from the audience.

The courtroom remained calm as Judge Smith handed down their sentences. David Earl King would go to prison for 36 years. Nathan Paul King would be there for about half that time. The third man, a drifter named Gary Bates, got five years probation.

According to a news report, Assistant DA Bill Goodwin vouched for Bates before his sentencing. I’m reading here: “The act Mr. Bates participated in is frankly unspeakable. But there is no question from the time he was arrested, he told the truth. That was extremely helpful in bringing to justice the man we believe had been doing that for 35 years.”

Darlene Lamb also got to address Bates at his sentencing. Again I quote the article: She said, “All I can say is get your life straight and live for God, because if you don’t, things will be worse.”

Afterwards, Goodwin and his team watched as officers escorted victims and their families away from the courthouse. Goodwin says having so many of King’s victims there in the courtroom made this case unlike any he had prosecuted before.

GOODWIN: You know, in the case of, uh, a murder case, obviously you can talk to their families afterwards, but the victims are gone. Tremendous satisfaction comes from those cases, but this case I could talk to the victims, both Nathaniel and the multitude of other ones  who were able to have a sense that there is ultimate justice, you know, uh, that there is ultimate justice.

And he gives Nate much of the credit for that.

GOODWIN: Nathaniel was brave enough and strong enough and his family were brave enough and strong enough, that in getting justice for himself, he helped many, many, many other victims get justice. Because when David Earl King left here to go to prison for the rest of his life, he not only went to prison for Nathaniel. He went to prison for all of the transgressions and, uh, acts of violence against children that he had done through the years. So, uh, Nathaniel, uh, uh, got justice for all of them. And he is to be commended for that.

Meanwhile, Officer Thornhill had the task of taking the two Kings to prison.

THORNHILL: Now he was kind of hostile about that--having to go directly to the penitentiary.

And back at the Enterprise-Journal, cub reporter Matt Williamson had proved himself during those months of covering the King case. The Associated Press asked him to write something about the trial that they could move on the wire.

WILLIAMSON: I remember after the verdict, I was sitting in my house watching headline news or something like that. You could see the ticker crawling at the bottom of the screen. I was on my lunch break and I saw the headline about the Valley of the Kings. That’s the first time that had ever happened to me.

Bill Goodwin was used to that kind of spotlight. He handled two separate cases in which parents murdered their toddlers for insurance proceeds. He got national attention for it—appearing on 60 Minutes and A&E’s Cold Case Files. Still, Goodwin says the King trial was different.

GOODWIN: This case gave me more satisfaction because there were so many victims that afterwards—there were probably weeks on end—that I received letters from victims saying, “Thank you. I cannot stress enough that we had wonderful, dedicated law enforcement who were as appalled at what had happened and the volume. They all became determined. We let some of these other kids down. It stops here, and it did stop there.

Bill Goodwin told me the Lamb Family had  shed the community of serious evil, and the community was grateful.

Kindness even showed up on Nate’s school desk. It was a new school for the Lambs, and Darlene says her children were two weeks late getting started. Remember, the trial was in August.

DARLENE LAMB: You know, some of the kids just wrote him some sweet little letters. Just left little notes on his desk, you know, how much they supported him, and they were proud of him.

Nate acknowledges that, but he says trying to get back to regular life after the trial was difficult. Just days after settling into a new school routine, 9/11 happened. He remembers his teacher rolled a TV into their consumer math class so they could watch the national tragedy unfold.

But Nate says he was too wrapped up in his own personal tragedy to pay much attention.

NATE: I was not normal. I wasn't healed. I wasn't whole, I was totally a wreck.

DARLENE: I knew when he was going through problems. You know, in school. He’d want to skip school. And I didn’t really push him, make him go that day. And I’d go downstairs and say, “You know, Nate, you want to talk? We’re here for you.” And sometimes it took a day to shake it, sometimes it took a little more than a day to shake it. Then he’d get back up.

Nate says he studied hard, but he couldn’t cut it. He was having trouble focusing in class. His principal noticed.

NATE: Whenever I’d get the failed test—I’d get my tests back, you know—and I knew it was going to be failed because that's what I was used to doing—was failing. And, um, I’d get the test. My principal would write, "Nathaniel, you can do better than this. I'm praying for you." (exhale) And just those words, just those simple words were worth a million dollars. It was priceless. It took some time. I got a bunch of those tests, a bunch of those notes, and I'm thankful he didn't give up on me. Gosh. (Sigh.)

Edward and Darlene decided it would be best to start fresh a few miles further away from Valley of the Kings, but it took two years to sell their house.

Meanwhile, Nate was struggling.

NATE: Picture yourself 14 years old, a young man that should already have an idea, plans toward his future, what direction he's going to go after high school, developing good traits, good character traits. That age is totally interrupted. Psychologically, mentally, spiritually. What you know to be right is just messed completely up, trying to figure out a path forward.

And according to Assistant DA Goodwin, that’s the real tragedy when it comes to Rev. King’s victims. 

GOODWIN: It's the ultimate violation of trust, especially when you're dealing with a clergy member. Not only are these people angry at the man that has molested them, who does he represent? He represents God. So, when a clergy member molests a child, he has the potential of destroying any relationship with God that, uh, these people will ever have. They're many times bitter, angry, not only at their perpetrator, but at God. And that's the insidious part of this.

THEME MUSIC

On the next episode of  Truth Be Told, Nate learns to trust again.

NATE:  This man that God sent was a true shepherd. A true pastor, that had the gentleness, had the kindness, who was there to pick up the broken pieces—to allow a new season of my life to come to pass . .

CLOSING ANNOUNCER: Truth be Told is a four-part story written by Kim Henderson and produced by the creative team at WORLD Radio. If you’d like to comment on this special report, our email address is: editor@wng.org. To share this episode with a friend, or learn more about the case, visit our website at wng.org/truthbetold. Thanks for listening.


WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.

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