By Jeff Lehr
jlehr@joplinglobe.com
NEOSHO, Mo. — A probe of alleged child sexual abuse, focused on a Newton County pastor, widened Tuesday with the filing of 10 more charges against him, including three felony counts based on allegations of a fourth young woman.
The Newton County prosecutor’s office filed five more counts of second-degree statutory sodomy, two counts of first-degree statutory sodomy, two counts of first-degree child molestation and a misdemeanor charge of second-degree child molestation against Randall “Danny” Russell, the 49-year-old pastor of the Acts II Church near Neosho.
Russell already was facing single counts of second-degree statutory rape, second-degree statutory sodomy and child abuse related to a woman who came forward in late April with allegations that Russell began molesting her and taking nude photographs of her in 2003, when she was 16.
Two more alleged victims surfaced after those charges were filed April 30, and a fourth alleged victim was named in court documents filed Tuesday.
Assistant Prosecutor Bill Dobbs said the women, all members or former members of the Acts II Church, describe initial alleged incidents of touching or kissing that would progress to more direct contact and culminated, in the case of the first woman to come forward, with alleged sexual intercourse.
“It’s as though he had a prescribed pattern he would follow as he would groom these girls,” Dobbs said.
The Newton County Sheriff’s Department has described Russell as “a self-proclaimed pastor” whose church has no known denominational affiliation. The locations of the alleged abuse vary from a public park to church offices after services to Russell’s home where the church is located at 11285 Mulberry Road.
In the case of the woman who came forward most recently, she told Detective Mike Barnett, the lead investigator in the case, that Russell began “touching” her in the summer of 2004, when she was 16. He allegedly would call her into the church office before and after services on Sundays and Tuesdays, and touch her through her clothing, according to a probable-cause affidavit. She alleges three such incidents that summer.
She told Barnett that after that, Russell began touching her under her clothes “a couple of times a month on most months,” and that such abuse continued until she left the church in February or March of this year.
Three of the charges of second-degree statutory sodomy filed Tuesday are based on her allegations.
Dobbs said a woman contacted him May 1 about Russell after news reports of the first woman. He said she alleges that Russell began abusing her when she was 12. At the time, he had no church of his own, and she would attend another church with him and go to his house after services. The abuse reportedly stopped when she quit going to church with him at the age of 16.
The two charges of first-degree child molestation and the two charges of first-degree statutory sodomy are based on her allegations.
The misdemeanor charge filed Tuesday is based on the allegations of a woman who now lives on the West Coast. Dobbs said she contacted him on May 2, and he referred her to the Sheriff’s Department.
‘Eerily similar’
“Their allegations are eerily similar,” said Assistant Prosecutor Bill Dobbs.
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