Scandal

The Polk County Sheriff’s Office responded to a residence in the Watersong Resort development near Davenport where the homeowner reported that a package from Amazon was stolen from his front porch. The package was delivered on December 19, 2019 according to his Amazon account information, but there was no package when he got home.

The homeowner pulled up his surveillance video covering the front door and saw the Amazon delivery driver deliver the package, take a delivery confirmation photo, and then remove the package.

Thirty-five years later, Debbie Vasquez's voice trembled as she described her trauma to a group of Southern Baptist leaders. She was 14, she said, when she was first molested by her pastor in Sanger, a tiny prairie town an hour north of Dallas. It was the first of many assaults that Vasquez said destroyed her teenage years and, at 18, left her pregnant by the Southern Baptist pastor, a married man more than a dozen years older.

Richard J. Poster served time for possessing child pornography, violated his probation by having contact with children, admitted masturbating in the bushes near a church school and in 2005 was put on a sex offender registry. And yet the former Catholic priest was only just this month added to a list of clergy members credibly accused of child sexual abuse — after The Associated Press asked why he was not included.