Youth pastor Dustin Werneberg (28) was arrested for allegedly raping a girl under the age of 16. Werneberg was the youth pastor at First Baptist Church in Coalgate.
Coalgate police investigator Richard Costantino says former youth minister Dustin Ray Werneburg was arrested on eight sex crime charges after a parent came forward saying Werneburg had inappropriate contact with their daughter.
"Information was passed to us. We had it checked out. Found that it was factual and we are still proceeding with the investigation," Costantino said.
An affidavit states the victim's parent found inappropriate messages and pictures between Werneburg and his daughter. It also shows the two began texting in November of 2011 and exchanged at least 1,000 messages.
Note to parents – A youth pastor should never be allowed to communicate with your child via unsupervised or unsanctioned text messages or emails. As a parent, you should be monitoring your child’s cell phone activity.
Watch this video. It shows First Baptist pastor Jeff Self saying something odd:
"We had some allegations of sexual misconduct him basically inappropriately approaching a teenage girl. And with that we met with leadership of the church and asked for his resignation," Self said.
Wereneburg resigned in August, but Self says this was not the first allegation made against Werneburg.
"We had three allegations over the course of three years. Two of them he had come to me and said you are going to hear this personally, and it was a he said she said and we believed him and there was no anything else about it, but once we had that third allegation that was really significant in August," Self said.
Their youth pastor had three allegation of misconduct over three years. They kept him working with kids even though there were allegations because it was a “he said, she said” kind of thing and they believed him. Jesus friggen Christ people. Have you learned nothing? Hello! Where there is smoke, there is fire.
Note to parents: Your kids are not safe at First Baptist Church in Coalgate. Perhaps you should move on to Second Baptist, or even Third.
