United States: Youth pastor's guilty plea to child rape of boys in his congregation, Church For All Nations
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Material that narrows or disputes the record
Appellate history
2003-02-07
Affirmed the trial court's suppression of Glenn's statement to a church elder on clergy/penitent-privilege grounds, on the State's interlocutory appeal (115 Wash. App. 540, 62 P.3d 921); did not disturb the prosecution itself.
Record class
Core record
Evidence status
Convicted
Authority role
Herman Glenn, Jr., youth pastor at Church For All Nations, Tacoma
Organization
Church For All Nations, Tacoma
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
Glenn was the boys' youth pastor at the church their families attended; his authority over them as their spiritual mentor was the channel through which the grooming game — an invented spiritual/alter-ego framing requiring 'purging' through sex acts — operated.
- Institutional obedience or isolation
Evidence structure
Proceedings
Date in cited record · guilty plea
Superior Court, Pierce County, Washington. Glenn, a youth pastor charged with six counts of third-degree rape, one count of second-degree rape and one count of child molestation involving boys affiliated with his church, pleaded guilty to three counts of third-degree child rape under a deal exposing him to a longer-than-standard sentence (reported as up to nine years), required registration as a sex offender, and three years' community supervision on release. An interlocutory appeal by the State over suppression of Glenn's confession to a church elder — held protected by clergy/penitent privilege — was resolved in Glenn's favor and is reported at State v. Glenn, 115 Wash.App. 540, 62 P.3d 921 (Wash. Ct. App. 2003), affirming the trial court's suppression order without disturbing the prosecution.
Documented coercion mechanisms
- grooming of boys under his youth-ministry authority through an invented game in which Glenn claimed to have an alternate persona that could only be 'purged' through sex acts
- clergy/penitent-privileged disclosure to a church elder, later litigated on interlocutory appeal
Cited record
Sources
- appellate court opinion court opinion State v. Glenn, 115 Wash. App. 540, 62 P.3d 921 (Wash. Ct. App. 2003).
Published Washington Court of Appeals opinion identifying Glenn as 'a youth pastor' charged with child molestation and child rape, and resolving the clergy-privilege suppression question.
- national newspaper court reporting press report Poynter, 'Former youth pastor pleads guilty to child rape' (2003).
Contemporaneous report of the guilty plea to three counts of third-degree child rape and the plea-deal sentencing exposure.
Source provenance
Source access and integrity log
This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.
- Source and tier basis
- https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2621464/state-v-glenn/ Corpus classification: appellate-court-opinion; evidentiary role: court-opinion. SHA-256 e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
- Source and tier basis
- https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2003/former-youth-pastor-pleads-guilty-to-child-rape/ Corpus classification: national-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: press-report. SHA-256 b6ac2559ecbc68aeac93e27fbe289a54ba8f4f4aadff9219a32ecf72f7114d71
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
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Related record
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- 2021 · Paris, France CIASE/Sauvé Report: est. 216,000 abused by French clergy since 1950
- 2019 · Vatican City McCarrick: ex-cardinal found guilty by Vatican canonical process, laicized
- 2010 · Oregon City, OR, USA Beagley faith-healing death: parents convicted (criminally negligent homicide)
- 2014 · Philadelphia, PA, USA Schaible: 3rd-degree murder, second child dead of untreated pneumonia
- 2001 · London, UK Victoria Climbié: murder convictions; possession belief; Laming Inquiry followed
- 2012 · London, UK Kristy Bamu: kindoki 'deliverance' murder convictions (30/25-yr minimums)