Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Evangelical, Pentecostal, and independent Kingston, Jamaica · 2017

Jamaica: pastor sentenced to 20 years for raping a thirteen-year-old baptised member of his church

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

pastor of a Pentecostal congregation

Organization

Pentecostal City Mission Church

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The complainant was a baptised, active member of the defendant's own congregation — squarely inside the faith relationship, and it was his pastoral standing that let him take her from her family.

Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2017-03-09 · conviction at trial and sentence

Home Circuit Court, Kingston, Jamaica (Justice Lorna Shelly Williams). Paul Hanniford, pastor of a Pentecostal City Mission congregation, was convicted on 24 January 2017 of sexual intercourse with a minor and sentenced to 20 years. He had taken a 13-year-old baptised member of his church and her five-year-old brother to his home on the pretext of a drive, and assaulted her in the bathroom; the younger brother witnessed part of the incident and reported it.

Documented coercion mechanisms

pastoral authority over a baptised child member
instruction that the assault be kept 'their secret'

Cited record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting verdict and sentencing report 'Pastor gets 20 years for sex with minor', Jamaica Observer, 9 Mar. 2017.: Jamaican paper of record reporting the conviction, the 20-year sentence, and the victim's status as a baptised member of the congregation.

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.jamaicaobserver.com/2017/03/09/pastor-gets-20-years-for-sex-with-minor/ Corpus classification: national-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: verdict-and-sentencing-report. SHA-256 e9b58074404ae5f4d40da17bbfbbcddaacad5190b5337fe3db7c74627bbbc7fb
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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