Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Evangelical, Pentecostal, and independent Ruffin, North Carolina, USA · 2018

United States: North Carolina pastor and school principal sentenced for abuse of a student who was also a congregant

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

pastor of Victory Baptist Church and principal of its affiliated private school, Ruffin, North Carolina

Organization

Victory Baptist Church, Ruffin, North Carolina

Spiritual nexus

A single figure's combined pastoral and educational authority over the same child — his student and his congregant at once — removed any institutional channel through which she could have been believed.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2018-11-29 · guilty plea and sentence

    Rockingham County Superior Court, North Carolina. Kevin Scott Heffner, 48, pastor of Victory Baptist Church and principal of its affiliated Victory Church Academy, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of statutory sex offense with a child under 15 and 12 counts of disseminating obscene material to a minor, for a sexual relationship formed February to August with a 14-to-15-year-old student who was also a member of his congregation. He was sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison without parole and must register as a sex offender.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • dual pastoral and educational authority over a minor who was both his student and a member of his congregation

Primary record

Sources

press press report FOX8 WGHP, Nov 2018.

Sentence, plea, dual role, charge counts.

press press report Greensboro News & Record, Nov 2018.

Victim age, timeline, sex-offender registration.

Related record

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