Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Other or denomination not established Georgia, USA · 2019

United States: minister convicted of molesting two young girls from congregant families at his church

Request a correction or reply

Disposition and response

Material that narrows or disputes the record

Appellate history

2019-09-23

Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions.

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Minister

Organization

Unnamed church congregation, Georgia

Archive classification

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

Pinkston was minister of the church the victims' families attended; the abuse of both girls occurred at the church itself, including while one victim, aged four to six, sat on his lap as her congregation's minister.

Pastoral or clerical authority
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

Date in cited record · trial

Superior Court, Georgia. Jury convicted John Aubrey Pinkston on two counts of child molestation. Pinkston, a minister, repeatedly molested two young girls, ages four to six, whose families attended his church, on church premises.
2019-09-23 · appellate

Court of Appeals of Georgia. Convictions affirmed. The court rejected Pinkston's challenges to the admission of his statements to police, the denial of a jury charge on accident, and an ineffective-assistance claim.

Documented coercion mechanisms

clerical status and physical access within the church building used to isolate young congregants (e.g., holding a child on his lap)

Cited record

Sources

court opinion appellate opinion Pinkston v. State, No. A19A1390 (Ga. Ct. App. Sept. 23, 2019).: Full appellate opinion describing Pinkston's role as minister of the victims' family church, the on-premises abuse of both children, and the affirmance of his convictions.

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://storage.courtlistener.com/pdf/2019/09/23/john_aubrey_pinkston_v._state.pdf Corpus classification: court-opinion; evidentiary role: appellate-opinion. SHA-256 4db324baff8f237c9d819fbd3843b431d6338887dbf44e8256ac61e4644f2e31
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

Named in this record? Request a correction, report a changed disposition, or submit a response.

Related record

Related cases · Christian institutions & contexts

Browse all 796 Christian institutions & contexts records

← Explore all cases