Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Evangelical, Pentecostal, and independent Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia, Canada · 2019

Canada: Nova Scotia youth pastor convicted of grooming and sexually assaulting a teenage congregant

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Youth pastor, Emmanuel Baptist Church, Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia

Organization

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Hammonds Plains

Spiritual nexus

A teenage congregant groomed over years by her church's youth pastor, whose pastoral role over the congregation's young people was the access mechanism.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2019-01-01 · convicted at trial

    Nova Scotia Provincial Court. Michael Oliver Fisher, youth pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Hammonds Plains, N.S., was convicted of sexual assault and sexual interference. The court heard he began grooming the victim in 2008 when she was 14, escalating over the following three years to kissing, massages, nudity and sexual assault by the time she was 17. He was sentenced to 27 months in prison, placed on the national sex-offender registry for 20 years, and his DNA was recorded in a national databank.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • youth-pastor authority over a young congregant beginning when she was 14
  • multi-year grooming under cover of pastoral mentorship

Primary record

Sources

press news report CBC News, 'Former youth pastor convicted of sexual assault, sexual interference.'

Reports the conviction and grooming timeline from age 14.

press news report CBC News, 'N.S. youth pastor gets 27 months in prison for sexual interference.'

Reports the sentence, sex-offender registry order, and DNA order.

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