Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Other or denomination not established Sumter, SC, USA · 2020

Larry Durant: affirmed twenty-year sentence for abuse presented as prayer and spiritual protection

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Disposition and response

Material that narrows or disputes the record

Appellate history

The South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed the conviction on May 6, 2020, rejecting Durant's evidentiary, mistrial, jury-instruction, Brady and cumulative-error arguments.

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

founder and lead pastor of Word International Ministries, spiritual leader conducting private prayer meetings with teenage congregants

Organization

Word International Ministries in Sumter

Archive classification

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

The state supreme court found that Durant exercised spiritual leadership and pastoral trust to isolate teenage congregants in private prayer meetings. He represented sexual contact as part of prayer for health, disease prevention and good fortune, invoked scripture to groom them and threatened misfortune if they refused or disclosed the conduct. The religious pretext was the documented method of access and coercion.

Pastoral or clerical authority
Spiritual healing or treatment
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

Date in cited record · jury verdict and sentence

South Carolina circuit court in Sumter County. A jury convicted Durant of second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor, and the court sentenced him to twenty years in prison. The published appellate opinion does not state the trial judgment date.
2020-05-06 · direct appeal, Opinion No. 27964

Supreme Court of South Carolina. The court affirmed the conviction and sentence. It held that evidence of similar abuse was admissible because Durant used the same position of trust, spiritual leadership, private-prayer setting, scripture and threatened misfortune across the accounts.

Documented coercion mechanisms

private prayer meetings
sexual contact presented as prayer for health and good fortune
scripture used for grooming
threats of misfortune for refusal or disclosure
claims of divine direction
pastoral authority over girls raised in the church

Cited record

Sources

official state supreme court opinion final appellate judgment and nexus Supreme Court of South Carolina, State v. Durant, Opinion No. 27964 (May 6, 2020).: The official opinion records the single conviction, twenty-year sentence, final affirmance and evidence that Durant used pastoral authority, private prayer, scripture, health claims and threatened misfortune to facilitate abuse.
state supreme court opinion reproduction accessible opinion copy Supreme Court of South Carolina, State v. Durant, Opinion No. 27964 (official opinion reproduced by Justia).: The accessible reproduction preserves the full factual and procedural record, including the distinction between the tried count and similar-acts testimony.

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.sccourts.org/media/opinions/HTMLFiles/SC/27964.pdf Corpus classification: official-state-supreme-court-opinion; evidentiary role: final-appellate-judgment-and-nexus. SHA-256 97f24be0a2bcc50387f484fef9b8d87f72344cdeeaed9be670a7ca2bffa902b5
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://law.justia.com/cases/south-carolina/supreme-court/2020/27964.html Corpus classification: state-supreme-court-opinion-reproduction; evidentiary role: accessible-opinion-copy.
Retrieval: 2026-07-27 · Retrieval failed; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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