Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Other or denomination not established Lexington, Kentucky, USA · 2026

Zachary King: former LexCity executive pastor sentenced after admitting sexual offenses against a minor congregant

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

former executive pastor, pastor in a position of spiritual trust

Organization

LexCity Church

Archive classification

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

Kentucky's attorney general described King as having used a position of spiritual trust to abuse a minor congregant. His executive-pastor role supplied trusted access and authority within the church relationship; the nexus does not rest on religious employment alone.

Pastoral or clerical authority
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2026-03-23 · guilty plea

Fayette Circuit Court, Kentucky, USA. King pleaded guilty to seven felony counts, including first-degree rape, first-degree sodomy and first-degree sexual abuse, arising from offenses against a minor who attended his church.
2026-06-04 · sentencing

Fayette Circuit Court, Kentucky, USA. The court imposed a 13-year prison sentence and lifetime sex-offender registration.

Documented coercion mechanisms

pastoral authority
access to a minor congregant
abuse of spiritual trust

Cited record

Sources

official prosecution record guilty plea announcement Office of the Kentucky Attorney General, 'Former Lexington Pastor Pleads Guilty to Rape and Sexual Abuse of Minor' (Mar. 23, 2026).: The official announcement identifies King's former executive-pastor role, the minor congregant, seven felony guilty pleas, the agreed sentencing recommendation and the attorney general's finding that the conduct abused a position of spiritual trust.
reliable contemporaneous reporting sentencing report WKYT, 'Former Lexington pastor sentenced for rape, sexual abuse of minor' (June 4, 2026).: Contemporaneous local court reporting records the Fayette Circuit Court's 13-year sentence and lifetime registration requirement.

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.kentucky.gov/Pages/Activity-stream.aspx?n=AttorneyGeneral&prId=1901 Corpus classification: official-prosecution-record; evidentiary role: guilty-plea-announcement. SHA-256 a643acf3f3d61a0d73c8a08ccfdde60483aff025b75ef65a27b0c0c9c13f3b9e
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://www.wkyt.com/2026/06/04/former-lexington-pastor-sentenced-rape-sexual-abuse-minor/ Corpus classification: reliable-contemporaneous-reporting; evidentiary role: sentencing-report. SHA-256 e7c2f2edb756805e673389918d4f4bb1f598abdc518c6870d2d64bb13990a0dd
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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