Southern Baptists' secret list of sex abusers includes at least six from Cobb
Jun. 1—At least six people who worked at Cobb County Baptist churches appeared on a previously secret list of sexual abusers maintained by the Southern Baptist Convention.
The list of hundreds of ministers and church employees was released by the convention last week in the aftermath of a third-party review finding the church had covered up systemic abuse for years.
Compiled internally by a staffer of the convention's executive committee, the list includes a disclaimer that it is incomplete and inadequately researched. Many of the names are redacted, including a number of unidentified individuals from Georgia.
The six Cobb men, however, were all convicted of their charges and have been previously identified in MDJ reports ranging from the late 1980s to 2016.
The oldest charges documented in the list are those of Rev. Thomas McGowan, who was convicted in 1989 of molesting three former congregation members, two of them underage, while he was pastor of New Grace Baptist Church in Powder Springs. McGowan received a three-year sentence and 20 years on probation.
The following year, James Calvin McCurry of Smyrna's Greater Zion Hills Baptist Church, received 20 years for repeatedly molesting a teenage girl who attended the church's Bible school.
Kevin DeRosa, a youth minister who worked at Western Hills Baptist Church in Kennesaw, was sentenced in 1995 to 20 years on sex abuse charges. DeRosa pleaded guilty to molesting six boys between 1992 and 1993, when he moved to New Jersey. He later moved back to Cobb and was subsequently charged.
The list of Cobb County offenders is rounded out by three men who were convicted of sex crimes while working at Eastside Baptist Church in east Cobb.
In a high-profile case from 2001, Sunday school teacher and sports instructor Gunter Fiek was found guilty of nearly two dozen child molestation charges. Said at the time to have been the largest list of molestation offenses in Cobb history, Fiek received a 90-year prison sentence.
Then in 2016, volunteer youth minister Alexander Edwards was convicted of molesting an 11-year-old Marietta boy, receiving three years, while former janitor John Samuel Stafford pled guilty to a misdemeanor sexual battery charge and spent a month in jail.
The Southern Baptist Convention said in a statement last week the list's release was an "important, step towards addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform in the Convention.
"Each entry in this list reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by sexual abuse. Our prayer is that the survivors of these heinous acts find hope and healing, and that churches will utilize this list proactively to protect and care for the most vulnerable among us," the convention added.
