Please note: unusually hard language below the "fold." May not be for all readers.

Baltimore Sun, February 8, 2008:

The 31-year-old music director of Bethel AME, a high-profile West Baltimore church, has been accused of rape and child abuse in a case involving a 13-year-old girl who is a member of the congregation, according to city police and church officials.

Timothy D. Price III was charged with second-degree rape, assault and child abuse, and multiple sex offense counts, city police said. Since his arrest Wednesday night, Price, who lives in Owings Mills, has been held on $1 million bail at Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Center, electronic court records show.

Price and the girl had sex on three occasions in his car, off church property, between early November and January, police said. Twice the meetings occurred in a West Baltimore alley and once in the parking lot of Druid Hill Park, according to police charging documents.

The documents allege that one encounter occurred after Price obtained permission from the girl's mother to bring her home from church Bible study class. Police said the girl was 12 when the incidents occurred. Price confessed to having sex with the girl, according to police charging documents.

Let's be frank. If you are the 31-year-old straight male music director in a church, perhaps Baltimore's largest Black church, you are going to be surrounded - bombarded - with social opportunities. It's almost as good as being the minister, who is usually but not always married (not that that's controlling). The women who won't date you will still fix you up with their cousins, nieces, granddaughters, sisters, co-workers, family friends, etc. Many churches are majority women; the odds favor you. You may run out of money or time, but you won't run out of social opportunities.

But this son of a bitch did not want to meet or date those women. If the police report is substantially accurate, he confessed to screwing a 12 year old. What kind of conversation can a 31-year-old maintain with a 12-year-old? No, I am asking the questions that a grown-ass man who likes women - WOMEN, not 6th graders - would ask. Conversation? Must be some liberal atheist.

I have not read this report and so cannot claim to know the precise factual allegations. And the reports of his confession may be false or otherwise legally or factually invalid. But this appears to be rape and that's how it has been charged. Even the characterization of this as "having sex" appears wrong; that's the wrong language to describe two sexual encounters between a 31-year-old and a 12-year-old in an alley and parking lot in a public park.

Don't you just wish that this Man of God had been spending his time making fun of religion and drinking beer at his laptop instead of being so religious?