Detroit Pastor's Church Sued For Not Preventing His Sexual Assault on Teen Victim
A lawsuit claims officials at a Warren church should have stopped a former pastor from influencing a 15-year-old boy he later sexually assaulted.
The civil suit filed against the Antioch Baptist Church and Academy in Warren also claims Christopher Settlemoir shouldn’t have been hired because officials knew about his pedophilic tendencies.
According to the report and the complaint in Macomb County Court: "Defendant Antioch hired the pedophile Christopher Settlemoir as a teacher, pastor and principal even though defendant Settlemoir, while still in college, began showing signs of sexual perversion by racking up $100 in gay porn charges on the cable at the apartment where he was staying as part of the pastor internship program.
"Defendant Settlemoir was eventually kicked out of the internship program for not adhering to the rules, which included bringing teen-age boys to his apartment and being along with the boys for 'Movie Night.'"
In his own case, Doe says: "For a period of 14 months, the pedophile Christopher Settlemoir openly and freely vetted, targeted and then sexually abused, exploited and raped John Doe in his office during school hours as well as in defendant Christopher Settlemoir's house and/or within the domains of other property under the control of defendant Antioch Baptist Church and/or its agents."Settlemoir last year pleaded no contest to charges he sexually assaulted the boy and accosted another. The 29-year-old former Warren resident is serving a seven- to 15-year prison term.
John Doe claims he was younger than 14 when he was repeatedly raped and sodomized in 2009-10 by defendant Christopher Settlemoir, a "29-year-old serial pedophile who was posing as a man of God, a church pastor and a parochial school principal of the defendant Antioch Baptist Church dba Antioch Baptist Academy."The Macomb Daily reported the suit filed Friday in Macomb County Circuit Court by “John Doe” seeks more than $25,000 in damages and claims a minor child was assaulted “dozens of times” while staff turned a “blind eye.”
UPDATE: Doe is now suing for $10 million for assault and battery and negligence.
Doe also sued Settlemoir's wife, who is or was a teacher at the academy, other employees and the 10 members of the church's board of directors, who allegedly knew about Settlemoir's molestations but failed to stop them.
Doe claims that Eunice Settlemoir, the pastor's wife, "attempted to conceal and later recruited other members of the defendant Antioch to destroy a laptop belonging to her husband to prevent police from obtaining evidence of the molestation and rape of John Doe."Source
