Louisiana pastor sentenced to 80 years for sexually molesting two boys | New Orleans
A religious priest living in suburban New Orleans was sentenced to 80 years in prison after being convicted of sexually abusing two boys; He was found guilty of molesting minors for the third time.
As Terry Reed received sentencing at a state court hearing on Thursday, the mother of one of the survivors read a victim impact statement on behalf of her son, calling him “a complete failure and a sad excuse for a man.”
Jurors found Reed guilty on May 6 of two counts of third-degree rape and two counts of molestation of a child; Jefferson County, Louisiana, district attorney Paul Connick’s office in question in a statement.
He abused both survivors after gaining the trust of their guardians and took them to his home in the Jefferson neighborhood in Terrytown. Prosecutors found that Reed, posing as a priest, quoted Bible verses to convince teens that his sexually abusive behavior with them was normal.
The May verdict against Reed followed two previous convictions for similar crimes. He pleaded guilty in 1997 to indecent behavior with a teenager. And in 2017, he pleaded guilty to indecent behavior with a child and molestation of a juvenile.
Reed has faced up to 40 years in prison on each of the child molestation charges since May, when he appeared before Judge Ray Steib for sentencing.
Steib set that maximum after hearing from the mother of one of the survivors at the center of the case how much she trusted Reed because she had known him since she was a young girl.
He said he knew Reed had been sexually abused as a child. She explained that she was a single mother living outside Louisiana when she asked Reed for help with her troubled son before taking in the minor.
“I gave Terry the opportunity to be the grandfather figure he had long wanted to be,” he said at the hearing before Steib.
The abuse Reed later experienced “triggered the deepest wound of my childhood. I felt deeply betrayed,” he added.
In a statement read by the victim’s mother on behalf of her son, she called him “a complete failure and a pathetic excuse for a man” as well as adding, “It’s done. It’s over. And I couldn’t be happier.”
“You disgust me,” the statement added, referring to Reed.
Another dark chapter in Reed’s past that was not brought up in Steib’s trial involved the 2002 deaths of two boys, ages 12 and 13, in the hot tub at his home. Investigators later determined that the children had been electrocuted, but said they could not classify whether the deaths were murder, suicide, accident or natural, according to a contemporary media report.
Like much of the rest of the United States, the New Orleans area has been plagued by sexually abusive religious leaders from various denominations for decades.
At least five men who served as Catholic priests in the archdiocese of New Orleans were convicted of sexually violent crimes, including against children, after the institution filed for federal bankruptcy protection in 2020 amid the financial fallout from a decades-long clergy abuse scandal.
Also in February, in the New Orleans suburb of Chalmette, Pentecostal pastor Milton Otto Martin III was sentenced to seven years in prison after a jury found him guilty of molesting a teenage girl.
