A suburban New Orleans pastor was sentenced to 80 years in prison Thursday after being convicted of sexually molesting two boys in the Terrytown community, according to the Jefferson Parish district attorney’s office. The sentence marks Reed’s third conviction for similar crimes over nearly three decades.
Judge Ray Steib of the 24th Judicial District Court in Gretna imposed the maximum 40-year term on each of the two juvenile molestation counts, to run consecutively, the district attorney’s office said. Jurors had found Reed guilty on May 6 of two counts of third-degree rape and two counts of molestation of a juvenile.
Before the sentence was handed down, the mother of one of the survivors read a victim-impact statement on behalf of her son. She told the court that she had trusted Reed because she had known him since she was a young girl and that he knew she had been sexually molested as a child herself. She described being a single mother living outside Louisiana when she asked Reed for help with her troubled son.
“I gave Terry the opportunity to be the grandfather figure that he long wanted to be,” she said during the hearing.
Reed’s subsequent abuse, she said, “triggered the deepest wound of my childhood. I felt profoundly betrayed.”
The statement on behalf of her son called Reed “an utter failure and a sorry excuse for a man” and added, “You disgust me.”
Prosecutors established that Reed, acting under the guise of a pastor, cited biblical scripture to manipulate the youths into believing his sexually abusive behavior was normal, according to the district attorney’s statement. He molested both boys after gaining their guardians’ trust and taking them into his home.
The conviction came after two prior guilty pleas for similar conduct. Reed pleaded guilty in 1997 to indecent behavior with a juvenile and in 2017 to indecent behavior with a juvenile and molestation of a juvenile.
A separate incident in 2002 involving Reed’s home did not come up during the sentencing hearing, according to the Guardian. Two boys, ages 12 and 13, were found dead in a hot tub at Reed’s residence. Investigators later determined the children had been electrocuted, though they said they could not classify whether the deaths were homicide, suicide, accidental, or natural, according to a contemporary news media report.
The New Orleans area has grappled for decades with sexually abusive religious leaders across denominations, according to the Guardian. At least five Catholic priests within the Archdiocese of New Orleans have been convicted of sexually violent crimes, including against children, after the institution filed for federal bankruptcy protection in 2020 amid the financial fallout of a clergy abuse scandal dating back decades.
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 convicted him of molesting a teenage girl.
In the U.S., call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline at 800-422-4453 or visit their website for more resources and to report child abuse. For adult survivors of child abuse, help is available at ascasupport.org.