Prosecutors dropped the charges against a deaf church official in Missouri who was accused of sexually molesting a male churchgoer with disability.
Rodney Sexton, a treasurer at the Deaf Liberty Baptist Church in Overland Park, was charged in Johnson County with aggravated sexual battery of a 31-year-old male, who is deaf and has a mental age of an eight-year-old, according to KCTV5.
Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe dropped the charges against Sexton a day after the latter appeared in court for the first time.
Sexton is also on the roster of sign language teachers at Maple Woods Community College in January and also once taught at the Metropolitan Community College (MCC).
He faced six felony sex charges involving a child in the 1980s and was convicted on two counts and served time in prison. He is not listed on the Kansas Sex Offender Registry as his convictions occurred before 1994. Sexton was released from prison in 1989 and released from probation four years later.
The mother of the victim wanted to know if church leaders knew about Sexton's prison records.
"I think people knew. This should never happen to another family," she said.
She was disappointed that the charges against Sexton were dropped.
"Disappointed is way past the word. We want action. We want somebody to take action," she said.
She said an adult witnessed the abuse and that Sexton even sent her an apology text, adding that he pressured her to keep the abuse a secret.
"This shouldn't happen to anybody sitting in a church or at school. This needs to be stopped. My boy deserves to be protected," she said.
MCC would not discuss whether Sexton put his conviction on his job application.
"We are investigating the recent series of events and once we have more information we can assess the matter," Christina Medina, a spokeswoman for MCC.
