A pastor thought to be on the run from police in Pennsylvania is trying to hand himself, police said on Tuesday.
Jacob Malone, a married pastor of Calvary Fellowship church in Exton, Pennsylvania, is wanted on charges of rape, institutional sexual assault and other offences against a girl he met when she was 12. West Whiteland Township police said Malone had hired a lawyer and was in Ecuador awaiting a return flight with the intention of handing himself in.
Police confirmed Malone's location just a day after they said he was in an unknown location.
The 33-year-old pastor allegedly molested and impregnated a teenage girl in his church. The girl told police the abuse began shortly after she moved with Malone and his family to Exton for his job. She had known the pastor from his previous job at a church in Arizona.
Another pastor at Calvary Fellowship, Bill Bateman, said Malone and his wife had treated the girl like an adopted daughter, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. They had even registered her in a local high school.
The teenager, who moved with Malone when she was 17, told police the abuse began in late 2014, just months after she had joined the family. She claimed that he gave her alcohol twice when she had turned 18, and that once when she was intoxicated, he molested her.
In November 2015, when Bateman and the rest of the church leadership learnt of the girl's pregnancy and of a separate alleged relationship Malone was having in another state, he resigned.
"Our church's goal in difficult moments like this is to protect the innocents, first of all," Bateman said in an interview Monday.
"And, number two, we strive to bring about repentance and restoration of the offender."
