Court Digest

Florida
Pastor sued over fake porn images aimed at teenager
BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) — A Florida pastor is being sued by a teenager who claims fake pornographic images of her were posted online from a computer in the pastor’s home.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports that the lawsuit is against Pastor Jason B. Lane and his church, the Skyway Community Chapel. It claims the teenager, a high school student at the time, has suffered shame, embarrassment, emotional pain and suffering because of the incident.

The lawsuit was filed after the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office could not produce enough evidence for criminal charges. Authorities said they could not establish who actually posted the images on the computer in the pastor’s house because multiple people had access to the internet address.

Attorney Rebecca Brownell, who represents Lane and Skyway Community Chapel, declined to comment on the case.

The lawsuit claims the girl was threatened with blackmail if she did not provide real nude photos of herself and later sent the doctored images of her to others at her high school.

The girl has undergone psychiatric care and has been prescribed antidepressants and antianxiety medication that she takes daily, the complaint stated.

Virginia
Fake psychologist who treated dozens gets 11 years in prison
STAFFORD, Va. (AP) — A judge in Virginia has sentenced a woman to 11 years in prison for pretending to be a psychologist and treating more than 100 patients, most of whom were children.

The prison sentence that Stafford County Circuit Court Judge Charles Sharp handed down Friday to Sharonda Avery, 44, was well above the recommended term under state guidelines, which called for a maximum of two years and three months.

“Your lies and misrepresentations were truly astounding,” the judge told her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a case in which non-violent acts caused so much damage.”

The Free Lance-Star reports that Avery did not have a criminal record before she was convicted of five counts of obtaining money by false pretenses, two counts of passing forged documents, perjury and practicing psychology without a license.

Police began investigating Avery in October 2018 after receiving complaints about her.

Avery practiced for about three years at the former Pediatric Partners for Attention and Learning in Stafford, an office run by a real doctor.

Avery was accused of prescribing medication for nonexistent conditions and failing to properly diagnose conditions that patients did have. She also testified in court while posing as a medical expert.

Defense attorney Charlotte Hodges said Avery had stopped taking medication that she needed for her own mental health issues before her arrest.

“She cannot erase everything she did, but she is trying to make amends,” Hodges said. “Somebody on medication is one person. Somebody off it is somebody else.”

Prosecutor Greg Holt called Avery a “con artist” who preyed on desperate people.

“Real lives were changed and hurt by her,” Holt said. “She not only stole money, she stole trust.”

Tennessee
Couple pleads not guilty to killing, abusing children
KINGSTON, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee couple pleaded not guilty Monday to dozens of charges including murder and abuse involving children they had adopted.

Michael Gray Sr., 63, and Shirley Gray, 60, were arraigned on the 42-count indictment handed down last week by a Roane County grand jury, news outlets reported.

The charges involve the death of a girl, whose remains were found on the property, and other children the couple had adopted.

The couple was arrested in May after a little boy was spotted walking alone along a Roane County road.

Arrest warrants say passersby called 911, and a responding officer began asking questions. The boy’s legal guardian soon confessed, the warrants said, to burying the remains of a little girl in a barn and locking a 15-year-old boy in the basement for four years.

Two other children spent time in a wire dog cage, while all were supposedly homeschooled and appeared to be “stunted in growth,” according to the warrants.

Michael Gray told authorities that the girl was about 10 when she died in 2017, a few months after she was locked in the basement, and that he buried her inside a barn in the backyard, the warrants said. Investigators found her skeletal remains the day after the 911 call.

The couple is also facing a theft charge. Authorities say they didn’t report the girl’s death and kept receiving state benefits.

The Roane County case led authorities to search a Knox County property where the couple lived previously and court records show the remains of a second child were found.

The Knox County case is still under investigation and no charges have been filed, news outlets reported.

The Grays are due in court again in December.

Indiana
U.S. court backs state’s limits on voting time extensions
INDIANANPOLIS (AP) — A federal appeals court has upheld a law unique to Indiana that prohibits voters from asking county judges to extend voting hours beyond the state’s 6 p.m. closing time because of Election Day troubles.

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling  throws out a  federal judge’s decision last month against the law passed in 2019 by Indiana’s Republican-dominated Legislature. The law prohibits anyone other than a county election board, which oversee voting matters, from requesting court orders to extend voting hours.

The lawsuit, filed in July by the voting rights group Common Cause Indiana, objected to provisions that allow judges to keep polling sites open only if they were shut down, and preventing them from considering situations such as malfunctioning equipment, insufficient ballots or long wait times.

The three-judge appeals court panel ruled that the law “does not place any burden on Indiana residents’ constitutional right to cast a ballot.”

“The district court rested its conclusion that the amendments burdened the right to vote on the possibility that some imaginable circumstance exists in which those provisions might affect voters,” the ruling said. “But (legal precedent) does not license such narrow second-guessing of legislative decision making.”

Mississippi
Lawsuit: Ex-clerk was punished after indictment of mayor
ABERDEEN, Miss. (AP) — A former city clerk in Mississippi says in a lawsuit that she was unjustly fired and she wants her old job back.

Jackie Benson was the Aberdeen city clerk for 16 years. She was fired in July by Mayor Maurice Howard shortly after he won a second term.

Benson has filed a lawsuit against the city and the mayor. The suit claims she was fired because she provided information to investigators with the state attorney general’s office that resulted in an embezzlement indictment against Howard, WCBI-TV reported.

The mayor is accused of embezzling nearly $3,500 in city funds meant to pay for travel expenses related to city business. According to the Mississippi Office of the State Auditor, Howard sought and was paid advance checks for attending meetings and conferences on behalf of the city but then failed to actually attend the events. Howard has called the charges false and erroneous.

A text message Sunday to a cell number listed for the mayor for comment on Benson’s suit was not immediately returned.

In addition to seeking reinstatement to her job, Benson is seeking actual damages of $200,000 plus punitive damages, court costs and attorney fees.

North Carolina
Company that maintains rest stops settles EEOC lawsuit
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina-based company under contract to maintain state-owned rest areas will pay more than $39,000 to settle an age discrimination lawsuit, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said.

A news release from the commission on Friday said Liberty Support Services, Inc. of Raleigh was charged with violating federal law when it fired or refused to rehire four rest area attendants employed at the Cherokee County Rest Area in 2016 after it was closed for renovations.

The commission said the attendants, all of whom were over age 40, expected to return to their jobs. Instead, they learned they had been discharged and replaced with younger workers.

The EEOC said Liberty Support discharged or failed to rehire the employees because of their respective ages, violating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The law is designed to protect individuals age 40 and over from employment discrimination and makes it illegal for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or discharge anyone because of his or her age.

In addition to the monetary relief, the three-year consent decree settling the lawsuit requires Liberty Support to adopt an anti-discrimination policy and provide training for its owners and employees on the ADEA.

Georgia
Whistleblower suit against prison health system continues
ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia doctor may continue his whistleblower lawsuit against the state’s prison health care system, its director and the warden at the hospital prison where he worked, a federal judge has ruled.

The state officials and agencies had asked U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee to rule without trial that Dr. Timothy Young didn’t have a case.

He ruled instead that Young’s right to free speech protected his secret disclosures to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about conditions at Augusta State Medical Prison and that his suit is a valid whistleblower lawsuit, the newspaper reported Thursday.

Young “raised numerous concerns specifically related to inmates’ constitutional rights to healthcare and employees’ state law rights to a safe work environment,” the judge wrote.

No date has been set for trial in the case against warden Ted Philbin, Georgia Correctional HealthCare and its statewide medical director, Dr. Billy Nichols.

Philbin and Nichols had argued that the First Amendment didn’t protect the disclosures. The system’s lawyer had argued that failure to claim violation of any specific law, rule or regulation meant Young wasn’t protected by the Georgia Whistleblower Act.

The law doesn’t require such citations, Boulee wrote in his Sept. 30 ruling.

Young’s lawsuit alleges that management began to ignore and delay basic requests for patient care at Augusta State Medical Prison after the newspaper published a series of stories about dangerous and unsanitary conditions there.

Young, who began working at the medical prison in 2001, said he resigned on Jan. 31, 2018, to avoid being fired. However, the judge ruled that he failed to show any coercion.

The judge also dropped the Georgia Department of Corrections as a defendant in the case, ruling that it wasn’t Young’s employer.

The ruling describes his years of attempts to get the prison staff and state medical system to correct problems.

Those included inadequate heating and cooling, asbestos, mold, and garbage stored in nursing units and the medical clinic, the newspaper reported.

Young talked with an Augusta Chronicle reporter and then began supplying information to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the newspaper reported.

Connecticut
Ex-Minister gets 30-year sentence for repeatedly raping girl
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) — The former minister of a Connecticut church who was convicted of repeatedly raping a girl beginning when she was 6 has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Orane Cole, 45, continued to maintain his innocence during the sentencing hearing Friday in Bridgeport Superior Court, the Connecticut Post reported. But Judge Eugene Calistro said Cole admitted to police that he sexually assaulted the victim.

The victim faced Cole as she spoke during the hearing.

“You took something from me I can never get back: my innocence,” the woman, now in her 20s, said. “You took me under your wing, not to protect me, but to hurt me over and over again. Mr. Cole, you hurt me so bad.”

Prosecutors said Cole, a former minister at a Bridgeport church, began raping the girl when she was in kindergarten and the assaults continued until 2017 when she was a teenager. A jury convicted him of three counts of first-degree sexual assault in March.

After prison, Cole would be on probation for 30 years and have to register as a sex offender for the rest of this life. His public defender, Bradford Buchta, said Cole is a Jamaican citizen and likely would face deportation after prison.