Youth Pastor Charged With Nearly 200 Sex Crimes Going Back Decades

Many of the victims were the West Virginia pastor’s relatives, the police said, including five nieces who filed a complaint against him in 2004.

The state police in West Virginia are continuing to investigate a longtime youth pastor who has now been charged with nearly 200 counts of sexual abuse crimes involving children, many of them his relatives, dating back more than three decades.

The pastor, John W. Radcliff II, was arrested a second time last week after officers investigating a complaint filed against him in September revisited a case from 2004, when five of Mr. Radcliff’s nieces told the police that he had abused them.

“I have no idea what happened, but we never saw charges pressed,” said one niece, Carla Rinehart, whose mother is Mr. Radcliff’s sister.

Ms. Rinehart, 38, said that growing up, she did not know that her relatives had endured the same type of abuse that she says her uncle had committed against her. But when Ms. Rinehart was hospitalized at 17 after a mental breakdown, she began to share her story with family members. Her sister recounted a similar experience at the time, and then their cousins did the same.

A local TV station, citing court documents in Lewis County, W.Va., on the 2004 case, reported that Mr. Radcliff had forced the girls to perform sexual acts on him from 1987 to 1996, and sexually assaulted them in other ways until they were about 12. The victims are all now adults, the news outlet reported.

Lewis is one of four counties where Mr. Radcliff has been charged with abuse.

Ms. Rinehart said she did not know who had filed the recent complaint against Mr. Radcliff, in Nicholas County, alleging abuse between 2018 and 2019. But she and her sister and cousins went to the police there after their uncle was first arrested in September and released on bond, she said, to show support for the victim.

“West Virginia is a small state; word gets around very quickly,” said Ms. Rinehart, who runs a child-care center. “We didn’t want anyone to push her statement aside like ours was. We were, ‘This happened to us. You have to believe her.’”

Mr. Radcliff, 57, who has worked as a youth pastor for at least four churches in the state, is in custody on bonds totaling $1.7 million. It’s unclear if he is still working as a pastor. His wife, Kathy Radcliff, who has been charged with knowing that the abuse took place, has been released on bond. The Radcliffs declared bankruptcy last year, according to state records.

James Hawkins, a court-appointed lawyer for Mr. Radcliff, said almost all the charges stemmed from accusations from 1987 to 1996 and were unrelated to his work as a pastor. He said his client was facing a life sentence with more than 100 years.

“What I’m saying is there’s nothing new — they’re still uncorroborated statements of the alleged victims,” Mr. Hawkins said. “They were investigated in 2004 and it was determined there was not enough evidence to proceed with a criminal prosecution. We’re looking forward to our chance to answer these uncorroborated statements.”

The case will be brought before a grand jury in either March or July, Mr. Hawkins said.

Meanwhile, the investigation is ongoing and more victims are coming forward, the state police said in a statement.

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.