1984: Family Recounts Church Response After Jerry Sidell Abuse Case
Original publication: April 26, 1984. Original headline: “Family, church heal slowly after molestings.” Byline: Bert Roughton Jr.
Content note: This archival report discusses child sexual abuse. Some passages describe alleged abuse and its effects on victims.
Editorial transcription note: Newspaper wording is preserved as closely as legible; line-break hyphenation and paragraph layout are normalized. Square brackets identify unreadable print, not original article words.
From the archive
Original newspaper headline: Family, church heal slowly after molestings
Last November, Larry Martin wrote a poem to his sons. He asked them how he had missed their “pain that was growing — and your feeling of suffering and shame?”
Five months earlier, the two boys admitted to him that they had been molested repeatedly by the youth minister from their church, First Christian of Jonesboro.
That admission has led to a year of heartache for the Martin family. It cost them friendships, separated their family and led them to leave their church.
For the 400-member church, it has been a year of slow healing from wounds that cut deep into the hearts of religious people.
Jerry Sidell, 26, the youth minister, is in prison serving 10 years for child molestation. But Martin and his wife, Betty, believe their family also has been punished.
The Martins speak easily of the events of the past year. They have told their story to countless police officers, lawyers and counselors.
Anger is now part of their lives, as are methods of putting their emotions to work for them, such as their membership in Society’s League Against Molestation. As a representative of SLAM, a California group formed in 1980 to combat child molestation, Mrs. Martin speaks to civic groups about her family’s experience.
But bitterness lingers, especially toward First Christian Church and its members. The Martins said that following Sidell’s arrest, the church members turned cold shoulders to them, angry that they took their complaint to the police rather than trusting the church to handle the problem.
“It was like we had done horrible sin,” Mrs. Martin said. “They just wanted us to keep it quiet, to let the church elders deal with it in their own way.”
First Christian Pastor Mike Portwood said the arrest elicited powerful feelings.
“When this thing first broke last May, there were strongly emotional reactions going both ways,” Portwood said. “There are not words strong enough to describe the extreme feelings we all felt.”
Some church members were disturbed at how he and the elders, the church’s governing body, dealt with Sidell, Portwood said. Others were outraged that the police were brought in.
“We would have liked to handle it ourselves within the church,” Portwood said.
Asked whether he would have gone to police, the pastor responded that he was not sure what he would have done.
“I wouldn’t attempt to answer that question now. It would be too speculative,” he said. “It all happened too quickly for me to make a decision.”
It was the concern that the church would not turn Sidell over to authorities that led the Martins to go to the police themselves.
“It makes me sick to think that if they hadn’t gone to the police, that Jerry could go somewhere else and start raping more kids,” Mrs. Martin said.
A close friend from the church visited the Martin house one night after Sidell’s arrest. “He (the friend) said something about sacrificing a few for the good of all, meaning the church,” Martin said.
“I don’t think it would be right for me to sacrifice my boys by clamming up, keeping quiet, moving out of the city, not doing anything in order to save the reputation of the church. I couldn’t sacrifice my two boys for the sake of that church or anybody else.”
The friend left and hasn’t returned, Martin said.
Sidell was arrested May 15, 1983, at Woodland Christian Camp in Carroll County after the Martins went to Clayton County police with the stories their sons had told them. The Martins told police Sidell had molested one 12-year-old son repeatedly since February 1982. They later learned he also had molested their 11-year-old son.
Sidell, who Clayton authorities said confessed to molesting nine children, was indicted in August 1983 on one count of [text obscured in scan] four counts of child molesting. He pleaded guilty to all five counts in September and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In September, the Martins and another family sued Sidell and the church for $3 million, to pay for the psychiatric treatment of their three children and damages. The Martins eventually settled out of court for less than $5,000 from the church in exchange for their agreement not to seek further legal action against the church or Sidell.
Monday, Sidell pleaded guilty in DeKalb Superior Court to a count of child molesting, based on a 1981 incident in which he took the Martins’ older son to Stone Mountain Park and molested him. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, to run concurrently with his Clayton County conviction.
The Martins are angry over the sentences, contending they should have run consecutively. “He’ll be back out on the streets in no time now,” Martin said.
As angry as they are at the court system, it is their former church that gives the Martins the most pain.
Since Sidell’s arrest, the phone in the Martins’ home has been ringing constantly. Many callers are abusive and threatening, the couple said, telling the Martins they should not have gone to the police. The family has been forced to install a recording machine to screen their calls.
[Text obscured in scan] lack of compassion shown them and their children.
“They talk about how un-Christian we were to turn in Jerry like a common criminal,” Martin said.
“But nobody from the 400-member church has called us or written us and said … that we may have done some wrong things, and if we did, then, in Christ, we would like for you to forgive us,” he said.
Portwood said he was unaware of any harsh treatment inflicted upon the Martins by the members of his church. “The first I’d heard of these incidents was from the Martins,” he said. “It came as a surprise to me.”
The wounds are still fresh for the church, especially among members whose children were molested by Sidell.
“It was a tragic thing. Jerry was so popular, so loved. We trusted him and placed confidence in him, and now we feel betrayed,” Portwood said. “We’re still dealing with it; it’s very much an alive issue. And every time the newspaper or television has something on Jerry, it puts salt in the wound.”
He said the church initially assisted the families of the molested children with professional care. But the assistance was discontinued, he said, since “most of the families found the initial counseling session was enough.”
Mrs. Martin believes [text obscured in scan] done.
Source attribution: Historical Atlanta newspaper clipping, April 26, 1984; article by Bert Roughton Jr.; supplied through the Atlanta Journal-Constitution archival research collection. Original newspaper edition not independently confirmed from these cropped scans. Transcription prepared from provided microfilm reproductions; newspaper text and images remain the property of their respective rights holders.
