A Texas pastor has been arrested and charged for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl and supplying her with meth. Vernon Police received a tip earlier this month about an adult man with a teenage girl at a local motel. That tip came from the girl’s mother, who was trying to find her daughter there. Soon, officers discovered the horrible truth of where she was.
- Brian Pounds was a minister at First Assembly of God at Vernon. Police found Pounds at the motel, where he claimed he was renting a room for a person in need, according to an arrest warrant. The room was under the church’s name, but the girl wasn’t there when police arrived.
- The girl was found at a local Walmart later that day. Her mother located her and brought her to the Vernon Police Dept. headquarters, where she told officers she’d been having sex with Pounds at the hotel at around noon that day. She also revealed she’d smoked meth in the room with him.
- The relationship had been going on for a while. This wasn’t the first time Pounds and the girl had sex. She told police it had been going on for about a month and that she began the relationship with Pounds because he had been “counseling her and her family through the church.”
- Pounds denied it all, but the evidence proved he was guilty. While Pounds insisted he’d never had sexual contact with the girl, after he signed a consent form for police to search the motel room, they discovered fibers, hairs, and a substance suspected to be meth.
- The girl was taken to a local hospital for examination. She was also treated for medical complications from smoking meth. She later told Vernon Police that Pounds had gotten her a job cleaning houses and had begun offering her meth while at church. She also revealed that their first sexual encounters took place at the church and claimed that Pounds choked her when they had sex at the hotel on July 1.
- Pounds was arrested and charged on July 16. He was charged with sexual assault of a child on July 16 and later, on July 19, he was additionally charged with delivery of a controlled substance to a minor. He’s being held in Wichita County Jail on $300,000 bond.
