A former youth pastor has been charged with two counts of possession of child sex abuse material (CSAM). Nathan Walker, 50, resigned from his role at Crossbridge Christian Church in Houston in the weeks leading up to his arrest.
Editor’s note: This article contains information about child sex abuse that some readers might find disturbing and/or triggering.
According to Click2Houston, local authorities launched an investigation after receiving a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The investigation led them to a Yahoo instant messenger account with the username “roughneckforchrist” that was associated with the email “subsea@yahoo.com,” which investigators traced to Walker.
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When investigators searched Walker’s computer, they reportedly found multiple sexually explicit images of children ages 3-7.
During an interview with investigators, Walker’s son said that he “knew this was going to happen,” alleging that he found similar images of children on Walker’s laptop several years ago. He also told investigators that he discovered his father engaging in an inappropriate conversation on Discord.
The son said that when he asked Walker about the messages, Walker said he was “doing it to catch the bad guys.”
Walker’s son told investigators that he had never shared this information with anybody out of loyalty to his father.
According to a staff page that has since been scrubbed from Crossbridge Christian Church’s website, prior to his recent resignation, Walker had been serving as the church’s associate pastor. Prior to that, he was the church’s youth pastor, a position he assumed in 2015.
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“Even though Nate is now our Associate Pastor, his heart is bent towards fostering Christ in the lives of everyone he encounters,” his bio reads. “By his own admission he has yet to grow up (just ask his wife Michelle) and when he isn’t playing video games, he can be found playing in the mud with his granddaughter Adelynn.”
