A North Carolina pastor has been charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor. Devin Carroll of Happy Home Baptist Church in Nakina is alleged to have committed the crime in his capacity as an employee at a South Carolina middle school.
Editor’s note: This article refers to disturbing reports of child sex abuse that some readers might find triggering.
According to WMBF, the charge against Carroll, 22, stems from an incident during his time as an in-school suspension aide at Conway Middle School.
A 13-year-old female student is claiming that on May 29, Carroll grabbed her “private parts in a lewd and lascivious manner with the intent of arousal.”
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Happy Home Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist congregation, has deactivated its Facebook page and removed most pages from its website. An archived staff page on the website shows that Carroll became pastor of the church in May 2024.
“Pastor Devin surrendered to preach the gospel at 16 years old,” Carroll’s staff profile said. “With God as his guide he leads our church out into the community as we teach and share God’s word with all people.”
Matilda Wofford, a 15-year-old former student of Conway Middle School, told WMBF that she first saw red flags in Carroll’s behavior two years ago.
“He was very flirtatious with my classmates,” said Wofford. “When you’re this young, it doesn’t really register in your mind that people you’re interacting with on a daily basis are actually really weird and do not have the right intentions in their mind.”
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Wofford said that Carroll would ask female students whether they had boyfriends and would ask for their phone numbers—behavior that she didn’t realize was untoward until much later.
