Pastor who raped teen church member, then violated probation terms, headed to prison
A former pastor given deferred adjudication probation in 2008 after admitting he raped a teen church member was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for repeatedly violating his probation.
James “Jay” Virtue Robinson was just months away from completing his 10-year deferred adjudication probation sentence when someone alerted Robinson’s probation officer in February that the former Southwood Baptist Church pastor had started a new church and had unchaperoned access to children.
Robinson’s defense attorney, Rhett Parham, told the judge that Robinson had made some poor choices but pointed out that he had not been accused of any criminal or sexually inappropriate behavior.
He asked the judge to deal with Robinson’s cavalier attitude by extending his deferred adjudication probation time and ordering that he never work or volunteer at a church again.
Prosecutor Kim D’Avignon told the judge that Robinson, 42, was “grooming the criminal justice system just like he groomed his victim.”
“Rules are black and white,” D’Avignon said. “No matter what rule you give him, he looks for the shade of gray.”
She asked the judge to sentence Robinson to 15 years in prison.
State District Judge David Hagerman found Robinson guilty of the sexual assault of a child charge and determined the allegations that he violated his probation eight separate times to be true.
In ordering the 10-year prison sentence, Hagerman said he had questions regarding why Robinson was even given deferred adjudication probation in 2008.
“You were charged with the care and nurturing of all of your parishioners, especially the children,” Hagerman said. “You took that and you committed not one, but several abominable acts.”
Probation violations
Prosecutors had sought to revoke Robinson’s probation and move to adjudicate, alleging that Robinson had committed eight violations of his probation, including going to TCU and Texas Ranger games without permission from his probation officer and starting and then leading a new church — a role that gave him unchaperoned access to children.
Robinson testified Monday that he believed he could attend sporting events as long as a chaperone was with him. He also acknowledged he made a “huge mistake” in not informing his probation officer when his role at the Refuge Place, the new church, evolved into becoming the church’s leader.
“Looking back at it now, I was wrong,” Robinson testified Monday. “I felt at the time, ‘I’m not working with children. I’m not working with teenagers. I’m not violating anything.’ ”
Robinson said at the new church he helped form, Refuge Place, there was built-in accountability.
“When I committed my crime, I was a young, single senior pastor of a large church with no accountability. It didn’t cause me to commit my crimes but enabled me to,” he testified.
The sexual assault
Robinson was pastor of the Southwood Baptist Church when accusations arose in February 2008 that he’d had a sexual relationship with an underage church member.
Then 32, Robinson repeatedly denied the accusation.
A division within the church soon followed between those who believed him and those who didn’t. Some left the church; others were escorted out by armed guards.
In a letter Robinson sent to church members that March, Robinson reiterated the the “accusations of moral failure” levied against him were false and accused the victim’s family of being used by others “who desire to wrest the leadership of this church from the pastor and the council” and would stop at nothing.
He wrote that those who cause discord in the church “are to be shunned according to scripture.”
Robinson later resigned from the church at the advice of his attorneys.
But he returned one Sunday night in August 2008, stood before the congregation he once led and admitted that he had an inappropriate relationship with an underage church member.
Later that same week, he stood before a judge and the victim’s family in a Tarrant County courtroom and pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a child under 17. As part of the plea deal, he received 10 years deferred adjudication probation but also had to register for life as a sex offender.
This story was originally published December 12, 2018 at 11:03 AM with the headline "Pastor who raped teen church member, then violated probation terms, headed to prison."
