Well, whaddya know? Another antigay pastor has been busted on child sex charges.
This time it’s a well-known Alabama evangelist, youth pastor, public speaker, and self-proclaimed “best-selling author.”
37-year-old Paul Edward Acton Bowen was arrested yesterday and charged with second-degree sodomy, enticing a child to enter a vehicle or house for immoral purposes, and second-degree sex abuse of a minor.
The victim was a young male, but police did not release his age other than to say he is over 12 but under 16 and was a “family acquaintance” of Bowen.
Related: Antigay pastor and wife arrested after he’s busted for luring kids with candy then molesting them
Hoover police Capt. Gregg Rector said his department’s Special Victim’s Unit first launched an investigation into Bowen three weeks ago.
“This is certainly one of the more disturbing cases that we’ve investigated in quite some time,” Rector told media. “Mr. Bowen is in a highly-respected position of influence and he is trusted by many. We believe he betrayed that trust in the worst kind of way.”
Bowen is the founder of Acton Bowen Outreach Ministries. Since his arrest, the ministry’s website and social media pages have all gone dark. According to the now defunct website, Bowen is “a speaker, best-selling author, and visionary.” And child molester.
He’s currently being held on $90,000 bond.
Related: Antigay pastor busted for making little boys sit on his face
DCguy
Republicans and Evangelicals. The Party of Family Values.
ChrisK
When you add enough so called conservative values it’s the equivalent of being a complete sex pervert.
Cylest Brooks
Hi DCguy. Friendly mod here to remind you of the comments policy.
Please avoid using sweeping generalizations. Even if they’re accurate. Because then I have to delete them. This will be the only snarky warning.
Thanks!
JerseyMike
I want to laugh and mock this piece of sh!t but there is a victim involved.. All I will say is KARMA has no expiration date!!
Kangol
Big surprise; usually the most vocally homophobic, misogynistic and racist are projecting some serious internal crisis onto others. Instead of getting help, they end up making others’ lives more difficult and, in some cases, a living hell or even worse, placing them in mortal danger. For the victim’s sake and everyone else’s, I hope this anti-gay evangelical monster gets locked up for the rest of his life.
alllowercase
It seems that being a pedophile or otherwise just a disgusting deviant is a prerequisite to living in Alabama! What really pisses me off is that cases like this one will only add fuel to flames for those people who view all homosexual men as pedophiles. These types of men need to be shot.
chris33133
Come on Queerty; can’t we make snarky, hateful, and personal comments about this pastor? ….., just this once? …., pleaaaaassssssseeeee?
RitalinNS7
Disgusting? Without question!
Is Bowen antigay? Let’s be honest, it’s probable for a lot of reasons, but how do we really know? Where in this article does it actually prove this? The Advocate says this about the man: “An internet search didn’t turn up any specific anti-LGBT rhetoric on Bowen’s part, although one of his books, Escape the Noise, includes a condemnation of ‘sexual immorality.'”
There are plenty of antigay ministers out there who are hypocrites, so I totally understand the rush to judgment here, but let’s not be like the hateful right and peddle something we can’t yet prove. We dealt with nine+ years of that s**t against President Obama.
Kangol
Hmm. He deleted some of his sites but not Twitter. Just scrolling through his tweets and RTs you learn that in addition to spending a lot of time around kid, professing love for his girlfriend-then-wife and being a U. of Georgia football fanatic, he’s pro-Trump, pro-Ted Cruz, pro-Billy Graham, anti-Women’s march, anti-liberal (in general and famous Hollywood ones), anti-youth protesters against Trump, and anti-Islam, etc.
Also, he slams Obama more than once, RTed a post claiming Bernie Sanders was unqualified to be President, and posted gender-panic tweets (about men wearing scarves, men dancing in their underwear in a Target commercial, a survey about men who drink Starbucks unicorn frappacino wearing capri pants, etc.). He also has no clue how Reagan actually responded in the Middle East (RR did cut and run after the Lebanon bombing, etc.) So basically he’s a garden variety right-wing evangelical. I’d guess he’s no fan of the gays, not if they’re not finding Jesus and praying the gay/bi/trans away.
Also a quick Google Books search turns up two books by him, both self-published. Maybe they fly off the bookshelves so fast that he really is a “best-selling” author, but whatever the case, you can’t do a text search for either on Google Books, so I’ll take the news reports’ word on the “sexual immorality” language in at least one of them.
GayEGO
Oh my! This is a never ending battle dealing with these religious sexual predators. if Bowen acts like he is antigay, based on studies of homophobia, Bowen must be afraid of himself as a homophobic.