BY JEFF CHUDZINSKI
North Country This Week
CANTON — A dozen members of CFCtoo asked the St. Lawrence County Legislature Monday to support the proposed Child Abuse Reporting Expansion Act (CARE) Act.
CFCtoo is an advocacy group that supports abuse survivors who have left Christian Fellowship Center. They work to educate the North Country community on how to prevent and respond to abuse. However, a more short-term goal for the group is ensuring that clergy be added to the mandated reporting list in New York State.
The CARE Act advocates have continued their push for passage of the legislation, which would make clergy mandated reporters. Critics argue the legislation would violate an individual’s First Amendment right.
Many members of CFCtoo spoke at the meeting, highlighting instances of abuse that went unreported to state authorities even after church elders were notified of the abuse.
Abbi Nye, who co-founded CFCtoo, made the most vocal push for legislators to support the CARE Act.
Nye told legislators that Albany has been keeping tabs on events in St. Lawrence County.
“My CFCtoo colleagues and I have spent the past two months meeting with dozens of legislators in Albany. We were introduced on the New York Assembly floor and commended for our work by the Speaker of the Assembly. Albany knows the names of Sean Ferguson and Rick Sinclair,” Nye told legislators.
Sean Ferguson, 43, was charged with first-degree sexual abuse and acting in a manner injurious to a child in May of 2022. Roughly a year later he was sentenced to six-months probation for the crime after he took a pled guilty to second-degree sexual abuse as part of a plea agreement.
As a member of Christian Fellowship Center, Ferguson’s case made waves locally after he was charged in 2022 with sexually abusing children in 2015 due the fact that church leaders had been made aware of abuse allegations but did not report them to authorities.
Sinclair is the church’s senior pastor.
“You have an…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply