Myron and Kathleen Chorbajian (Greenville County Sheriff”s Office).
A pastor from South Carolina and his spouse are facing numerous charges related to child abuse after their adopted children alleged they were subjected to eating out of dumpsters and sleeping in trash cans.
Myron Chorbajian, aged 73, has been charged with two counts of assault and battery with the intent to kill, 15 counts of endangering the welfare of a child, and eight counts of criminal sexual conduct with a minor, among other charges, as reported by the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office. Chorbajian serves as the pastor at the First Southern Methodist Church in Greenville.
Kathleen Chorbajian, 71, faces at least 10 charges of endangering a child’s welfare. These allegations surfaced in April when the couple’s adopted children reported incidents dating back to the 1980s.
The Chorbajians were detained in May while visiting the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, and have since been brought back to South Carolina.
According to arrest warrants obtained by local Fox affiliate WHNS, Myron Chorbajian is accused of paddling a naked child 50 times and striking another child with a belt until they lost consciousness. He allegedly forced one child to sleep in a trash can and compelled another to eat spoiled food from dumpsters.
Moreover, the pastor is accused of sexually abusing female children. He also reportedly shot the family dog in the kitchen and made a child bury the animal.
All the while, his wife allegedly looked the other way and never reported the abuse.
On Friday, Kathleen Chorbajian appeared before a judge for a bond hearing. According to a courtroom report from WHNS, her attorney argued that “this case is not as the state has advertised.”
He said the accusers have allowed their children to stay at the Chorbajian home overnight.
“If Kathy and Myron were as bad as they say, why would they ever let their children stay with them, unsupervised, overnight? I think that’s very important,” he reportedly said.
But the state argued that the pastor’s wife is a danger to the community because she not only allowed the abuse to happen, she also used religion to manipulate the children.
“This case is essentially about the weaponization of Christianity to justify the abuse of children,” the state’s attorney reportedly said. “The time the abuse occurred, these victims were small children in foster care. They had nowhere else to go. These sadistic acts of abuse that were justified by religion against some of the most vulnerable members of our society, I don’t know a situation where someone could present a more clearly present danger to the community.”
The judge set Kathleen Chorbajian’s bond at $120,000. She remains at the Greenville County Jail along with her husband, who has no bond.
