Chesterfield County Police Division
A Virginia Seashore pastor dealing with felony costs for allegedly soliciting intercourse from a minor has been incomes $30,000 a month and touring up and down the Jap Seaboard whereas free on bail, in line with state court docket filings.
John David Blanchard, who serves alongside his spouse Robin as senior pastors of the Rock Church in Virginia Seashore, received caught up final yr in a prostitution sting that netted 17 space males who thought that they had been chatting on-line with underage ladies. Blanchard discovered he had truly been speaking with an undercover detective and never a teen after allegedly driving to fulfill up for intercourse at a neighborhood motel, the place he was handcuffed by cops.
Blanchard, 52, was launched on $20,000 bond shortly after his Oct. 29 arrest, and “voluntarily stepped down” from his place at Rock Church. In a bail doc offered Wednesday to The Every day Beast by the Chesterfield County Common District Courtroom, Blanchard experiences an earnings of $30,000 a month from his work in “know-how.” Underneath “household ties,” Blanchard’s spouse and 6-year-old daughter are listed. His solely prior arrest stems from a cost of improperly altering a price ticket, the doc states. Public data point out Blanchard has up to now confronted costs of sexual battery and stalking, which seem to have later been dismissed.
Blanchard’s arrest warrant within the prostitution sting, which was additionally shared with The Every day Beast by Chesterfield County officers, consists of handwritten notes spelling out varied court-approved revisions to the pastor’s launch circumstances. (The Every day Beast redacted delicate private info from the doc earlier than publishing.)
“Bond amended with settlement of bondsman,” it says. “Enterprise journey with Zion Options. Journey 11-16 to 18 to Atlanta. 11-22 to 27 to Tampa. 12-7—16 to N.Y. and different journey as req’d for work. When touring on dates not particularly listed, will notify court docket + bondsman of dates + areas. Will examine in weekly w/ bondsman.”
A associated submitting reviewed by native CBS affiliate WTKR reportedly confirmed extra journey by Blanchard to Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Commonwealth of Virginia
Blanchard, who has been married for some 30 years, holds a Masters of Divinity diploma from Oral Roberts College, an evangelical school in Tulsa, Oklahoma based by the late televangelist. The college’s Honor Code Pledge, which all college students should signal initially of the yr, requires folks to vow “always to maintain my whole being beneath subjection from all immoral and unlawful actions and communications, whether or not on or off campus,” and that they “won't interact in or try to have interaction in any illicit, unscriptural sexual acts, which embody any gay exercise and sexual activity with one who just isn't my partner via conventional marriage of 1 man and one lady.”
Different prohibitions embody alcohol and tobacco use.
On the Rock Church web site, Blanchard is described as having grown up an atheist with “a dysfunctional childhood,” including, “John’s coronary heart is to achieve a technology with a message of hope via the therapeutic and delivering energy of Jesus Christ.”
There's one enterprise named Zion Options that's integrated in Virginia, and state data don't checklist Blanchard as an organization official. Nevertheless, he touts himself on-line because the founding father of TechDirect, a self-described “LED display resolution for church buildings.”
In a promotional video for the corporate, Blanchard tells pastors and church leaders “I imagine that the blessing that the Lord has given us at our church could be a blessing to you,” explaining that his personal seek for “excessive definition LCD screens” to make use of throughout companies had been stymied by “outrageous” and “exorbitant” costs.
“I started to only pray about options and…so I had a possibility to go to China and meet a distributor,” Blanchard says within the clip. “And now now we have a direct connection to immediately carry this know-how to church buildings within the U.S. at a fantastic low cost, to assist pastors and leaders all throughout America to have this know-how at a fraction of the price… And it is going to be a blessing to you and your church to have this contemporary know-how to have the ability to talk the gospel in a robust and visible method.”
Costs for TechDirect’s “turnkey” LCD screens, which vary in measurement from 6.5-feet tall to almost 10 ft, begin at simply over $32,000 and run as excessive as $62,000.
Blanchard’s subsequent court docket look on costs of solicitation of prostitution and use of a car to advertise prostitution is scheduled for March 22, Chesterfield County officers informed The Every day Beast. Blanchard didn't return a number of voicemail messages left on three cellphone numbers related together with his title, and didn't reply to emails searching for remark. His lawyer, T. Noel Brooks, didn't reply to a request for remark.