Truth Apostolic in Madisonville, Kentucky is a small church, and now it is the focus of national attention after its pastor, Michael Orten, defended the rape of a 13-year-old girl by saying that the girl “chose to be raped.”

Some background: Orten hired a convicted sex offender to work with children at the church. The man wasted no time spotting a victim. He held a razor blade to the child’s throat and viciously raped her. But to hear Pastor Orten tell it, the girl was as much to blame as her perverted assailant, because:

“It takes two to tango.”

WTF?! I mean really, WTF?! is that all about?

Thomas Hopper was later charged with the rape of the girl who attended Truth Apostolic. Hopper was convicted in the 1990s for the rape and sodomy of a young girl. And yet Orten hired him to work with children.

To hear Orten tell it, Hopper had been forgiven for his sins, and he even compared the rape of the girl at his church to the stealing of candy, maintaining that both are sins in God’s eyes. And he said of the matter of Hopper raping the girl that if “she chooses to sleep with him (she’s) just as guilty as he is.”

Does this man have any idea what rape entails? How in the world could the girl have chosen to sleep with a man while he held a razor to her throat and threatened to kill her?

For now, the doors of the church are locked and its website has been pulled offline. A posting on the Facebook page for Truth Apostolic says church members should refrain from using social media until the matter is finally resolved, and it adds:

“Do not comment or feed into the mess that the devil is creating. Leave it alone, let it be! Let’s not tag others in it either.”

The devil is still at Truth Apostolic, and he goes by the name of Pastor Michael Orten.

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This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org.