A Florida assistant youth minister who claims he had graphic sexual conversations with homosexual teen-agers in “gay” chat rooms so he could eventually “talk to them about Jesus” has been arrested.
Deputies from the Broward Sheriff’s Office picked up Hewart Lee Bennett, 46, near North Lauderdale, Fla., this week, saying he drove to Broward County looking for a 15-year-old boy he’d met online, reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
 Hewart Lee Bennett |
According to the report, Bennett was charged with using a computer to seduce, solicit, lure or entice a child to commit an illegal sexual or lewd act. Bennett is a volunteer assistant youth minister and elder at the West Palm Beach First Seventh-day Adventist Church, the paper said.
“He led our detectives to believe that he frequently chats with youngsters online and talks about sex so when he meets them in person he can talk to them about Jesus,” Broward Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright told the paper.
Bennett is married with three children and described by the chairman of the church’s elder board as “a faithful, active churchgoer.”
“This would be the complete opposite thing that I know of his personality,” Edward Richardson told the Sun-Sentinel.
The paper reports Richardson believes Bennett “might be true in what he says” his motives were. “I discourage that kind of thing because so many people in chat rooms do it with an ulterior motive, a motive that is not good.”
According to the arrest report, Bennett claims he looks for homosexual boys on the Internet to “put them back on the right path.”
A sheriff’s deputy talked with a teen-age boy seen walking away from Bennett’s car before the arrest, who, the paper reports, said he met Bennett in a chat room.
Officials with the Law Enforcement Against Child Harm Task Force are now investigating Bennett’s online activities, the report said.
Bennett was released from jail after posting $1,000 bail.
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