Oliver Brazelle
SHEFFIELD – After meeting with officials of The Sheffield First United Methodist Church on Tuesday, Detectives of The Sheffield Police Department were granted access to the former office of accused pedophile, Oliver Brazelle. According to Chief Greg Ray, they seized a computer and numerous documents.
FUMC Annex Building
Chief Grey Ray
“We’re going over the material right now,” Ray told The Quad-Cities Daily. Ray would not say what information was contained in the documents.
This morning, Detectives are meeting with the “Group of Six” at a Muscle Shoals lawyer’s office. It is not clear if all six of the church members are present at the interview or not. Once the meeting is concluded, Chief Ray will determine what, if any the next step should be in the investigation.
The Quad-Cities Daily attempted to get a statement from UMC District Superintendent, Mike Stonbreaker. When asked if the Church Bishop had ever ordered the higher-ups at Sheffield’s congregation to take some sort of sexual awareness training back about 8 to 10 years ago after another alleged dust-up, he would only say that, “We have ‘Safe-Sanctuary’ training every year in all our churches. They have to be re-certified every three years.” he continued, “It involves being trained for sensitivity of issues like have arisen here in this (Sheffield’s) church.”
When asked if there had ever been any reports of prior alleged misconduct at the Sheffield church, Stonbreaker said, “I’ve told you all I can tell you. OK? I don’t know any more. I have no history of any of this. This is as new and as raw to me as it is to you.” With that, Stonebreaker said that any future questions should be submitted to the Public Relations Office at the Birmingham Conference.
