Clark County sheriff’s deputies are seeking information about possible additional victims after they arrested a Hazel Dell minister who investigators say disciplined a 6-year-old by whipping the child with a belt.
Deputies responded Feb. 17 to a report from a mother about potential child abuse. The woman said she and her child attend a church operated out of a house in Hazel Dell called Army of the Lord — Ministry of Defense. Deputies said the woman told them she’d asked a friend to take her child with them to a church service Sunday because she couldn’t go. She also said she had asked the friend to ask the minister, Gabriel Hardy, to talk with her child about recent disrespectful behavior, according to a sheriff’s office news release.
The woman said her child came home from the service with bruising and welts across their lower back, hips and rear end. The child said Hardy had whipped them with a belt about a dozen times, the news release states.
The sheriff’s office’s Special Victims Unit talked with witnesses who said Hardy, 42, preached about corporal punishment of young children and claimed to be divinely ordained to chastise kids. The agency said Hardy admitted to the child’s mother that he had whipped the child with a belt to discipline them.
