A PASTOR KNEW A SEX OFFENDER WAS WORKING NEAR HIS CHURCH'S CHILDREN. HE SAID NOTHING FOR YEARS.

Don Williams spent 27 years building Pawleys Island Community Church into a South Carolina institution with its own school — Pawleys Island Christian Academy. This week, he was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice, unlawfully placing a child at risk, and criminal conspiracy. His wife, Ginny, the church's guest services director, was charged with criminal conspiracy and obstruction alongside him.

The reason: Warren Perry, a man convicted in 2023 of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor, was working as a custodian at the academy — near children, on church property — while on probation. The Georgetown County Sheriff's Office opened an investigation after a tip came in. At a community meeting afterward, Williams didn't deny knowing. He said he and other church leaders knew about Perry's conviction and simply believed he was complying with his probation terms.

THE PART WORTH GETTING RIGHT

This isn't a story about one bad hire. It's a story about a pastor who had the information — a completed conviction, a named offense, a probation status — and made an institutional decision to let it stand rather than remove the risk. "We believed he was complying with probation" is not the same sentence as "we didn't know." Those are two very different defenses, and Williams chose the one that admits knowledge while minimizing responsibility.

WHY THIS ACTUALLY MATTERS BEYOND THE DRAMA

This is the pattern we track every week, in its purest form: an institution had the choice to protect the people in its care or protect its own continuity, and it chose continuity. Twenty-seven years of trust got spent on a bet that a convicted sex offender's probation paperwork was more reliable than removing him from proximity to children. When the bet failed, the church didn't get to call it a surprise — because it wasn't one. It was a known risk, managed quietly, until it couldn't be managed anymore.

— Grant Keller