Court Denies Arrest Warrants for Three JMS Female Pastors... "Room for Dispute on Causality"

Jung Myung Seok JMS President Accused of Aiding Sexual Crimes

The arrest warrants for three female JMS executives accused of participating in sexual crimes committed by Jeong Myeong-seok, president of the Christian Gospel Mission (JMS) (78, detained and indicted), were dismissed.

On the 29th, Judge Seol Seung-won, in charge of warrants at the Daejeon District Court, dismissed the arrest warrants requested by the prosecution against three female JMS pastors, including Ms. A (29), on charges of forcible molestation and aiding quasi-rape.

Judge Seol, who conducted the pre-arrest detention hearing (warrant substantive examination) for them from 2:30 p.m. the previous day, dismissed all three arrest warrants after midnight in the early morning.

Judge Seol stated the reason for dismissing the warrants was that "there is room for dispute regarding causality, so it is necessary to guarantee the right to defense while not detained, and since their residence is fixed, it is difficult to see a risk of flight." It was also considered that most of the evidence had been collected, making it unlikely they would destroy evidence.

Ms. A and others are accused of assisting or knowingly condoning Jeong’s sexual crimes against female believers of German nationality and Korean female believers.

Among them, Ms. B, who is both a pastor and a dentist, is also accused of jointly coercing a victim who filed a police complaint to withdraw the report.

Jeong has been detained and indicted on charges of molesting or sexually assaulting a female believer of Hong Kong nationality and sexually molesting female believers of Australian and Korean nationality 23 times from February 2018 to September 2021 at the training center in Wolmyeong-dong, Geumsan-gun, Chungnam, and is currently undergoing trial in the first instance.

Earlier, the Daejeon District Prosecutors’ Office indicted six female executives, including Kim Ji-seon, known as the 'second-in-command' of JMS and Jeong’s successor, and civil affairs director Jeong Mo, who were arrested and indicted on charges of quasi-rape and aiding quasi-rape, respectively, in May, and four others who were indicted without detention on charges including quasi-rape, forcible molestation, and aiding quasi-rape.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.