After 45 years, a child sex-abuse survivor looks for justice against ‘Uncle Raggy’

After 45 years, a woman may get justice for crimes committed against her when she was a child.

The man she has accused of sexually molesting her in the mid-1970s, Dural Reece “Uncle Raggy” Ragsdale, 71, turned himself in Monday afternoon to the Tishomingo County Jail, the Clarion Ledger reports. A grand jury indicted him last month.

Ragsdale’s alleged victim, Glenda LeAnne Kay, was 10 years old in 1974 when he began abusing her. Ragsdale was a youth minister at the time.

“He used his position of trust as our youth/music minister at the Iuka United Methodist Church in Iuka, MS, to gain access to me,” Kay wrote in a Facebook post Monday night. “He has served over 40 years as a seminary-educated ordained Methodist minister throughout the state of Mississippi & adjoining states from the 1970s until he was forced to retire under suspicious circumstances on June 18, 2013, from the Porter’s Chapel United Methodist Church in Vicksburg, MS.”

Kay went on to say that Ragsdale was also the director of the Wesley Foundation at Mississippi State University in the 1980s.

“Most people are unaware that Mississippi does not have a statute of limitations on some of the various sexual crimes, especially sexual crimes against children,” Kay wrote.

“There are some cases where the statute of limitations doesn’t bar prosecution, and this would be one of them,” District Attorney John Weddle told the Clarion Ledger.

Last April, the paper ran a story where Kay detailed the allegations against Ragsdale, which including forced oral sex. At the time, however, the Ledger did not name him as no charges had been filed. He denied the abuse, although he said something had happened which he described as an accident and the actions of a “curious” child. He admitted to the paper that it was possible his penis was in the child’s mouth, the paper reported today.

In her Facebook post, Kay thanked the many people who supported her “during this long journey to stop a child predator from having access to any more children. … Your courage & boldness to speak up & call for criminal justice should serve as a model for church leaders & congregations around the country on truly godly responses that at a minimum demands criminal accountability.”

Ragsdale is out on a $20,000 bond. A court date has yet to be set.