{"id":1996680,"date":"2023-08-10T13:56:02","date_gmt":"2023-08-10T17:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/charlotte-pride-lists-child-sex-offender-as-lgbtq-award-recipient\/"},"modified":"2023-08-10T13:56:02","modified_gmt":"2023-08-10T17:56:02","slug":"charlotte-pride-lists-child-sex-offender-as-lgbtq-award-recipient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/charlotte-pride-lists-child-sex-offender-as-lgbtq-award-recipient\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlotte Pride Lists Child Sex Offender As \u2018LGBTQ\u2019 Award Recipient"},"content":{"rendered":"

20<\/div>SHARES<\/span><\/div>

<\/span>Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/span>Twitter<\/span><\/a>

Chad Sevearance-Turner, a former music minister who served years<\/a> in prison for sexually abusing a minor boy, will receive the award this year, with the group praising<\/a> him as an \u201cinfluential advocate for LGBT+ issues,\u201d Reduxx reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sevearance-Turner and several other honorees, who were dubbed \u201cChampions of Pride\u201d on Charlotte Pride\u2019s website, will be honored as part<\/a> of this year\u2019s Charlotte Pride festival, scheduled for the weekend of August 19 and 20.<\/p>\n

Sevearance-Turner, 45, is president and chief executive officer at the<\/a> Carolinas LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit that \u201csupports LGBT+ and allied businesses\u201d in North and South Carolina.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was accused<\/a> by three minor boys of sexual abuse in 1998 when he was 20, all three of whom he met through his position as music director for New Harvest Church of God in Gaffney, South Carolina, according<\/a> to a 2000 report from GoUpstate.com.<\/p>\n

The three boys\u2019 accusations were tried in three separate cases.<\/p>\n

The first case involved a 14-year-old boy who testified that he spent the night with Sevearance-Turner at one of the other victims\u2019 houses and awoke to Sevearance-Turner fondling his genitals. The boy also testified that Sevearance-Turner invited him to spend the night at his house, and when he did, Sevearance-Turner asked him how he would feel about a man performing oral sex on him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought he was joking,\u201d the boy told the court at the time.<\/p>\n

The child said Sevearance-Turner\u2019s questions about sexual acts were upsetting because of his position in the church.<\/p>\n

The second boy, who was 15 at the time of the alleged incident, testified that Sevearance-Turner invited him to his house and showed him a pornographic video of sex between a man and woman. The boy went to sleep in the same bed as Sevearance-Turner and awoke to Sevearance-Turner fondling him, the child said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe told me if I ever told the pastor, he\u2019d make me look like a fool and a liar,\u201d the boy said.<\/p>\n

The third boy, who was also 15 when he said the incident happened, said Sevearance-Turner made the same advances to him when he stayed at the boy\u2019s home for three weeks and fondled him multiple times.<\/p>\n

Sevearance-Turner\u2019s defense attorney Thomas Shealy accused the boys at the time of a \u201cSalem witch hunt\u201d against their alleged abuser.<\/p>\n

Sevearance-Turner was eventually convicted in 2000 of performing a lewd act on a minor under 16 and sentenced<\/a> to ten years in prison. He served just two years before being released on parole.<\/p>\n

He is currently listed<\/a> on the North Carolina sex offender registry.<\/p>\n

Charlotte Pride called the registered sex offender a \u201chighly accomplished leader in human resources\u201d whose career has been \u201cdriven by a deep commitment to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).\u201d<\/p>\n

As of Thursday, however, Sevearance-Turner\u2019s profile has been removed<\/a> from the website page listing this year\u2019s honorees. An archived version of the page shows<\/a> him listed.<\/p>\n

Charlotte Pride did not respond to a request for comment about whether Sevearance-Turner\u2019s award will be rescinded or whether the group was aware of his child sex offender status when it decided to honor him.<\/p>\n

Last week though, Sevearance-Turner posted about his award on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am also humbled to be listed with these amazing humans who do so much great work for our region,\u201d Sevearance-Turner wrote.<\/p>\n

His employer congratulated him as well.<\/p>\n

(LinkedIn)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Sevearance-Turner has been recognized frequently for his LGBT advocacy work. He was appointed by Charlotte\u2019s mayor to serve on the city\u2019s business advisory committee this year, according to Charlotte Pride. LGBT newspaper QNotes named<\/a> him their \u201cPerson of the Year\u201d in 2015. He has also mingled with North Carolina\u2019s political brass \u2014 Democrat Governor Roy Cooper was photographed<\/a> standing next to Sevearance-Turner at a gala in 2019.<\/p>\n

The Harvey Milk Award, named for the famous gay activist in 1970s San Francisco, is presented every year \u201cto honor exceptional leadership, service to the community, and those who champion LGBTQ causes that impact the Charlotte community and beyond,\u201d according<\/a> to Charlotte Pride.<\/p>\n

The 2023 Charlotte Pride festival has sponsorships<\/a> from Amazon, McDonalds, Bank of America, Bud Light, Lowe\u2019s, NASCAR, and Krispy Kreme, among other major companies.<\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

This is not the first time Sevearance-Turner\u2019s child sex offender status has been unearthed while in a position of influence.<\/p>\n

In 2016, Sevearance-Turner resigned<\/a>\u00a0as president of Charlotte\u2019s LGBT Chamber of Commerce after his child sex offender conviction became known. He said<\/a> at the time that his past had not stopped him from being successful.<\/p>\n

At the time, Sevearance-Turner was at the forefront<\/a> of a push for North Carolina to allow trans-identifying men to use women\u2019s bathrooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one who is a convicted sex offender should be leading a campaign to allow men to be in women\u2019s bathrooms and showers,\u201d the leader of the NC Values Coalition, who sounded the alarm about the child sex offender, said<\/a> at the time. \u201cIt\u2019s just common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Charlotte Pride, a leading LGBT pride organization in Charlotte, North Carolina, has listed a child sex offender as the recipient of its 2023 Harvey Milk Award for exceptional \u201cLGBT+\u201d advocacy. Chad Sevearance-Turner, a former music minister who served years in prison for sexually abusing a minor boy, will receive the award this year, with the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":1996681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1996680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1996680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1996681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1996680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1996680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1996680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}