One new article link has been added to our Related News page. AL.com published an article titled Former music and youth minister in Sheffield charged with sex abuse of a youth.

Oliver Brazelle, 79, the former music director at the First United Methodist Church in Sheffield, was arrested Monday, Jan. 6, 2014, and charged with second-degree sexual abuse and one-count of second-degree sodomy, according to officials in Lauderdale County.

Brazelle had been barred in 2003 from directing youth choirs by the Methodist bishop for North Alabama, according to records released during the investigation by the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, because of allegations of inappropriate relationships with young people alleged to have occurred in the 1970s. When the Sheffield police opened an investigation in July 2012, Brazelle admitted to church officials that he had had an inappropriate relationship with a youth in the past. Church officials fired Brazelle on July 27, 2012.

Source: AL.com