Ex-Arkansan faces charges in girl’s abuse

A California pastor who was raised in Texarkana has been charged by prosecutors in Arkansas with three counts of rape in the sexual abuse of a girl in the city more than a decade ago.

David Jerome Keener, 36, is accused of abusing a girl repeatedly beginning when she was 9 and ending when she was 13, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in the case. The case was reported to Texarkana police in March.

The victim said she was afraid to tell anyone about the abuse until years after it occurred.

“This happened for years and years and years, and I would just never say anything,” the affidavit quotes her as saying.

She provided police with specific accounts of multiple occurrences of forcible sodomy and said that as she grew older, she confided in family members, according to the affidavit. She also provided investigators with a copy of Facebook messages between a female relative and Keener during which the relative confronted Keener regarding the alleged sexual abuse, police said.

“I saw where David confessed to the rapes and stated that he was sorry for what he had done but was in a dark place at the time,” the detective said in the affidavit. Archives from the Texarkana Gazette showed Keener was featured as a guest pastor in the city in November and that he is affiliated with a church in Fresno, Calif.