On Wednesday, Arkansas GOP Senator Tom Cotton, citing a story that surfaced delineating how Georgia Democrat senatorial candidate Raphael Warnock was charged and arrested in 2002 after allegedly obstructing a police investigation into suspected child abuse, bluntly asked whether the media would even ask Warnock about it.
Cotton tweeted, “In 2002, when the police investigated suspected child abuse at Raphael Warnock’s church camp for children, Warnock was arrested for obstructing the investigation. Will the media ask Raphael Warnock why he interfered with the police investigation?”
Cotton added in a follow-up post: “If a Republican helped run a camp for children that was investigated for child abuse—and then was arrested for trying to block the investigation—the media would be asking a lot of questions.”
In 2002, when the police investigated suspected child abuse at Raphael Warnock's church camp for children, Warnock was arrested for obstructing the investigation.
Will the media ask Raphael Warnock why he interfered with the police investigation?https://t.co/oW4uMwtzmI
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) November 11, 2020
If a Republican helped run a camp for children that was investigated for child abuse—and then was arrested for trying to block the investigation—the media would be asking a lot of questions.
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) November 11, 2020
Warnock, who was 33 in 2002, was then serving as senior pastor of the Douglas Memorial Community Church in West Baltimore. The church’s Camp Farthest Out was in Eldersburg, which is located in Carroll County, Maryland.
Warnock and Mark Andre Wainwright, the assistant minister for youth, were accused of trying to bar a state trooper from interviewing counselors at the camp, the Baltimore Sun reported in 2002. Neither Warnock nor Wainwright was a suspect in the child abuse investigation, but they interrupted a police interview of a counselor.
“The ministers interrupted a police interview of a counselor Wednesday in a room at the camp and, after investigators moved the interview to a nearby picnic area, interfered again and subsequently tried to prevent a camper from directing police to another potential witness, according to charging documents,” the Sun reported at the time.
Trooper Diane Barry of the state police Child and Sexual Assault Unit said, “I’ve never encountered resistance like that at all.” She pointed out that the counselors were informed they could leave at any time but still consented to be interviewed.
Warnock stated, “Reverend Wainwright and I acted well within the framework of the law, and I am confident that we will be exonerated. It’s just unfortunate that our children had to see their pastors carried away in handcuffs. My concern simply had to do with the presence of counsel. We cooperated fully with their investigation. We have nothing to hide.”
The Sun said the camp “serves 300 inner-city children each year in three, two-week sessions.”
“More than 15,000 kids in Maryland were the victims of child abuse or neglect in 2002, and 33 of them died as a result, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,” the Capital News Service reported in 2004, adding, “The Child Maltreatment Report, released Thursday, said 11.5 children out of every 1,000 in the state were abused or neglected in 2002, slightly below the national average of 12.3 kids per 1,000. While the 15,843 cases of mistreatment in 2002 made for a fairly typical year in Maryland — cases in the state have fluctuated between 15,559 and 16,214 in the last six years — reports of suspected abuse have been rising steadily.”