Arizona woman gets emergency surgery after vibrator gets stuck in her bladder
MESA, AZ ( 3TV/CBS 5) – An Arizona woman is recovering from surgery after getting a sex toy stuck in her bladder. It’s a case that stunned emergency room doctors and an OBGYN, and that woman spoke out to Arizona’s Family warning others about the product she used.
She’s asked we keep her name anonymous. Her pleasure turned to pain in an instant. “Every time it went off it was like my entire abdomen was vibrating,” the Mesa woman said.
She was talking about her new Vesper Vibrator Necklace by the company Crave. She wore the sex toy around her neck out to dinner with her boyfriend, then used it with him when they got home earlier this month. She was only using it on the outside of her body as intended.
“I moved and out of nowhere I just felt a really sharp pain,” she said. The vibrator was nowhere to be found. “Where is it? And he like…didn’t know,” she said, about the moment she and her boyfriend knew something was wrong.
But…she could still feel it. “First reaction was panic because I had just lost something inside of me that was still going off,” she said.
“Still vibrating?” asked reporter Briana Whitney. “Yes, still vibrating,” the woman confirmed. With the device still on, she went to the emergency room, where several doctors did pelvic exams, but with no success.
“The emergency room staff wasn’t able to find it in the vagina,” said OBGYN Dr. Greg Marchand. The emergency room staff called in Dr. Marchand to take a look, and he was shocked by what he found on the x-ray and inside her body.
“I was really surprised when I’m looking in the abdomen and realizing this device is actually in the bladder,” Dr. Marchand said. “I’ve never seen a case like this in my entire career.” They realized the device had actually entered her body through her urethra and went into her bladder, lodging itself sideways. They had to surgically remove it.
The woman plans on filing a lawsuit against the company for lack of warning on the label that this could happen even during normal use. She said the small and narrow design is dangerous, especially with a detachable chain. After her horrific vibrator experience, she said she’ll be taking it down a notch.
“Are you done using sex toys?” Whitney asked the woman. “Uh, probably. Yeah. Probably,” she said. Arizona’s Family reached out to the sex product company, Crave, for a response but had not heard back as of Friday night.
Photo Credit: azfamily
Second black Texas teen told by school to cut dreadlocks, according to his mom
A second teenager at a Texas high school was suspended and told he could not return to class until he cut his dreadlocks to be in compliance with the school’s dress code.
Kaden Bradford, 16, a sophomore at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu in Southeast Texas, has been on at-home suspension since last week, according to his mother, Cindy Bradford.
Kaden’s cousin, DeAndre Arnold, is a senior at the school and also wears dreadlocks. DeAndre was recently told by administrators that he is not allowed in school and cannot walk at his graduation unless he cut his hair, his mother, Sandy Arnold, told NBC affiliate KPRC of Houston. DeAndre, whose father is from Trinidad, said the men in his family often grow their dreadlocks, and that it is a part of his identity and culture.
Both women, who are sisters, said they will not cut the boys’ hair.
Bradford said in an interview Friday that like DeAndre, her son has worn dreadlocks for years and it only recently became an issue at the high school. Last year, Kaden would wear a headband to keep his dreadlocks off his shoulders, his mother said. The school told her that if Kaden kept his dreadlocks pulled back, he would not be in violation of its hair policy, she said.
But shortly after Christmas break, she said the school’s principal, Rick Kana, told Kaden that he would need to cut his hair. Bradford said she paid last week to have Kaden’s dreads cornrowed, or tightly-braided so that they lay flat against his scalp. But that did not appease administrators, who placed him on at-home suspension because he refused to cut his hair, his mother said.
She said she is now considering taking legal action so he can return to school.
Bradford said she believes the hair policy is racist. The school district dress code states male students cannot have their hair “gathered or worn in a style that would allow the hair to extend below” the collar, earlobes and eyes when let down.
Barbers Hill High School is predominantly white, according to school district data. African Americans made up 3.1 percent of the school district’s population in the 2017-18 school year.
The principal and Barbers Hill Independent School District superintendent, Greg Poole, did not return multiple requests for an interview.
In a statement posted on its Twitter account, the district said that it does allow dreadlocks. “However we DO have a community supported hair length policy & have had for decades,” the statement said. “BH is a State leader with high expectations in ALL areas!”
On Friday, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who announced the first federal legislation that would ban hair-based discrimination in December, expressed support for DeAndre and Kaden.
“Natural hair like dreadlocks is a reflection of culture & heritage,” he tweeted. “No one should be punished for expressing who they are. The CROWN Act would end this—hair discrimination is discrimination against black people.”
In December, Booker said the Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Act (CROWN) will make it clear that “discrimination based on natural and protective hairstyles associated with people of African descent” is a “prohibited form of racial or national origin discrimination.”
Houston Texans wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, who has dreadlocks, also tweeted support Wednesday for DeAndre.
“Never cut your locks,” Hopkins said.
via: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/second-teen-suspended-over-dreadlocks-texas-school-n1122261
Photo Credit: Cindy Bradford
Mom upset after 9-year-old suspended over hair color
(WISN/CNN) — A mother said her 9-year-old daughter was suspended from her private school in Wisconsin because of the color of her braids.
Jalissa Taylor said her daughter, a fourth-grader at Hope Christian School in Racine, never received a warning from school administrators before the suspension.
“She came to me crying,” Taylor said. “This is a hairstyle she picked. It’s just one big braid, going in a circle with a little bit of color to it — and now it’s a distraction.”
The school sent a letter home Tuesday, saying the fourth-grader violated the dress code policy. Students cannot dye or change their hair color, and girls can only wear solid blue, black, gray or white headbands.
“I called the school and when they did answer the phone, I’m like, ‘Please work with me, let me know.’ Don’t wait ’till you gonna suspend my kid to come tell me, ‘Oh, she was doing this, she was doing that, and this is not appropriate.’ It’s like no one told me anything,” Taylor said.
The mom said this isn’t the first time her daughter has worn a colorful hairstyle to school, and school administrators said they have discussed the dress code with Taylor.
However, they did not confirm whether Taylor and her daughter received a warning.
Administrators told WISN-TV that “all concerns have been addressed.”
Photo Credit: kjct8.com
91-year-old man charged with rape of minor in Louisiana
SHREVEPORT, LA (KTBS) — A 91-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a juvenile, according to police in Louisiana.
Otis Allen was booked into the Shreveport City Jail Friday on a charge of first-degree rape. His bond is set at $250,000.
Shreveport police’s sex crimes investigators began looking into Allen in November after receiving a complaint about the alleged rape of a juvenile.
Allen was taken into custody by the U.S. Marshal’s Office and taken to Shreveport police for interviews. He was arrested afterward.
Photo Credit: KTBS
R. Kelly: Emergency Hernia Surgery … Can’t Make It to Court
Article via TMZ
R. Kelly missed a court date this week, but had a pretty good excuse — going under the knife … in an operating room, not his jail cell.
Sources close to Kelly tell TMZ … the singer was briefly taken outta MCC Chicago, and transported to a hospital earlier this week where doctors performed emergency surgery to repair a hernia. We’re told he was transported back to the big house after the procedure.
We don’t know how long of a hospital stay he had, but he was back in his jail cell by Thursday evening. We’re told he wasn’t allowed to have any visitors at the hospital.
Seems the hernia’s been plaguing Kelly for a while. His lawyer filed docs back in September, outlining several medical issues facing Kelly … including anxiety, numbness in one of his hands and the then-untreated hernia.
The Chicago Sun-Timesreports Kelly is getting pain meds now, and aside from missing the court date this week — he’s also MIA from jailhouse basketball games while he’s recovering.
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Scientists discovered four new species of sharks that walk
So — some sharks walk. Just not the scary ones. While great whites haunt the deep, walking sharks are content to scuttle in the shallows.
They’ve been walking, or something close to it, for at least 9 million years. They’re evolutionary superstars, too: Walking sharks could be the most recently evolved shark on Earth. That’s according to findings published this week in Marine and Freshwater Research.
Shark scientists spent years sampling the DNA of the only known walking shark species to estimate when they evolved. They found four new species while they were at it.
The youngest species might’ve evolved less than 2 million years ago. And by evolutionary standards, that’s recent — and a major contradiction to the widely held belief that sharks are slow to evolve. “The discovery proves that modern sharks have remarkable evolutionary staying power and the ability to adapt to environmental changes,” said Mark Erdmann, the paper’s co-author and Conservation International Vice President of Asia-Pacific marine programs. Sharks are older than dinosaurs, dominating the seas for as long as 400 million years (the oldest dinosaur fossil is thought to be about 240 million years old, by comparison). So the fact that sharks continue to evolve as recently as 399 million years later is pretty remarkable.
How they walk and where they do it
Walking sharks, also called “epaulette” sharks for their spots that resemble the military decor, “walk” on their muscular fins to forage for small fish along shallow reefs and sea grass. It’s a behavior partially driven by changing sea levels and shifting landscapes, which ultimately influenced where most of the nine known species settled — eastern Indonesia and neighboring islands, New Guinea and parts of Australia. Based on differences in the sharks’ DNA, scientists created estimated evolutionary timelines. They found walking sharks started to split off from their evolutionary relatives around 9 million years ago.
This walking shark, which resides in a shallow ocean off New Guinea, uses his fins to “walk” along the sea floor in search of food. During mass extinction events, carpet sharks, the group that includes walking sharks, were among the “most affected” animals, researchers wrote. Sea levels rose and ocean temperatures dropped, pushing the sharks to migrate to warmer waters. Sharks off the coast of Australia “hitched a ride” on moving tectonic plates all the way to New Guinea, researchers said. When the plates stopped shifting, the land settled, creating barriers for species to migrate. This might be why the sharks’ habitat rarely overlap, they wrote.
Hope for walking sharks’ future
Erdman said the group hopes their research could encourage conservationists to add a few of the sharks to the IUCN Red List, a global inventory of threatened species, based on how little is known about them. “A global recognition of the need to protect walking sharks will help ensure they thrive providing benefits for marine ecosystems and to local communities through the sharks’ value as tourism assets,” he said. “It’s essential that local communities, governments and the international public continue working to establish marine protected areas to help ensure our ocean’s biodiversity continues to flourish.”
Article via CNN
Don Lemon’s assault accuser says CNN anchor a ‘liar and hypocrite’ with #MeToo coverage
The man suing CNN host Don Lemon for assault says his claim isn’t being taken seriously because it doesn’t fit the mainstream media’s #MeToo movement narrative.
Dustin Hice filed an explosive lawsuit against Lemon – who is openly gay — last year, accusing the “CNN Tonight” host of a sexually charged assault.
Hice told Fox News the alleged “vile, disgusting, lewd and inhumane” attack would be treated much differently if he were a woman.
“[Lemon] put his hand down the front of his own shorts, and vigorously rubbed his genitalia, removed his hand and shoved his index and middle fingers into Plaintiff’s mustache and under Plaintiff’s nose,” according to the lawsuit, filed Aug. 11, 2019 in Suffolk County Court.
Lemon offered a six-figure settlement before talks broke down and the formal complaint was filed, according to Hice.
“I’m not doing this for notoriety or fame, I’m doing this because I’m standing up for myself and what I believe in,” Hice told Fox News. “I’ve grown a new respect for people dealing with mental health issues because stress, depression, anxiety, those are all very serious things. It consumed my life.”
CNN did not respond to a series of questions from Fox News, including a request for comment regarding Hice’s claim that Lemon offered him a six-figure settlement.
Lemon was served with the complaint Wednesday. The case was moving to discovery, according to a source close to Hice’s legal team.
CNN did not immediately respond with a comment regarding the complaint being served.
Lemon, through CNN, previously vehemently denied Hice’s allegations, and has continued to host “CNN Tonight.”
“I’ve grown a little skeptical of the news after what’s happened to me, nobody acknowledges it anymore,” Hice said. “The hypocrisy, he is a black, gay, liberal and supposed #MeToo advocate but when it doesn’t fit their narrative, or it’s one of their own, they don’t even address it.”
Lemon allegedly asked a crude question about Hice’s sexual preference during the physical confrontation, leaving him “shocked and humiliated,” according to the suit. The alleged incident occurred at Murf’s Backstreet Tavern, in the prestigious Hamptons area east of New York City in July 2018.
CNN initially denied Hice’s account and said Hice seemed to bear animosity toward the cable news network. But, Hice said he didn’t watch much CNN, with the exception of “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,” before the alleged incident and had no reason to trash the network.
Last year, the New York Post cited a “source close to Lemon” who said Hice asked for $1.5 million in exchange for not filing the lawsuit. Hice admitted that $1.5 million was a figure discussed during settlement talks but said it’s only part of the story.
“They painted me as trying to extort $1.5 million from him but they never mentioned that he offered many times over six figures to settle. He tried to make payments on that and I said, ‘No thank you,’” Hice said. “I think that when he went to CNN and [denied the accusations], he probably failed to mention that he offered me well over six figures in the settlement process.”
While Hice wasn’t particularly opinionated about CNN before the alleged incident, he has since paid close attention to Lemon’s show.
“I don’t want to see his face on the news anymore because he’s a blatant liar and hypocrite,” Hice said, pointing to a Sept. 2018 segment when Lemon discussed the various ways victims of sexual harassment dealt with the aftermath and trauma.
“It was only two months after he assaulted me,” Hice said. “This is something that I’m going to be healing from and recovering from for the rest of my life.”
Hice said he didn’t want to take the spotlight away from female victims of abuse and said he developed a strong sympathy for anyone going through similar struggles.
“The media has labeled me as an ‘accuser,’ as opposed to a ‘victim,’ just because I’m a male,” he said. “I’ve been struggling, but there is a lot of people that have gone through a lot worse things than somebody rubbing their genitals and putting it in your face, as disgusting and vile as that is. There are people that have been raped and worse.”
Hice said he took a polygraph test with a former FBI profiler to prove to people close to him that he’s telling the truth.
“I passed with flying colors, this guy hooked me up to this whole machine, it was nerve-wracking but I just wanted to prove that I’m not lying,” Hice said. “Witnesses saw this happen. The whole town of Sag Harbor knew.”
Last year, when the suit initially was filed, Fox News spoke with George Gounelas, one of the witnesses named in the suit who was Hice’s boss at the time of the alleged incident.
Hice approached Lemon to strike up a conversation but the newsman declined, according to Gounelas, who said he and Hice then offered to buy Lemon a drink, which the CNN host also declined.
Hice told Fox News he simply wanted to be able to share a story of taking a shot with the CNN host and was not hostile, confrontational or looking for trouble.
“He took offense to it, or took it as me flirting, and that’s when he decided he’s above the law and can do whatever the hell he wanted,” Hice said.
Gounelas said that a few moments later, Lemon came up to them.
“Don Lemon has now come around the corner and is standing face to face with us. There is a beam, a pole, in the place. Don’s standing up against the pole, face to face with Dustin, I turn around and I’m standing right there between the two of them,” Gounelas said. “He’s saying, ‘So, you like me? Is that why you’re bothering me?’”
Gounelas told Fox News he couldn’t recall what Lemon said verbatim, but it was “along the lines of, ‘Do you like me? Is that why you’re bothering me, because you wanna f— me?’”
Gounelas said Lemon appeared “pretty drunk” when he confronted the duo.
“He put his hands down his pants, inside his board shorts, grabbed his [genitals], and then came out with two fingers and, like, clipped Dustin’s nose up and down with two fingers asking ‘do you like p—- or d—?’” Gounelas said.
Gounelas also said he laughed during the alleged incident and immediately mocked Hice as “gross” because of Lemon’s alleged actions – but Hice didn’t think it was a laughing matter.
“Dustin was in this shock mode, saying, ‘Bro, did that just happen? That was disgusting,’” Gounelas said, noting that the story followed Hice. “Every time we went out, every bartender offered him a lemon drop shot, making fun of him. He got some sh– for it.”
“The plaintiff in this lawsuit has previously displayed a pattern of contempt for CNN on his social media accounts,” a CNN spokesperson told Fox News in a statement when the suit was first filed last year. “This claim follows his unsuccessful threats and demands for an exorbitant amount of money from Don Lemon.”
“Don categorically denies these claims and this matter does not merit any further comment at this time,” the CNN spokesperson added last year.
Article via FOX
Annabella Sciorra Testifies That Harvey Weinstein Raped Her: ‘My Body Shut Down’
Article via YahooNews
Annabella Sciorra said in court testimony Thursday that Harvey Weinstein raped her more than two decades ago.
Called as a witness for Weinstein’s rape trial in New York, the actor — at times visibly very upset and crying — recalled the incident shortly after she appeared in Miramax’s “The Night We Never Met,” released in 1993. After a dinner in New York in ’93 or ’94, Weinstein dropped her off at her Gramercy Park apartment. He unexpectedly showed up at her door, pushing it open, and started to unbutton his shirt.
“I realized that he thought in his head that he wanted to have sex,” Sciorra said. “I started to back up because I thought I could make it into my bathroom. I told him to leave because it was not going to happen… I was not going to have sex with him.”
Weinstein then grabbed Sciorra around her collar above her chest, the actor testified, and he shoved her onto the bed. She said she was wearing a nightgown and did not have underwear on. “I was trying to get him off of me, I was punching him, I was kicking him,” she said. “I was just trying to get him away from me… He put my hands over my head to put them back and he got on top of me and he raped me.”
“He put his penis inside my vagina and he raped me,” Sciorra continued. “I was trying to fight but I couldn’t fight anymore because he had my hands locked. At a certain point he stopped, and he came out of me and he ejaculated on top of me on my leg in the nightgown.”
At that point, according to Sciorra, Weinstein said, “I have perfect timing,” and then “he proceeded to put his mouth on my vagina,” before which he said, “This is for you.”
“I didn’t have very much fight left inside of me at that point. I said ‘no, no’ but there was not much I could do at that point. My body shut down,” Sciorra testified. “And then it was just so disgusting that my body started to shake in a way that was very unusual,” she said, describing it as “like a seizure or something.”
Sciorra said she doesn’t remember a lot of what happened the rest of that night. “I know that I woke up. I’m not sure if I fainted or fell asleep or blacked out, but I woke up on the floor with my nightgown kind of up and I didn’t know if something else had happened.”
Sciorra said she did not call police to report the incident “because he was someone I knew,” she testified. “I would say I felt at the time that rape was something that happened in a back alleyway in a dark place” and committed by a stranger.
On cross-examination, defense attorney Donna Rotunno challenged that version of events, suggesting that Sciorra must have known what rape was at the time.
“Ms. Sciorra, you were 33 years old at the time?” she asked.
Rotunno also questioned various decisions Sciorra said that she made that night. She asked why Sciorra had opened the door to Weinstein without knowing who it was, and asked why she hadn’t tried to get to her phone to call 911.
“It happened very fast — very fast,” Sciorra said.
Rotunno highlighted Sciorra’s training as an actor, suggesting that her job is to pretend to be someone she is not.
Sciorra told the jury that a few weeks after the incident, she was in a restaurant where she saw Weinstein. “I confronted him about what happened in my apartment. I tried to talk to him about what happened and I told him how I woke up and then I blacked out and fainted and he said, ‘That’s what all the nice Catholic girls say,’ and then he leaned into me and said, ‘This remains between you and I.’ It was very menacing… and I thought he was going to hit me right there. And it was threatening and I was afraid.”
The actor testified that she wasn’t drunk on the night she alleges Weinstein raped her, and she said she had stopped taking Valium prior to the incident. “I realized I was addicted to the Valium. I was taking it during the day a lot and at nighttime and I also knew it wasn’t good for me, so I found homeopathic treatment at the pharmacy so I started to wean myself off,” she said.
Following Weinstein’s alleged rape, according to Sciorra, she began to drink heavily and cut herself. “I cried a lot. I had a lot of what I know is called dissociative experiences. I spent a lot of time alone,” she said. “I didn’t see very many people. I didn’t want to talk about what happened. I disappeared… I began to drink a lot. I began to cut myself a lot.”
In 1997, when Sciorra was at the Cannes Film Festival to promote Miramax’s “Cop Land,” Weinstein showed up unannounced at her hotel with a bottle of baby oil in his hand, she testified — at which point she pressed “every single call button” on the hotel phone. Since then, Sciorra testified, she recalled seeing Weinstein only once more, at an event. “Suddenly I felt a hand on my back, and as I turned around, it was the defendant and he immediately took his hand off and went away,” Sciorra said.
Sciorra said she first met Weinstein in either 1990 or 1991 when her agent took her to a party in Los Angeles at someone’s house. “There was a lot of people there, and at a certain point, my agent introduced me to Harvey Weinstein,” she said. Asked if she was familiar with Weinstein at that point, she said, “No, I had never heard of him.” Sciorra joined Weinstein in a car ride home to Malibu from the party, during which Weinstein handed her his business card and said that if she came across any scripts, she could reach out.
Sciorra said that following their initial meeting, she approached Weinstein about the script for “The Night We Never Met,” a rom-com in which she co-starred with Matthew Broderick. According to Sciorra, Weinstein said he wouldn’t produce the movie if she was not in it and he pushed her to start the shoot on the heels of two other movies she was in.
Weinstein sent Sciorra, who was living on Central Park West at the time, a plastic bag of Valium and a collection of his recent movies with a note saying “Enjoy these movies,” along with some licorice, popcorn and a bottle of wine. Later, Weinstein delivered another care package to her: “He sent me a box of chocolate penises,” she testified. “I thought it was disgusting and inappropriate.”
Prosecutor Joan Illuzzi, in her direct examination, asked Sciorra if it’s typical in the entertainment business to take meetings with producers and directors in hotel rooms, to which Sciorra responded: “Yeah, all the time.”
Illuzzi also queried Sciorra about whether she had any romantic relationship with Weinstein ever in her life. “No,” the actor replied. “To this day, have you ever had a romantic interest in Harvey Weinstein?” the prosecutor asked. “No,” Sciorra said.
Previously, Weinstein’s defense team had sought to block Sciorra’s testimony, arguing that her allegations were past the statute of limitations and represented a violation the Constitution’s prohibition on “ex post facto” laws. Prosecutors asked the court to allow Sciorra’s testimony to show that Weinstein is a repeat sex offender and a judge allowed her as a trial witness in a ruling last fall.
At the beginning of her testimony, Sciorra talked about her background growing up in Brooklyn. She said she graduated American Academy of Dramatic Arts high school at 17, and wanted to pursue a career in entertainment professionally — despite her mom’s disapproval. Sciorra is known for her roles in “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” and “Jungle Fever” and earned an Emmy nomination for her part in HBO’s “The Sopranos.”
In New York, Weinstein is facing five counts of predatory sexual assault, rape, and criminal sexual acts. If convicted, he faces a potential life sentence. He also faces four charges in Los Angeles for allegedly raping one woman and sexually assaulting another in 2013, which carry a sentence of up to 28 years in prison. Weinstein’s criminal trial began Jan. 6 at the state Supreme Court in Manhattan.
Weinstein, who has been suffering health problems, hobbled into the courtroom Thursday without his walker, and was holding onto his PR rep.
Pictured above: Annabella Sciorra arrives to testify as a witness in the sexual assault trial of Harvey Weinstein at New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Jan. 23.
Hillary Clinton & others break their silence on Harvey Weinstein+ My thoughts on the hypocrisy!
Woman rejects 20-year sentencing deal for drug charges, gets 99 years instead
UPSHUR COUNTY, Texas (KETK) – A Texas woman was sentenced to 99 years in prison after pleading guilty to drug charges in Upshur County.
Felisha Diane Williams, 39, pleaded guilty on January 13th to possession of a controlled substance with the intent to deliver. In her plea, she declined the state’s offer of 20 years and opted for a jury to decide her punishment.
Due to previous felonies, Williams faced an enhanced punishment range of 15 years to life rather than the normal punishment range of 5-99 years or life in prison.
Williams was arrested on May 26, 2018. According to court records, she was a passenger in a car stopped in Gilmer for displaying multiple registration and mismatched license plates. Police said one of the car’s passengers originally gave police a false name. Once police found out the real name, they also found warrants against that name and requested permission to search the car, which the driver granted.
In the search, officers found several baggies and methamphetamine. During her transport to the county jail, Williams indicated she had more meth concealed on her person.
At the jail, staff found about 7 grams of meth and 16 more small baggies, which authorities say are commonly used in drug trafficking.
Williams had four previous felony convictions on her record and was on parole at the time of her arrest.
Photo Credit: fox2now.com
Struggling church asks older members to go away to appeal to young families
COTTAGE GROVE, MN (AP) — A struggling Minnesota church is asking its older parishioners to leave in hopes of making it more attractive to young families.
Grove United Methodist Church in the St. Paul suburb of Cottage Grove is closing in June, with plans to relaunch in November. The present members, most of them over 60 years old, will be invited to worship elsewhere, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported. The church is asking that they stay away for two years, then consult the pastor about reapplying.
“I pray for this church, getting through this age-discrimination thing,” William Gackstetter said at church on a recent Sunday as the gray-haired heads around him nodded in agreement.
But church officials said the congregation needs a reset and the best way is to appeal to younger people.
The Grove United Methodist Church is the product of a 2008 merger with a larger church in Woodbury.
The Cottage Grove church has struggled with membership and finances. Seven years ago, Methodist officials said they could no longer pay for its minister, so the church switched to lay ministry, with weekly sermons by members. The church’s attendance and finances have stabilized recently, with an average weekly attendance of 25.
But Cottage Grove is growing quickly and the church should be growing with it, said the Rev. Dan Wetterstrom, head of the two-location Grove church.
The Methodists’ regional body is paying $250,000 to restart the church, Wetterstrom said. They have hired a specialist in starting new churches, 30-year-old Jeremy Peters who moved to Cottage Grove with his wife and two children for the relaunch, probably in November.
“It’s a new thing with a new mission for a new target and a new culture,” he said.
The older members will not be physically barred from attending, Peters said, but the expectation is that they won’t.
“We are asking them to let this happen,” Wetterstrom said. “For this to be truly new, we can’t have the core group of 30 people. The members of the church have other options. They can come to Woodbury during this phase.”
Stella and Jon Knapp of Cottage Grove were the only members with children at the recent service, and they hate the plan.
“If it happened, I wouldn’t come here any more,” said Stella Knapp, 34. As six-year members, the couple loves the church and said they didn’t mind being the youngest members.
“This church is very kind to us and our children,” said Jon Knapp, 34.
Photo Credit: kmov.com