Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Other or denomination not established Turlock, California, USA · 1951

United States (1951): Turlock pastor's guilty plea to statutory rape of a congregant affirmed

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Disposition and response

Material that narrows or disputes the record

Appellate history

1951

Affirmed (108 Cal. App. 2d 60).

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

pastor of a Turlock church

Organization

No organization assigned

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The opinion itself places the victim in his congregation at the time of the offence.

Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

1951-01-01 · guilty plea; judgment affirmed

California Court of Appeal, Third District (People v. Tidwell, 108 Cal. App. 2d 60). Simpson L. Tidwell pleaded guilty to statutory rape of a seventeen-year-old who, in the opinion's words, 'was, at the time of the commission of the offense, a member of the church of which defendant was then pastor in Turlock'; the Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment on his appeal from denial of plea withdrawal.

Documented coercion mechanisms

pastoral standing over a seventeen-year-old member of his church

Cited record

Sources

official court judgment appellate judgment People v. Tidwell, 108 Cal. App. 2d 60, 238 P.2d 21 (Cal. Ct. App. 1951).: The appellate opinion.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1188501/people-v-tidwell/ Corpus classification: official-court-judgment; evidentiary role: appellate-judgment. SHA-256 e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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