Pastor ‘Played with my Family and I like Frogs in a Pot,’ says Teen Abuse Victim

A former youth pastor from New York has been sentenced to more than a decade in prison for the sexual abuse of a Missouri teenager in 2013.

Jesse Vargas, now 38, met Molly Rodgers of St. Louis at a religious camp in Michigan where he worked when she was 11 years old. He had sexual contact with her four years later when she was 15 and he was 29, officials said.

At the sentencing Sept. 29, the victim said Vargas “played with my family and I like frogs in a pot” over the course of the four years she knew him, “slowly increasing the temperature of his manipulation until we each were unaware of the water we had been submerged in, let alone its suddenly scalding temperature.” 

She said that by age 13, she had abandoned most of her spiritual leaders and friendships at his suggestion. 

“By 14 he even guided me to push away my two closest friends,” she said.

She said he told her God had provided a path that they should travel together in secret and that “the world” would not understand. 

In January of 2013, Vargas traveled from New York to the teen’s St. Louis-area home, staying in her family’s house and preaching a sermon at her church. Prosecutors said he first sexually abused her during that visit, then on a return trip in March 2013 and in June, when he arranged for her to travel to New York. 

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He also exchanged images and videos containing nude images with the teen via social media apps and text messages, they said.

The victim said she had been an honors student but said she suffered from PTSD and dropped out of school after the abuse. 

Eastern Missouri U.S. District Judge Ronnie L. White sentenced Vargas to 13 years and four months in prison and ordered him to pay $146,594 in restitution to his victim. Vargas had pleaded guilty March 22 to two felony counts, travel with the intent to engage in illicit sexual contact, and coercion and enticement of a minor.

Vargas took responsibility for Rodger’s pain and said he was “…probably, the worst thing that ever happened to this person,” the St. Louis Riverfront Times reported. 

“The way Jesse Vargas used the guise of spiritual instruction is repugnant. He manipulated not only his victim, but the adults who tried to protect her,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge Mark Dargis of the FBI St. Louis Division. “I commend the victim’s bravery for coming forward, in spite of having to relive her trauma, to prevent others from becoming a victim.”

The case was investigated by the FBI and the Hazelwood, Missouri Police Department, and was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse.