{"id":227105,"date":"2026-03-30T15:45:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/227105\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T15:45:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:45:32","slug":"former-lubbock-youth-pastor-sentenced-to-40-years-for-child-sexual-assault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/227105\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Lubbock youth pastor sentenced to 40 years for child sexual assault"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcbd.com\/2024\/07\/02\/former-lubbock-youth-pastor-indicted-multiple-child-sexual-assault-charges\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.kcbd.com\/2024\/07\/02\/former-lubbock-youth-pastor-indicted-multiple-child-sexual-assault-charges\/\">Former Lubbock youth pastor Luke Cunningham<\/a> pleaded guilty Monday morning to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcbd.com\/2024\/06\/26\/former-lubbock-youth-pastor-accused-sexually-assaulting-two-children-over-span-three-years\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.kcbd.com\/2024\/06\/26\/former-lubbock-youth-pastor-accused-sexually-assaulting-two-children-over-span-three-years\/\">two counts of sexual assault child bigamy<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Cunningham was sentenced to 40 years on each count by Judge Douglas Freitage in the 140th District Court. Cunningham has 650 days of jail credit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">All other charges against Cunningham were dismissed. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Judge Freitag ordered a lifetime protective order for the victims. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cAs a pastor you were supposed to point people to God, but instead you tried to play God yourself,\u201d one victim said during impact statements made to the court. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">PREVIOUS COVERAGE: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcbd.com\/2024\/07\/02\/state-argues-former-lubbock-youth-pastor-is-violent-offender\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.kcbd.com\/2024\/07\/02\/state-argues-former-lubbock-youth-pastor-is-violent-offender\/\">State argues former Lubbock youth pastor is \u2018violent offender\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Cunningham served as the student pastor at Turning Point Community Church in Lubbock from 2016 to 2020 then left for a church in Granbury, Texas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 KCBD. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) &#8211; Former Lubbock youth pastor Luke Cunningham pleaded guilty Monday morning to two counts of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[86987,294,319,251,168,170,169,87909,19226],"class_list":{"0":"post-227105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lubbock","8":"tag-child-sexual-assault","9":"tag-crime","10":"tag-kcbd","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-lubbock","13":"tag-lubbock-headlines","14":"tag-lubbock-news","15":"tag-luke-cunningham","16":"tag-turning-point"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}