Donny Pauling’s long rambling confession is here.
Pauling was arrested Dec. 1, 2014 on three felony sex charges, including unlawful intercourse (statutory rape), after a 16-year-old female told law enforcement that Pauling had ongoing sexual contact with her for the past three years.[10] The teen informed detectives that Pauling had told her that if she were to ever tell officers about the relationship, she should tell him first so he could kill himself. She also said Pauling told her he wasn’t like other child molesters because he loved her.[11]
On October 15, 2015, Pauling admitted to engaging in oral and vaginal sex with that victim from when she was age 14 in 2012, continuing into 2014. He also admitted to lewd or lascivious behavior with a 16-year-old female, “motivated by an unnatural or abnormal interest in children,” according to the plea. Pauling also admitted massaging a third teen victim’s genitals in early 2014.[12] He pleaded no contest and agreed to a 6-year prison sentence.
Donny Pauling Jr. pleaded no contest Thursday to four felony sex charges involving two minors, a plea deal that would send him to state prison for six years.
The plea marked the end to a dizzying saga of sex crime charges that also implicated the former commander of the Sutter County Jail.
Pauling, 41, acting as his own attorney, admitted to oral copulation and having sexual intercourse with a victim 14 years old in 2012, continuing into 2014. He also admitted to lewd or lascivious behavior with a girl related to former Sutter County sheriff’s Capt. Lewis McElfresh, “motivated by an unnatural or abnormal interest in children,” according to the plea.
The facts of the plea also stated McElfresh masturbated while watching Pauling commit sex acts with that girl, who was then 16 years old.
Furthermore, Pauling pleaded to a misdemeanor charge of massaging a third victim’s genitals in early 2014. That victim was 16 years old at the time.
Sutter County Superior Court Judge Susan Green set sentencing for Nov. 12.
In addition to six years in state prison, of which he must serve at least three years, Pauling also must register as a sexual offender for life. Pauling also agreed to a period of parole ranging from three years to life following his release from prison.
A former Chico-based pornography producer, Pauling had said he found God and traveled to churches around the country as an anti-pornography activist. He lived in Yuba City when he was arrested Dec. 1 on suspicion of ongoing sexual acts with a teen girl. Investigation led to two additional alleged victims and charges.
Bill Davenport posts to Donny’s FB: Hello, Donny,
I don’t think you’ll take my input well, but I think I need to share. I don’t want to condemn you, but I also don’t want to excuse you either. I will indeed continue to pray for you. I am convinced that you still need honesty and humility and for this I will continue to pray.
If I were you, I think I’d begin by removing pictures of yourself on your blog wearing “I’m Da Greatest” T-shirts.
If you truly believe you will “never” be called to speak in churches again, you would remove your booking page … but the reality is that such organizations will indeed ask you to speak … sadly.
You didn’t fall in love with a 16 year old. Love is defined not by feelings (or “falling”) but by God who spells it out in 1Corinthians 13 … and it says nothing in that chapter about feelings. It says love is all about respectful behavior toward someone else. Read the passage again. So no, you do not “love Bethany very very much.” You abused your relationship with her while deceiving yourself that you were loving her. Love does not let a little girl smoke weed that rots her mind no matter what “look” she gives you … infatuation does … lust does … not love. Until you realize this, you are still very, very sick. As you say, you were “wrapped around her finger, and she knew what to do to get her way. She’d often demonstrate for her friends just how easy it was to make me see things her way, and I’d let her get away with murder because there’s something wrong in the head – that must be true.”
And yet you still think you were “very controlling” of the environment in which she lived? You were deceiving yourself – commending yourself for some “good” you thought you were doing and thus giving yourself the freedom to break rules on the other side. Your insistence on knowing where they were at all times is called “jealousy” not “love” for, as 1Cor. 13 says, “love is not jealous.”
You’ve never experienced so much heart break in your life? But that’s what you said years ago about missing your ex-wife … I didn’t hear any longing for her at all in this post.
You have not yet been through “Hell.” I pray you never will, but you have never been, either.
God causes all things to work for the good *only* for “those who love Him and are called for His purposes”. There is only one way to know for certain that you belong to Him, and that is if you are growing in the qualities His word lists in 2Peter 1. There, Peter says that in order to “escape the corruption in the world caused by lust,” you must be diligent in “adding to your faith” “moral excellence,” “knowledge,” “self control,” “perseverance,” “godliness,” “brotherly kindness” and finally, “love.” It says that only if you have these qualities, and if they are increasing, can you know for certain you are His. Be careful of the “God works it all out for good for everyone” idea.
You say it’s all your fault for what you’ve been through, but then you say that some of the girls are dishonest and vindictive … you can’t say it both ways. Either it’s all your fault or they share the fault with you.
You say that you “don’t have a problem admitting the mistakes you made and facing them head on” but you spent a long time seeming to say that all that happened has reasons and was justifiable.
You let a little girl who knew you were a porn producer parade around in front of you naked??? You let her do porn??? And smoke weed in your house illegally??? You slept in the same bed with a little girl who insisted she wanted to marry you and that you were her boyfriend??? No contest indeed.
Of course you would give her less hassle for smoking pot than for sneaking out with boys … because you were jealous of her. You weren’t trying to “push her away.” You were just plain jealous and angry that she’d be with another older man and not you.
You were not “in love” with a teenager. You were in love with your idea of who she was and it kept frustrating you that she would act out of character in the play you were acting in.
You have “begged God to forgive you in the ways which you have failed” but you don’t make it clear to us how you think you have failed and what parts you just thought were “innocent” handlings of a troubled teenager.
You wouldn’t take responsibility for this poor teenager. You wanted her to make the decision to leave you because you didn’t have the guts or the maturity or the “mental health” to make the right decision yourself. Your daily weeping still does not seem to come from a heart that is broken for his sin, but for how he somehow has not kept an angel from falling. But we are all fallen, Donny, Bethany included. She’s actually worse than a liar, she’s an evil sinner, just like you and me, and without broken repentance and humble faith in Jesus, she will face an eternity in Hell … so don’t protect her (or anyone) from the truth, Donny. The truth is ugly and it hurts, but only the truth can lead us to seek the Healer, Jesus.
I pray for you that you will receive the gift of humility. It seems you have tremendous pride – thinking that you can take in a girl and be her savior … but you can’t. You thought you were a better place than what she had before, but you didn’t end up any better. It all blew up in the end.
Yet right to the very end, “Bethany is a hero.” No, Donny. Neither Bethany nor you nor I are heroes. We are all desperate losers and each of us deserve the torture that Jesus took on our behalf on that cross. You don’t seem to get it, Donny. Keeping her on that pedestal as some goddess isn’t going to help her or you. She and you and I are all desperate sinners in need of repentance and broken humility before our God.
You are still sinning against her by refusing to call her a liar. Unless she confesses her sin and repents, your absolution is powerless to save her from dying in her sin. Worse yet, your absolution is an obstruction of justice. You have no idea if her family’s accusation against her of being a liar is true or not. I was abused by my neighbors at age 8 and I’m sure I could have made up all sorts of stories if I had a friend to make them up with. All you said that made you believe she was telling the truth about her abuse was a guilty “look” on the face of that man. What? Are you kidding? How do you know it wasn’t a look of total brokenness after being accused of something he didn’t do? Only your infatuation with Bethany makes you believe otherwise. Something bad indeed could have happened to her, but it may not have been him – just like it has happened in your case. No one knows – maybe not even Bethany herself. To refuse to tell the truth (i.e. “you are a liar”) is to propagate a lie. Being a liar doesn’t mean you have to stay a liar, but until one admits they are a liar, there is no hope to be freed from being one.
