Convicted sexual predator and former North Texas youth pastor Robert Shiflet has been granted early release from prison for good behavior.
After serving only a little over two years of a 33-month sentence, Shiflet is now residing in Weatherford.
Shiflet ended up being convicted and sentenced to federal prison for sexually assaulting two underage girls, but there may have been as many as 14 different victims spanning his many years as a pastor at Denton Bible Church, Fox 4 reported.
“This defendant took advantage of his position of trust as a mentor to young people and instead used his power to isolate and sexually abuse them,” said U.S. Attorney Cody Hiland, per a Department of Justice press release from November 2020 announcing that Shiflet was going to plead guilty to a handful of charges.
“This predatory behavior is never acceptable, but it is particularly disturbing when the offender is a youth pastor,” Hiland said.
While there is little publicly available data reflecting how widespread child sexual assaults are in North Texas, the issue has prompted the Dallas Police Department (DPD) to set up its own dedicated unit to investigate crimes against children.
Overall reported sexual assaults in Dallas, however, have maintained virtually the same rate this year as in 2022, with just one less incident reported in 2023 as of Tuesday, according to the City of Dallas Open Data crime analytics dashboard.
Still, the precise scale of the problem is difficult to grasp since sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes in the United States. It is estimated that roughly “63% of sexual assaults are not reported to police,” and “[o]nly 12% of child sexual abuse is reported to the authorities,” according to a report by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
Shiflet was tried in a federal district court in Arkansas for “transporting minors across state lines for the purpose of unlawful sexual activity,” having traveled across state lines with the victims in his capacity as a youth pastor.
Apparently, a miscalculation over sentencing guidelines and federal prosecutors’ fears that Shiflet could win at trial led the government to make a plea deal with Shiflet. He would only be sentenced to 33 months, a sentence that the sitting judge at the time felt was too lenient.
“You are a terrible person. I have never sat up here, since I’ve been on the bench, and said that to any defendant. … I don’t believe that you’re sorry in the slightest. I don’t believe that you have rehabilitated yourself,” said Judge Lee Rudofsky at Shiflet’s sentencing hearing back in June 2021, per the Denton Record-Chronicle.
Shiflet’s name only recently appeared on the Texas Sex Offender Registry, even though he was released in January. Fox 4 reported that this was due to a spelling error.
