By Will Hall, Baptist Message executive editor
COLFAX, La. (LBM) – In a press statement, Oct. 16, Grant Parish District Attorney Jay Lemoine announced that a grand jury had indicted Daryl Ray Stagg on four counts of first-degree rape, five counts of sexual battery and one count of indecent behavior with a juvenile.
In Louisiana, a grand jury conducts its investigation in secret with the state’s attorney and determines whether there is enough evidence to proceed to trial. Members only hear the government’s case against the defendant and do not render a verdict.
Stagg, 61, was arrested June 8, 2023, and charged at that time with 12 felony counts of sex crimes against at least one child in Grant Parish. Union Parish leveled an additional four charges, then, and noted that these crimes involved one juvenile victim in the Bernice area. The two parishes required a combined bond of $1.45 million.
During a joint press conference, June 11, the sheriff’s from Grant, Union and Rapides Parishes revealed there also was an investigation of Stagg in Kenosha County, Wisconsin.
At the time of his arrest, Stagg was the associational mission strategist, since October 2018, for the Big Creek and CenLa Baptist Associations (Grant and Rapides Parishes, respectively), representing a combined 87 member churches, including multi-site campuses. His office was in the Louisiana Baptist Building of Alexandria, but he was not an employee of the Louisiana Baptist Convention.
Lemoine shared that the Grant Parish case against Stagg “is being handled by Assistant District Attorneys Renee Nugent and Alex Hooper.”
“An arraignment date will be set, and a trial date will be set at the arraignment,” he added, noting that “Stagg remains in jail at this time.”
