Following public backlash and a strong rebuke from the District Attorney for DeSoto County in Mississippi Matthew Barton, Special Circuit Court Judge Andrew Howorth has recused himself from the child sexual abuse case of former youth minister Lindsey Whiteside.
In his order recusing himself from the case on Tuesday, Howorth said he sentenced Whiteside to three years of house arrest and seven years of probation, contending that Barton’s office has previously sought sentences in similar cases that do not align with the law, Fox13 reports.
“It cannot be presumed that Barton would have preferred the Court sentence the defendant to the legal sentence of probation alone. The implication is that Barton would never knowingly allow something like this to happen as a prosecutor. And yet, there are examples of cases in DeSoto County where Barton’s office has actually initiated sentencing recommendations to the Court in sex offender cases that were illegal sentences, asking the Court to sentence sex offenders to far less than the minimum allowed by law,” Howorth wrote.
Howorth sentenced Whiteside, a former youth minister with Getwell Church in Hernando, to just three years of house arrest and seven years of additional probation after she pleaded guilty to child sexual abuse.
Barton called the sentence “an absolute abomination of justice” during a press conference just over a week ago. He also called for the resignation of Michele Henley, a DeSoto County School Board member, for supporting Whiteside in court.
“We, as the state of Mississippi and on behalf of the victim, requested the maximum sentence, which is 30 years, and I don’t mind just saying it frankly — I’m extremely disappointed,” Barton said.
Court documents cited by Action News 5 allege that Whiteside, now 27, knowingly had sex with an underage girl under her guardianship between May 14 and Nov. 6, 2024. Prosecutors said Whiteside’s victim was 14 and 15 years old when the sexual abuse happened, and Barton said there was a mountain of evidence against the former youth pastor.
“She used the gospel of Jesus Christ as a weapon. She used the vulnerabilities of a child who was going through personal struggles to gain access and manipulate an entire congregation. But even worse and more specifically she manipulated a family through an undeniable pattern of abuse that started with several months of grooming and then several months of prolonged and repeated sexual abuse in the worst type of manner,” Barton argued.
“I cannot summarize the entirety of this abuse in a short press conference [but] suffice it to say, I sincerely believe that if this was perpetrated by a man against a young woman that we would have seen something akin to 20 years in prison,” he added. “I think that she is a benefactor of a very wrong double standard in society.”
Howorth noted in his order of recusal that while disagreements over court rulings are common, it was extreme in Whiteside’s case because of “Barton’s apparent desire for a high and very public media profile.”
“There is certainly nothing illegal, maybe not even unethical or improper, about the manner in which Barton promotes his personal views regarding the disposition of cases. However, since this behavior can result in bringing unusually high attention directed at people involved in the case, including some witnesses as well as the judge, the ability of the judge to continue to preside impartially over the case might reasonably be questioned, regardless of whether such perception is accurate,” Howorth noted.
In addition to recusing himself from Whiteside’s case, Howorth also recused himself from “any other cases, if any, prosecuted by Matthew Barton or others in his office in DeSoto County, Mississippi.”
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