A youth pastor from Waxahachie who impregnated a teenage girl will spend the next five decades behind bars after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting multiple children, officials say.
Ellis County District Attorney Ann Montgomery said 53-year-old Marvin Scales pled guilty to four felonies including two counts of continuous sexual abuse of a young child, one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child, and one count of sexual assault of a child. On Monday, Scales was sentenced to 50 years in prison. He is not eligible for parole and will have to serve his full sentence.
The district attorney said the investigation into Scales was opened in August 2023 after Waxahachie police were notified that a 14-year-old girl had given birth at Baylor Scott & White Waxahachie Hospital and that Scales was the father of the child.
According to the DA's statement, staff working at the hospital filed a report after noticing Scales was present with the girl at the hospital and was "overly involved" in her delivery process. Montgomery's office said after a DNA test confirmed Scales was the biological father of the teenager's child a police investigation was opened.
Get top local stories in DFW delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC DFW's News Headlines newsletter.
Investigators learned Scales was a youth pastor at a local church who often took the congregation's children on overnight trips and that he would frequently host sleepovers at his house. Once the congregation learned of the first victim, the district attorney said more victims began to come forward and that some reported that Scales would have sex with them regularly on the trips and sleepovers.
The district attorney's office said Scales was a registered sex offender and had an "extensive security system installed at his home." Investigators said several of the sexual assaults were recorded by security cameras and that Scales would also record the assaults and keep the recordings.
Texas News
News from around the state of Texas.
The security camera footage and the other recordings found by law enforcement uncovered even more victims of Scales's sexual abuse, the district attorney said.
“This is an unusually heinous case of child sexual abuse,” said Montgomery after the sentencing. “When a person of authority – especially in a religious institution – is the abuser, it can be incredibly difficult for victims and their families to speak out. We commend the bravery of the children who came forward to ensure that no other child suffered due to Scales’s abuse, and our hearts are with those children who could not speak out. With this sentence, justice is done for all of Scales’s victims. We hope now they, and this entire community, can begin to heal.”
The DA's office said that with the guilty plea on two counts of continuous sexual abuse of a young child, Scales will serve 50 years in prison without the possibility of parole.
