A youth pastor and Christian school teacher in Georgia claimed he was kidnapped by two Black men in an attempt to avoid admitting the real reason he was found in a hotel room.
Christopher Keys, 56, claimed he had been kidnapped, robbed, and left in a motel room by Black men. He has been charged with soliciting a prostitute after he “arranged to meet a male prostitute on Craigslist for sex,” Metro Weekly reported.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws in 2003, but Georgia’s solicitation of sodomy statute was upheld.
The Bibb County Sheriff’s Office says it is still investigating the robbery Keys initially reported on May 19. They also investigated a carjacking but determined that no such incident took place, The Daily Mail reported.
In a Facebook post obtained by LGBTQ Nation, a neighbor of Keys posted that Keys accused two Black men of robbing him. The post got shared hundreds of times, prompting WMAZ-TV to look into the rumor.
Keys had told the neighbor that he had been kidnapped in his truck at a nearby drug store, forced to drive to the motel, and robbed.
Keys met with police at the hotel after the so-called robbery, telling a sheriff’s deputy that “he liked to play around and was married to a woman,” the station reports. In an interview with the deputy, Keys even revealed his plan to tell his family that he was kidnapped at a CVS drug store. Two days later, Keys was arrested and charged with solicitation of sodomy, a misdemeanor, Towleroad reported.
Why Keys claimed he was robbed by two Black men is not clear. Neither has anyone addressed how potentially dangerous it could have been if police started to search for the “made-up” Black men. Two white men in Georgia hunted down and killed a young Black male jogger named Ahmaud Arbery earlier this year because they thought he fit the description of a burglar.
Keys is a Bible youth pastor in the area and a former teacher for the Tattnall Square Academy, a private Christian school in Macon.
An investigation revealed that Keys has frequented the hotel since January.
Keys claimed that he had been in the motel when he heard a knock at his door. When he opened the door, he said two masked men robbed him of his wallet, house, truck, work keys and a cell phone. He told deputies one of the men was armed, according to a press release from the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office.
Keys also told authorities that he was able to get his cell phone back only after a stranger retrieved it from a nearby Walmart parking lot.
Keys was listed on the Tattnall Square Academy’s website but has since been removed.
“Tattnall Square Academy was only recently made aware of the charges against our former employee, Christopher Keys,” Alyssa Huntt, director of communications and public relations, explained to The Telegraph. “We have no comment or information regarding the matter about which he is accused.”
As a teacher at Tattnall Square Academy, Keys taught upper-school Bible, worked with the chapel band, and served as coordinator for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, according to his now-deleted bio, Towleroad reported.
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“I am a people person and love to teach young people the truths of the Bible,” Keys wrote in the bio.
“I have been married for 20 years to my wife Jennie. I am a graduate of FPD and Mercer University and Southwestern Seminary. I am currently the student pastor at Wesleyan Drive Baptist Church in Macon and I’ve been in student ministry for 28 years.”
Keys also once worked as a bailiff for the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office — the same office that arrested him.
