A 55-year-old Christian author and former university professor who built a career attacking LGBTQ+ people on moral grounds has been indicted on multiple child sex charges in Greene County, Ohio.
John Kent Tarwater was indicted last Friday on two counts of rape, three counts of sexual battery, and three counts of gross sexual imposition, the Daily Mail first reported. The charges allege abuse that took place between August 2019 and last July.
One victim was known to Tarwater and was as young as 10 years old when the alleged abuse began, according to the indictment. The victim was under 13 during part of the alleged period and under 18 at later times. The indictment alleged that Tarwater used “force or threat of force” to compel the victim to comply.
Some of the alleged abuse occurred at a Cedarville address in the 3300 block of US Route 42 East, according to the indictment.
Tarwater, a registered Republican according to Greene County Board of Elections records, was arraigned Thursday morning at the Greene County Courthouse. He joined the proceedings on a video call from jail, according to Dayton 24/7 Now. His attorney, Jay A. Adams, entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf.
“This is a man who is, of course, presumed innocent,” Adams told the court. “This is a man who has no criminal history.”
Adams called the allegations “delayed” and argued that the $1 million bond was excessive, saying it was more typical for homicide cases. “There is no dead body in this case,” he told the court.
Tarwater is currently being held in the Greene County Jail.
Tarwater, who has fathered 10 children, authored numerous articles and publications on Christian sexual ethics, including “Does Sexual Self-Gratification Glorify God?” — which has since been deleted but remains archived online — and the co-authored “Business Ethics in the Marketplace: Exploring Transgenderism.” His 2005 book, Marriage as Covenant: Considering God’s Design at Creation and the Contemporary Moral Consequences, attacked what he described as “feminist and homosexual attacks on the standards of sexual moral behavior.”
He served as an associate professor of finance in Cedarville University’s business administration department beginning in 2017. Cedarville is a Baptist institution with roughly 6,400 students located in Greene County, about an hour west of Columbus.
The university said it learned in July 2025 that Tarwater was under investigation for “concerning allegations” and immediately placed him on administrative leave, restricting him from campus. The school dismissed Tarwater from his contract in October.
John W. Davis, the school’s associate vice president for human resources, informed the campus community of Tarwater’s indictment and arrest by email on Tuesday.
“Our understanding is that these charges do not involve anyone Dr. Tarwater met or interacted with as a University professor,” Davis wrote. “Even so, we desire to be transparent and ensure the safety of everyone on campus.”
Anti-LGBTQ+ Christian conservatives have for years accused queer people of sexualizing, indoctrinating, and “grooming” children for sexual abuse — rhetoric that has been used to justify anti-trans legislation across the country, including in Ohio. Meanwhile, Christian institutions have a publicly well-documented, decades-long history of child sex abuse within their own ranks.
