Paul Edwin George

Former Ohio Mennonite church member convicted of child sex abuse

Paul Edwin George (b. 1992) pleaded guilty in 2023 to two counts of gross sexual imposition on a child under the age of 13. He was sentenced to five years in prison, followed by five years of supervised probation, and ordered to register as a sex offender for 25 years. George was formerly a member of United Bethel Mennonite Church (UBMC), a congregation in Plain City, Ohio, that is affiliated with the Biblical Mennonite Alliance (BMA). George later moved to Illinois, where he reportedly attended an unidentified Mennonite congregation.

The leadership at UBMC engaged Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE) after the public criminal cases of Paul Edwin George and his brother, David George, a church member, revealed that they had engaged in years of sexual abuse of a younger, female relative. GRACE investigated how UBMC handled those and other allegations of abuse and in August 2024 released the report of their independent investigation.

For a more detailed account of the church’s response to the allegations against the George brothers, see David George.

Editor’s note: Clyde Byler appears in a leadership role in three cases documented by the GRACE report, where he is referred to as “Key Leader.” GRACE notes that Byler “became an assistant pastor in 1997 and served as the lead pastor of UBMC from 1999 through approximately 2013.” Byler subsequently became the lead pastor at Living Hope Mennonite Church, in Urbana, Ohio.

In his role as lead pastor at UBMC in the early 2000s, Byler reportedly learned of allegations of child sex abuse by Jerod Corbin but did not report to law enforcement or notify the congregation. Similarly, in his role as lead pastor at Living Hope in 2017, Byler reportedly learned of allegations of child sex abuse by David George and Paul Edwin George but did not report to law enforcement or notify the congregation.