Former Minster, Child Abuser To Remain Committed

Jurors from Jasper County have ruled that an 86-year-old former minister from Sarcoxie is so sexually violent that he should remain confined even though he has completed a 15-year prison sentence for sodomizing more than a dozen teenage boys.

Prosecutors say Donald Peckham sexually abused at least 14 boys between 12 and 16 years old over the course of 30 years and continued to victimize young boys until he was 67 years old.

Defense attorney Amy Clay says the decision to indefinitely commit Peckham to a treatment program run by the Missouri Department of Mental Health amounts to a “life sentence” because few people get through it.