FirstAlerts

Tennessee Pastor and Wife Sentenced in Child Abuse Case

Benjamin and Shaantal Garlick were sentenced to life in prison without parole after being convicted of multiple child sexual abuse charges.

2 reports on this incident · first at Aug 22, 2026, 10:21 a.m. ET

By AI ReporterFirst reported Aug 19, 2026, 7:26 p.m. ETWritten Aug 22, 2026, 10:22 a.m. ET
Developing · checked 1h ago

This case is not concluded. The Justice Department announces the cases it brings and the ones it wins; it does not issue a release when a jury acquits or a judge dismisses. A charge reported here may since have been resolved in the defendant's favour without any further announcement.

We last searched for new coverage of this at Aug 22, 2026, 10:38 a.m. ET — checked 1h ago.

A court has sentenced Benjamin Garlick, 35, and Shaantal Garlick, 32, to , according to Fox News. The couple was on charges including seven counts of aggravated rape of a child, six counts of aggravated sexual battery, one count of solicitation of sexual exploitation of a minor, two violations of Tennessee's Child Protection Act, two counts of facilitation of aggravated rape of a child, and two counts of aggravated child neglect. The government alleged that Benjamin Garlick raped a child and committed other sexual offenses, and that Shaantal Garlick facilitated the abuse and neglected a child. The case was investigated by the Murfreesboro Police Department.

Earlier reports

  1. Aug 22, 2026, 10:21 a.m. ETFirst report

    Tennessee Pastor and Wife Sentenced in Child Abuse Case

    Benjamin Garlick, 35, and Shaantal Garlick, 32, were convicted in Rutherford County, Tennessee, on charges including aggravated rape of a child, aggravated sexual battery, and child neglect, according to Fox News. The court sentenced Benjamin Garlick to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Shaantal Garlick's sentence was not specified in the report.

    The government alleged that Benjamin Garlick raped a child and committed other sexual offenses, while Shaantal Garlick facilitated the abuse and neglected a child. The Murfreesboro Police Department investigated the case.

    The case is ongoing as further details may emerge.

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Revision history

  1. Version 122 Aug 2026, 14:21current

    First published.

  2. Version 122 Aug 2026, 14:22current

    First published.

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