A South Carolina pastor and his wife are facing heinous abuse allegations after forcing their adopted children to bury the family dog, moments after he killed the animal in front of them.
Police have also accused Myron Chorbajian, 73, and his wife, Kathleen Chorbajian, 71, of forcing the children to find their food in area dumpsters, and at night, making the children sleep inside trash cans.
Myron, the pastor at First Southern Methodist Church in Greenville, has been charged with two counts of assault and battery with intent to kill, 15 counts of unlawfully placing a child at risk or harm, and eight counts of criminal sexual conduct with a minor, according to records obtained from the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office.
Kathleen faces 10 counts of unlawfully placing a child at risk or harm stemming from her alleged failure to do anything to stop the years of abuse.
The Chorbajians’ adopted kids first approached police in April 2025, claiming the abuse began in the 1980s.
After a brief investigation into the claims, the Chorbajians were arrested in May 2025 in Nashville, Tennessee, while attending a show at the Grand Ole Opry.
It took months to extradite the pair back to South Carolina, where they are both being held — him, without bond and her, on $12,000 bond.
Charging documents allege Myron hit a naked child with a paddle 50 times and used a child with a belt to discipline the victim until the child lost consciousness. He is also alleged to have forced his kids to “search dumpsters and eat rotten and discarded food.”
The pastor is also accused of sexually assaulting female children. Court filings also contend Myron shot the family dog to death in the kitchen of their home and then made one of the children bury it in a shallow grave.
Police said Kathleen allowed the abuse to go on, and never did anything to stop it.
WHNS was in court on Friday, February 13, for her first court appearance, and reported her attorney argued to the judge “this case is not as the state has advertised.”
The report does not name the attorney but said that the accusers have allowed their own children to stay at the Chorbajian home overnight.
“If Kathy and Myron were as bad as they say, why would they ever let their children stay with them, unsupervised, overnight? I think that’s very important,” the station quotes the attorney as saying.
Prosecutors countered Kathleen never reported the abuse and even invoked religious tenets to manipulate the kids they had adopted.
“This case is essentially about the weaponization of Christianity to justify the abuse of children,” the state’s attorney reportedly said, according to WHNS. “The time the abuse occurred, these victims were small children in foster care. They had nowhere else to go. These sadistic acts of abuse that were justified by religion against some of the most vulnerable members of our society, I don’t know a situation where someone could present a more clearly present danger to the community.”
If you suspect child abuse, please call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or visit ChildHelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential, and the hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
