Monday, July 22, 1996

Youth minister, girl, 15 missing together

By Associated Press

ANDREWS (AP) - A teen-age girl and the married youth minister who admitted having sex with her are missing.

Her parents assume they are traveling together.

Kenneth Nix Jr., 36, was free on $25,000 bond on charges of sexually assaulting Kimberly Ward, 15, when they vanished on June 18.

Her parents, Bill and Vivian Ward, have identified her publicly in the hope that the disclosure will help locate her.

"The longer she's with him, the more damage this man is doing to her," Mrs. Ward told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

The Wards said they have been in agony since May, when Nix told them he was having sex with Kimberly during the year she lived with his family.

Nix, who is the married father of three children, had taken the girl in while Bill Ward had to care full-time for his terminally-ill father.

Nix and the Ward family grew close when Nix joined their church five years ago. He and Mrs. Ward shared interests in ministering and used to drive to Lubbock together for seminary school.

The Wards say their daughter, who is diagnosed with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder, became close to Nix through a church youth group when she was 13.

"Kimberly went over to his house one Thanksgiving to help his wife with the cooking, and then she started spending more and more time over there," Mrs. Ward remembered. "I felt like I knew him, that I could trust him."

Last Christmas, Ward's terminally ill father moved to Andrews to be closer to his son and Kimberly stayed with the Nix family.

As the elder Ward's health deteriorated from congestive heart disease, he grew increasingly demented and demanded constant care. Kimberly's stay in the Nix house grew longer, her parents said.

"It ran into a year," said Ward, whose father died five days after Kimberly disappeared. "We brought her home in April. And then in May, he told us he'd been having sex with her."

On May 9, after Nix gave a statement to the Andrews County Sheriff's Department, he was charged with sexually assaulting a child and released on $25,000 bond.

"It broke my heart," Ward said. "I just broke down and cried and cried. It took everything out of me. I couldn't understand how he could do that.

The Wards said at first, they feared their daughter would kill herself. She went through intensive counseling, and church elders advised her.

Mrs. Ward said Kimberly seemed to relate to a book she and her husband gave her.

"She wanted to talk about it nonstop," Mrs. Ward said.

But later, she said, she and her husband learned that Nix was sending her notes in summer school, and their daughter started sneaking out of the house to see him.

The Wards notified local authorities, and District Attorney Dennis Cadra asked for Nix's bond to be revoked. Instead, Judge James Rex issued a protective order prohibiting Nix from contacting Kimberly.

Days later, the two disappeared. No leads in the case have panned out thus far, and Cadra said he asked that the FBI join the search.

Cadra said if Nix is caught, he'll prosecute him vigorously on the sexual assault charge, which could bring up to 20 years in prison.