DOUGLAS COUNTY, Ore. -- Richard Parrett walks into a Clark County, Wash. courtroom for sentencing. He hears a statement read by the victim, and he will now spend the next 17 1/2 months in prison. But this is where the story ends.

It began 13 years earlier at the Open Bible Christian Center in Riddle, Ore. This is where Parrett was a youth pastor, and it is also where his misconduct with a minor was first documented.

We talked with the current pastor, Don Causey, to see what he knew about Parrett. He was not at the church when the incident happened, although he did attend a meeting when Parrett gave his resignation.

A letter detailing that meeting was put in Parrett's file.

We asked Causey if he knew anything about the letter in Parrett's file, and he said, "I have no idea." When asked if KPIC could see the file, Causey said, "No."

KPIC obtained a copy of that letter from a church member, and according to the meeting log, the incident took place between Parrett and an underage member of his youth group.

The letter states that the 'relationship did not reach the fullest extent of intimacy, but was still highly inappropriate.'

Parrett was given a severance package that also included the initial cost of counseling, and he moved out of the area.

In a phone conversation with Gary Petersen, the pastor at the time, he said he didn't feel the need to contact police until Parrett tried to contact the victim after he had moved away.

According to Petersen, it was out of the Sheriffs jurisdiction, so there was nothing that could be done.

Peterson moved away to Ohio a short time later. He would not be asked about the incident again until a few years later, when someone told him that Parrett was being considered for a job at Riddle High School.

During the conversation Petersen told us, "I never thought he would get a job working around kids again. A lot of people dropped the ball, starting with me."

The current Riddle School District Superintendent, Dave Gianotti, says Parrett was an assistant for the boys basketball team, but doesn't know any more than what a few teachers have been able to tell him.

When asked if any type of background checks or reference checks are done on anyone, even if they are an assistant, he replied, "We do now. I don't know about at the time, we don't have records of it."

According to yearbooks, we know for sure that Parrett was an assistant coach for the boys team in 2001 and 2002.

Gianotti says they have rules in place to keep their kids safe. "We don't allow volunteers to be left alone with students," he said.

After his time at Riddle High School, Parrett would be hired as a head coach at the Canyonville Christian Academy (CCA), and some who worked there allege that they knew about the incident in 1996, and hired him anyway.

Parrett was hired by CCA in the summer of 2002, and according to the school's former superintendent, Pam Shepherd, she and other board members discussed Parrett's incident in 1996 at length before he was brought on board.

KPIC asked Shepherd, "If you and the members of the board knew that there was an inappropriate incident at the Riddle Open Bible Church, why was he ever be considered to work around kids again?" Shepherd replied, "Well, it was a huge, gigantic discussion among us. It was a huge discussion, and it had been several years that had passed."

As superintendent, it was Shepherd's job to review applications and bring up candidates for a vote at board meetings. She also claims that they talked with Parrett before he was hired.

CCA gave us full access to Parrett's file and the board meeting minutes. After searching through the documents, we found no record of a board meeting where Parrett was even discussed, but according to both Shepherd and the school, all employees must be approved by the board.

Current CCA C.E.O., Dan Godzich, said, "My understanding is the superintendent, or as we call it now the CEO, essentially has the hiring authority, and of course there are sometimes gaps between board meetings and there are places and slots that need to be filled, and there is authority for a superintendent to hire in the interim of that sort of thing."

Godizich said he talked with board members who claim they never knew Parrett, and left it up to Shepherd to hire him during the summer.

Pastor Gary Peterson, who was a former board member before moving to Ohio said,  "I don't know how the board members didn't know about the incident. Even if they didn't, there were several teachers at the school who attended my church when the incident happened, and someone should have stepped forward."

Another interesting part of Parrett's hiring was his job application. On it, he knowingly put people and organizations who knew of his past behavior.

We caught up with one of the people he listed as a reference who attended the church in 1996, and used her position as a former Riddle School Board member to recommend him for the job.

She asked us not to use her name, but said that because the pastor forgave him, she didn't think it would be an issue. She said, "I would have never dreamed that Richie would repeat, because his wife, they separated. He almost lost her, and it was sobbing, tears, regret. I would have never ever expected Richie to have ever done this."

She said that because of the incident, she would never recommend him to be a youth pastor again, so he wouldn't be left alone with kids.

Parrett did not have his contract renewed by CCA due to poor teaching performance. He would then be hired as a coach at Vancouver Christian High School in Washington state.

That school's principal, Roger Miller, says the A.D. did the reference checks, and claims CCA gave him a good recommendation.

CCA denies anyone ever giving him a good reference, and when KPIC asked Miller to see Parrett's application, he said legally he could show it, but he wasn't going to.

Both the Vancouver school and CCA did perform all state required background checks, which came back with clean records.

Since KPIC started the investigation, CCA has adopted stricter policies on background checks, as well as new rules on how their organization gives out references for past employees.

Because of stories like this happening around the country, Oregon recently passed new legislation that will require schools to do more stringent background and reference checks.

Lawmakers hope the new rules will prevent situations like this from happening again.