Mount Zion Baptist Church has sat at the corner of West Carpenter and North Congress streets since 1909. For almost a century, the church held services and often served as a hub for Athens' black community.
In the last decade, however, the building has sat empty, slowly deteriorating. The process has been especially painful to watch for Francine Childs, the church's last pastor.
"I put thousands of dollars, out of my own pocket, into that church," Childs said. "Every time I think about it, it makes me want to cry, how somebody could be so evil."
The church is currently owned by Cindy Johnson, a former member of the congregation and one-time Athens resident. According to court records, there haven't been services at the church in more than a decade. Slowly, the improvements that Childs had made to the church in the late 1990s crumbled away.
Now, the Ohio Attorney General's office is trying to claim the property, stating that Johnson has taken over the church, a charitable asset, and used it for her own personal gain.
"The Attorney General has the responsibility ... to make sure property held for charity is used for charitable reasons," Kate Hanson, spokeswoman for the Attorney General's office, said. "The goal (in this instance) is to protect the church and the charitable trust."
Last week, the office decided to pursue a default judgement from the Athens County Common Pleas court, because Johnson had not responded to the lawsuit in a timely manner, and has mailed back the complaints she was served several times.
"The civil lawsuit was filed in November," Hanson said. "The defendant has a period to respond but a response has not been filed, and then earlier this month the office filed a motion for a default judgment."
The case was brought to the attorney general's attention by the Mount Zion Church Preservation Society, a group of locals who are trying to preserve the church. The society's president, Henry Woods, said nobody knows Johnson's whereabouts.
"We somewhat suspect that she's living in the church," Woods, who also serves as the manager of OU's Recycling and Waste Center, said. "We were told she had an apartment and was evicted, but we don't even know where (the apartment) was. She's either in Cleveland or here."
Johnson has a history of litigation. In 1999, she filed a complaint for eviction of the church's lawful owners in the Athens Municipal Court. When the Municipal Court dismissed the complaint because "Johnson lacked standing to bring the complaint on behalf of Mount Zion Baptist Church," she appealed to the 4th District court, who upheld the ruling in 2000.
Childs, who has lived in Athens since 1974 and was Ohio University's first tenured African-American professor, worked hard to rebuild the church after the congregation had dwindled in the 1970s. Her efforts brought new members to the church, along with a new piano, a new organ and a refurbished basement, much of which Childs said she paid for from her own pocket.
"I was a committed Christian and a leader in the community and the university, and I felt the students needed a place to go," Childs said. "We went from six or seven people (in the congregation) when we started, to an overflow on Sundays."
Childs said Johnson was one of those students. During the early 2000s, Johnson constantly fought with Childs over ownership of the church after the congregation stopped meeting. In 2004, Childs said she could not take it anymore.
"I just said I was tired of going to court, so I just left and gave it to her," Childs said.
Hanson said the attorney general's office did not know when the issue would be resolved, but Woods was relieved that the state had taken on the case in the first place. If the church is turned over to the community, he said it would take a significant amount of work to get the building back into working order.
"We haven't been able to get inside to have a look at the place yet," Woods said. "But I would say (the church) would need several hundred thousand dollars of renovations."
