Henderson County has suspended thousands of dollars in grant money for an area nonprofit that serves homeless children, after its founder and chief operating officer was charged with two counts of statutory sexual offenses against a minor.

Michael Lee Absher, a former Henderson County Public School Board member, has been held in the Henderson County Detention Center under a $300,000 bond since his arrest on July 31. Absher, 35, was booked into the jail around 8:30 p.m., after the Henderson County Sheriff’s Office served a search warrant at an East Flat Rock residence earlier that day in response to “a disclosure of sexual assaults of juveniles,” the Times-News reported.

Meanwhile, a newly approved county grant for the nonprofit Absher founded in 2009, Only Hope WNC, was suspended at th

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