The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit alleging it failed to prevent the sexual abuse of a teenager by an older teen at an African mission boarding house in 1988.

The Louisville-based denomination says the suit should be barred under the statute of limitations because it happened so long ago — a stance the plaintiff’s lawyer calls “hypocritical,” following a church commission’s recommendation that the church lobby against such statutes.

Meanwhile, federal authorities in Florida have filed child-pornography charges against the alleged perpetrator in the lawsuit.

Samuel Shamba Warlick, 39, of Oviedo, Fla., was charged Jan. 14 with distributing and possessing images of child pornography, following an undercover computer sting conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

A landmark report issued in October by a Presbyterian Church panel — documenting sexual and physical abuse of minors on the global mission field between 1950 and 1990 — identified Warlick by name. It said that as an older teenager in 1988, he allegedly abused younger teens at a mission boarding house in 1988 in Kinshasa, capital of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In December, Sean Coppedge of California sued the denomination in Jefferson Circuit Court, saying it failed to protect him and other youths when he was living at the boarding house.

The suit says Coppedge was sexually abused when he was 14, and that mission officials allowed Warlick to return to the house after a temporary removal even though they knew of the alleged assaults on Coppedge and another .