2
0

Abuse of Faith - 20 years, 700 victims: Southern Baptist sexual abuse spreads as leaders resist reforms - Parts 1, 2 and 3


 invite response                
2019 Feb 11, 9:17am   1,133 views  10 comments

by null   ➕follow (0)   💰tip   ignore  

Full Series, Parts 1, 2 and 3: Inforgaphics, videos etc. in the main links for each part.

Thirty-five years later, Debbie Vasquez's voice trembled as she described her trauma to a group of Southern Baptist leaders.

She was 14, she said, when she was first molested by her pastor in Sanger, a tiny prairie town an hour north of Dallas. It was the first of many assaults that Vasquez said destroyed her teenage years and, at 18, left her pregnant by the Southern Baptist pastor, a married man more than a dozen years older.

In June 2008, she paid her way to Indianapolis, where she and others asked leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention and its 47,000 churches to track sexual predators and take action against congregations that harbored or concealed abusers. Vasquez, by then in her 40s, implored them to consider prevention policies like those adopted by faiths that include the Catholic Church.

"Listen to what God has to say," she said, according to audio of the meeting, which she recorded. "... All that evil needs is for good to do nothing. ... Please help me and others that will be hurt."

Days later, Southern Baptist leaders rejected nearly every proposed reform.

The abusers haven't stopped. They've hurt hundreds more.

In the decade since Vasquez's appeal for help, more than 250 people who worked or volunteered in Southern Baptist churches have been charged with sex crimes, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News reveals.

It's not just a recent problem: In all, since 1998, roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced allegations of sexual misconduct, the newspapers found. That includes those who were convicted, credibly accused and successfully sued, and those who confessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any other state.

They left behind more than 700 victims, many of them shunned by their churches, left to themselves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to forgive their abusers or to get abortions.

About 220 offenders have been convicted or took plea deals, and dozens of cases are pending. They were pastors. Ministers. Youth pastors. Sunday school teachers. Deacons. Church volunteers.

Nearly 100 are still held in prisons stretching from Sacramento County, Calif., to Hillsborough County, Fla., state and federal records show. Scores of others cut deals and served no time. More than 100 are registered sex offenders. Some still work in Southern Baptist churches today.

Journalists in the two newsrooms spent more than six months reviewing thousands of pages of court, prison and police records and conducting hundreds of interviews. They built a database of former leaders in Southern Baptist churches who have been convicted of sex crimes.

The investigation reveals that:

• At least 35 church pastors, employees and volunteers who exhibited predatory behavior were still able to find jobs at churches during the past two decades. In some cases, church leaders apparently failed to alert law enforcement about complaints or to warn other congregations about allegations of misconduct.

• Several past presidents and prominent leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention are among those criticized by victims for concealing or mishandling abuse complaints within their own churches or seminaries.

• Some registered sex offenders returned to the pulpit. Others remain there, including a Houston preacher who sexually assaulted a teenager and now is the principal officer of a Houston nonprofit that works with student organizations, federal records show. Its name: Touching the Future Today Inc.

• Many of the victims were adolescents who were molested, sent explicit photos or texts, exposed to pornography, photographed nude, or repeatedly raped by youth pastors. Some victims as young as 3 were molested or raped inside pastors' studies and Sunday school classrooms. A few were adults — women and men who sought pastoral guidance and instead say they were seduced or sexually assaulted.

Much much more: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/Southern-Baptist-sexual-abuse-spreads-as-leaders-13588038.php?utm_campaign=chron&utm_source=article&utm_medium=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.chron.com%2Fnews%2Finvestigations%2Farticle%2FInvestigation-reveals-700-victims-of-Southern-13591612.php

#SexAbuse #Baptists #GOPFamilyValuesReligion

Comments 1 - 10 of 10        Search these comments

1   anonymous   2019 Feb 11, 9:19am  

2   anonymous   2019 Feb 11, 9:24am  

A little better breakdown

3   anonymous   2019 Feb 11, 2:47pm  

4   anonymous   2019 Feb 11, 2:47pm  

5   anonymous   2019 Feb 11, 2:47pm  

6   anonymous   2019 Feb 11, 3:00pm  



And that would make the GOP, Mormons and the Southern Baptists taking the top three spots in the competition !
7   anonymous   2019 Feb 14, 11:53pm  

Part 2 - Offend, then repeat. Southern Baptist churches hired dozens of leaders previously accused of sex offenses.

Second of three parts

Doug Myers was suspected of preying on children at a church in Alabama — but he went on to work at Southern Baptist churches in Florida before police arrested him.

Timothy Reddin was convicted of possessing child pornography, yet he was still able to serve as pastor of a Baptist church in Arkansas.

Charles Adcock faced 29 counts of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Alabama. Then he volunteered as a worship pastor at a Baptist church in Texas.

The sordid backgrounds of these Southern Baptist ministers didn't stop them from finding new jobs at churches and working in positions of trust.

They're among at least 35 Southern Baptist pastors, youth ministers and volunteers who were convicted of sex crimes or accused of sexual misconduct but still were allowed to work at churches during the past two decades, an investigation by the San Antonio Express-News and the Houston Chronicle reveals.

Some were suspected of misconduct but were allowed to leave quietly and work elsewhere. Others had been arrested, had criminal records or even had to register as sex offenders but later found jobs at Baptist churches.

All the men worked at times for churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest coalition of Baptist churches in the United States.

The SBC has rejected efforts to establish a registry to track sexual abuse cases and prevent churches from hiring predatory pastors. In some cases, churches knew of a pastor's past and allowed him to work anyway. In others, the SBC's inaction might have allowed offenders to move from community to community, ruining lives as they slipped through background checks and found jobs at unsuspecting churches.

"There's no other group that does pass the buck better," said Dee Ann Miller, a longtime victims' rights activist in Kansas who speaks out against sexual abuse by Baptist ministers and clergy in other faiths.

The practice of hiring pastors with disturbing pasts is part of a broader problem of sex abuse at Southern Baptist churches across the United States, the newspapers' investigation shows.

At least 700 people — nearly all of them children — reported being sexually abused by those who worked or volunteered at Southern Baptist churches since 1998. Records show that about 220 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have been convicted of sex crimes or took plea deals. The charges range from possessing child pornography to raping children.

The SBC had an opportunity to stop some of the abuse.

In 2007, at their annual meeting in San Antonio, SBC leaders considered a proposal to prevent sexual abuse by creating a database of ministers who had been credibly accused of sexual misconduct. But when the SBC met again in 2008, the committee assigned to study the proposal rejected it, saying it had no authority to compel churches to report sex offenders to the SBC.

With no centralized method of tracking sex abuse at Southern Baptist churches, the Chronicle and the Express-News spent months developing their own database of Baptist offenders by collecting news stories and public records to find perpetrators and gather details about their cases. Studies show most sexual assault victims don't contact police, which means the true number of offenders may well be higher.

August "Augie" Boto, interim president of the SBC's Executive Committee, said sex abuse in churches is a horrendous act. He said the newspapers' database would shine "the light of day upon crime."

"Taking advantage of the vulnerable is what criminals do," Boto said. "And when that happens, our job is to voice it. Not to hide it."

But it's unclear if anything will change at the SBC.

No religion is immune to sexual misconduct in its ranks. But unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which is wrestling with its own sex-abuse scandal, Baptists don't answer to a pope or bishop.

Local church autonomy is a bedrock foundation of Baptist faith. There's no diocese that assigns priests to a parish. Instead, each church is responsible for ordaining and hiring its own ministers.

Boto said the SBC can't force its churches to participate in any efforts to track sex abuse. That means each Baptist church in the SBC — there are 47,000 of them — decides for itself how vigorously to screen job applicants.

"Pastoral assignment among Baptists is kind of the Wild West," said Ed Stetzer, a Christian author and executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in Illinois. "There's no regulation. There's no system."

At some churches — especially small ones with fewer resources — the congregation's idea of vetting a potential pastor is deciding whether he's a "good speaker," Stetzer said.

"The Wild Wild West approach to moving from church to church has some real consequences for people who don't know that the pastor that they called is the pastor that got fired for abusing a child three churches ago," Stetzer said.

'A bad feeling'

In case after case, Southern Baptists with a sex offense or troublesome behavior in their past have had no problem finding jobs as preachers, youth group leaders or volunteers at churches across the country.

In Georgia, the pastor of the SBC-affiliated Eastside Baptist Church near Atlanta announced it was re-examining its hiring practices after Alexander Edwards, a volunteer youth pastor, was arrested in 2016 on charges of sexual battery involving an 11-year-old boy he had met at the church.

It wasn't Edwards' first criminal charge. While serving as a youth pastor at another Baptist church 160 miles away in Lee County south of Atlanta, Edwards was arrested in August 2013 and charged with using the internet to find a child for a sex act. That case was still pending when Edwards began volunteering at Eastside. He was convicted of the 2016 charges, and the charge in Lee County was dismissed.

"It was incredibly painful," said the current pastor at Eastside, John Hull, who blamed Edwards' hiring on employment practices that have since been revised.

Hull emphasized that Edwards no longer worked at Eastside when the abuse occurred. But he had met the victim and his family at the church and ingratiated himself with them.

"A child was hurt, and it happened on our watch," Hull said.

"Taking advantage of the vulnerable is what criminals do. And when that happens, our job is to voice it. Not to hide it."

'Broken Trust'

The SBC does not keep statistics on ministers accused of abuse, making it difficult to compare the rate of sexual misconduct at SBC churches to other religions, such as Catholicism.

"The problem with Protestants is, we don't have the ability to track," said Wade Burleson, a Baptist pastor from Oklahoma who proposed creating a database of offenders at the SBC meeting in 2007. "Where we should be skewered is that leadership is acting as if they don't care to track. OK, so which is worse, tracking and knowing and doing nothing, or knowing there's a problem and refusing to track?"

Church autonomy didn't stop one of the SBC's state conventions in Texas from keeping its own list of offenders.

Under mounting pressure from critics in 2007, the Baptist General Convention of Texas, one of many groups that fall under the SBC umbrella, published a webpage called "Broken Trust" that included a list of eight Baptist pastors who had been convicted of sex crimes.

The convention also kept a longer, confidential list of others who had been credibly accused of sexual misconduct. Churches could contact the organization to see if a job applicant was on the list.

One of the ministers on the list was John McKay, a pastor at First Baptist Church of Hondo, 40 miles west of San Antonio. A charismatic former Marine who had a strong following, McKay had once received a military commendation for keeping his men out of trouble overseas.

But in the spring of 2003, the parents of a girl who attended the church suspected McKay was sleeping with their teenage daughter. The girl's distraught father asked Medina County Sheriff's Sgt. Wayne Springer to investigate. Springer checked McKay's employment history and discovered a record of questionable behavior toward women at other churches.

"I started looking into his past and we started calling these other churches where he'd been," recalled Springer, now an investigator with the district attorney's office in Medina County. "And there wasn't one of those churches that we called that didn't tell me something bad about this guy."

Springer was told that McKay liked to rub his arm against the breasts of church secretaries when he signed paperwork at the office. One Baptist deacon, Edward Lozano, told Springer that McKay had committed "indiscretions" with married women at a now-closed Baptist church in San Antonio, according to Springer's investigative report about McKay.

In Hondo, McKay began "grooming" a teenager in his congregation when she was only 13 years old, telling her how special she was and how she was more mature than other girls, the report states.

After two years, the relationship turned sexual. The girl was 15; McKay was 57.

McKay drove her to motels in Devine and San Antonio weekly to have sex — a second-degree felony in Texas, since she was under the age of 17.

Springer arrested McKay on April 16, 2003. After pleading guilty to sexual assault and serving nearly nine years in a Huntsville prison, McKay moved to San Antonio, where he lived as a registered sex offender.

McKay's wife answered the door at their house in August. She said he was in the hospital being treated for cancer and was unavailable for an interview. They had put his past behind them, she said, and didn't want to talk. McKay died in September.

McKay didn't face any criminal charges related to his previous employment in San Antonio, and it's unclear if his past employers told First Baptist Church of Hondo about their concerns.

Mike Vasquez, senior pastor at the church in Hondo, said background checks are conducted for all employees, especially anyone dealing with children. The McKay case was before his time, Vasquez said, but he was told the church fired McKay.

"They dealt with it pretty swiftly," Vasquez said.

Springer said the father of McKay's victim said he "should have known better" but trusted McKay.

After all, McKay was the pastor of his church.

No silver bullet

The Baptist General Convention of Texas, also known as Texas Baptists, eventually removed the public list with McKay and other offenders and stopped maintaining its larger confidential list, saying it was rarely being used and that effectively dealing with sexual misconduct "falls directly on the local congregation."

"While the list was created out of a desire to help churches, utilization was low and maintenance was challenging," Texas Baptists said in a written statement.

"There were concerns about accuracy, given that the convention did not have the capacity to conduct investigations, and churches in their autonomy were free to choose whether or not to utilize the service," the statement read. "At the same time, the quality and availability of online background checks and registry searches increased dramatically."

A criminal-background check often includes a nationwide search of public records. But companies that offer such searches rely on a hodgepodge of data from thousands of county courthouses across the United States. In many cases, criminal records aren't online at all, creating gaping holes in the system.

Checking sex offender registries isn't always effective, either. Sex crimes are often difficult to prosecute, and some church leaders plead to less-severe charges that don't require them to register as a sex offender.

Given the limitations of background checks, the proposal for an internal SBC database of offenders could be a powerful way for Baptist churches to police their ranks, said Sean Bigley, a lawyer in Southern California whose firm specializes in background investigations.

"You just got to be a big idiot to say, 'Hey, you know what? I'm going to hire this person even though they've got this accusation against them.'"

-William Rushing, pastor of Woodward Avenue Baptist Church

"On the whole, the idea has merit," Bigley said. "I don't think anyone's going to argue with wanting to protect children from predators. That's certainly an honorable thing."

But many employers — not just churches — are reluctant to release anything beyond basic information about a former employee because they're afraid of a defamation suit, said Michael Holland, a San Antonio lawyer who represents employers.

"It's a tough problem," Holland said. "It's a sad, frustrating topic, and I really feel bad for people who have been assaulted by folks in the ministry."

Burleson, the Baptist pastor from Oklahoma who proposed a database of offenders back in 2007, has had years to think about handling the sensitive information responsibly.

Burleson primarily views the database as a place for credible accusations — cases where investigators concluded something happened. Burleson also would encourage other Protestant denominations to participate.

Burleson said the SBC should pay the cost of maintaining the database. To avoid any hint of bias, he says that an independent nonprofit should oversee the data and diligently seek out court cases alleging misconduct so it's not entirely reliant on churches to report wrongdoing.

"Whoever's in power has a tendency to want to protect their buddies," Burleson said. "And I don't like a database in the hands of powerful people in the Southern Baptist Convention."

Pastor Doug's rule

Some ministers move from church to church for years until they're caught.

Concerns about Doug Myers' behavior around young boys followed him from Alabama to Florida before he was finally caught, then convicted in 2007.

Charles Canida first met Myers in 2000 at Concord Baptist Church in Russellville, Ala., where Canida was a deacon. Myers came from a Southern Baptist church in Maryland.

Myers quickly gravitated toward boys in the youth group, Canida said, despite being hired to minister to adults. Canida was soon suspicious.

"I just had a bad feeling about him," Canida said in a recent interview.

The concerns grew when, a few months after Myers' arrival, a boy told Canida about "Pastor Doug's" rule: Everyone had to swim naked.

Months later, a mother told Canida that Myers "held her son down on a table at the church on his back ... and was blowing on his stomach to tickle him," Canida said. "She was literally in shambles."

Canida said he met with the county's district attorney but no charges were ever filed.

Concerns about Myers eventually split the congregation at Concord. Canida and others started a new church; Myers moved to Florida, where he established new churches for a few years with help from state and local Baptist associations.

Canida wasn't surprised when he found out Myers was arrested. Myers admitted to molesting a minor he met at a church in Eustis, Fla., according to a probable cause affidavit filed in Lake County in 2006; he pleaded guilty a year later and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

The family of the Florida victim sued, alleging that the Florida Baptist Convention and the Lake County Baptist Association had failed to contact Myers' previous churches before entrusting him to start churches in the Sunshine State. The victim, who according to the suit was 11 when he met Myers, said the assaults caused "shame, humiliation ... suicidal ideations and night terrors."

A Lake County jury later awarded the victim $12.5 million. The lawsuit was eventually settled for an undisclosed amount of money, court records show.

Before his release from prison in December 2012, new allegations surfaced in Maryland, where he had been a pastor. Myers was arrested on charges of custodial child abuse and sex offenses against multiple victims from 1995-2001. He was convicted in Calvert County, Md., and is serving a 15-year sentence.

Training and transparency

SBC officials stress the importance of conducting criminal background checks. The SBC's publishing arm, Lifeway Christian Resources, offers discounted screenings to churches through a partnership with a background-check company. They've handled 320,000 checks since 2009.

But even if no criminal records are found, Boto said, that doesn't mean a church's job is done.

When Texas Baptists stopped compiling its registry of offenders, the state convention partnered with MinistrySafe, an organization in Fort Worth that trains churches to develop stronger policies and techniques to prevent sexual abuse.

Katie Swafford, director of counseling services at Texas Baptists, said the training sessions have been eye-opening. One lesson is that background checks, while important, won't catch every threat because most pedophiles don't yet have a criminal record.

That means church members need to ask better screening questions during the hiring process and learn how to spot predatory behavior.

"If you don't understand the risk, you're probably not preparing for the right thing," Swafford said.

Larry Baker and Rex Miller, two FBI agents assigned to the San Antonio Child Exploitation Task Force, have spent years uncovering crimes against children. They once investigated a popular youth pastor who was always around kids — but interacted only with boys.

The pastor had "zero involvement" with girls, even though he was responsible for them.

"Pastoral assignment among Baptists is kind of the Wild West. There's no regulation; there's no system."

-Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College

"It's tough," Miller said. "For a lot of people, it's hard to imagine that someone would have a sexual interest in children."

It was that very dynamic — the tendency toward denial — that made it difficult for people to believe the allegations against McKay, the charismatic former Marine who served as pastor in Hondo.

"Everybody just thought he was the best guy," said Springer, the Medina County investigator who led the case.

McKay's charm blinded parents and church leaders to the warning signs: the hugs McKay gave his underage victim at softball games; the suspicious phone calls at her home; the little favors McKay did for her.

After McKay's arrest, some who attended the church shunned Springer as if he were the criminal, he said.

Springer said it's crucial for church congregations to understand that sexual predators don't "groom" only victims to gain their trust. They groom everyone around them so no one suspects a thing.

"He was everything that the community wanted," Springer said. "But (they) didn't know about the devil inside him."

Springer said the father of McKay's victim said he "should have known better" but trusted McKay.

After all, McKay was the pastor of his church

-August "Augie" Boto, interim president of the SBC's Executive Committee

In Arkansas, Timothy Reddin was director of missions for the SBC-affiliated Central Baptist Association in 1998 when he was caught with child pornography and sentenced to 27 months in prison.

Reddin told the federal judge at his sentencing hearing in 2000 that he would never molest a child. But last July, authorities say, Reddin attempted to solicit a 14-year-old minor for sex in an online chat. At the time, Reddin was pastor of Turner Street Baptist Church in Springdale, Ark., despite his federal child-pornography conviction.

The "minor" was actually Gerald Faulkner, an undercover agent with the Department of Homeland Security who specialized in cases of child exploitation and child pornography.

"I'll never tell!" Reddin told the agent in an online message. "I could go to jail!"

Reddin pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity; in early February, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. His lawyer declined to discuss the case.

In Alabama, Charles Adcock was charged in 2015 with 29 counts of rape and sodomy involving a 14-year-old girl he met at the SBC-affiliated Woodward Avenue Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, where he had worked as a youth minister a few years earlier.

While out on bail under the supervision of his parents, Adcock moved to Texas, where First Baptist Church in Bedford allowed Adcock to volunteer as a music minister at worship services, despite knowing about his arrest.

"There's not a chance in the world that I would ever hire somebody if they were facing charges like this," said William Rushing, the current pastor of the church in Muscle Shoals. "You just got to be a big idiot to say, 'Hey, you know what? I'm going to hire this person even though they've got this accusation against them.'"

Adcock insisted he was innocent. Without admitting any guilt, he pleaded to a single charge of second-degree sodomy in January 2016 and served 15 months. He is now a registered sex offender.

"He has always, and continues to assert, his innocence," his lawyer, Chris Rippy, wrote in a letter to the Chronicle.

Steve Knott, at the time the pastor of First Baptist in Bedford, said another pastor had hired Adcock. He wasn't allowed unsupervised access to children, court records show. That was little solace to victims' advocates who protested the decision.

"To quietly hire an accused child molester as a music minister, which automatically places him in a position of trust, was astoundingly reckless and irresponsible on the part of the church leadership," the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said in a statement. "It shows lack of sound judgment in the care and protection of the children of their church."

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/Southern-Baptist-churches-hired-ministers-accused-13588233.php?utm_source=article&utm_campaign=chron&utm_medium=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.chron.com%2Fnews%2Finvestigations%2Farticle%2FAbuse-of-Faith-series-concludes-shedding-by-light-13611623.php
8   anonymous   2019 Feb 15, 12:01am  

Part 3: All too often, Southern Baptist youth pastors take advantage of children. Preying on teens - More than 100 Southern Baptist youth

Last of three parts

Chad Foster, a former firefighter from Missouri, arrived in Texas soon after his divorce and with his 30th birthday fast approaching. He described himself as a fairly new Christian with a history of hard drinking.

He was hired and later ordained as a youth pastor by Houston's Second Baptist Church, one of the largest Southern Baptist congregations in the country.

"When I took the job," Foster later said, "I didn't know anything about it."

Foster preached abstinence and urged teens to sign a contract to save themselves for marriage. But he soon targeted underaged girls at the church's Cypress campus for intimate text messages and physical contact. His brief career as a youth pastor ended in 2013 with guilty pleas to three counts of sexual assault of a child and two of online solicitation of a minor.

A 16-year-old girl with whom he illegally had sex testified at his sentencing.

"I thought I really loved him," she said. "He's not the person I knew. I feel like he's a sick person. I think he's going to do it again if he's on probation. I have no doubt in my mind that he will."

There are many others like Foster. Scores of Southern Baptist youth pastors across the country, many with little oversight or formal training, used their church positions to groom and sexually abuse children in their flocks, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News reveals.
More than 100 Southern Baptists described as former youth pastors or youth ministers are now in prison, are registered as sex offenders or have been charged with sex crimes, the newspapers found. Their most common targets were teenage girls and boys, though smaller children also were molested, sometimes in pastors' studies and Sunday school rooms.

"You can't let your guard down," said Amanda Griffith, a federal prosecutor in San Diego who has handled dozens of sex crime cases, including those involving predatory youth pastors. "There's the belief that church is sacrosanct, but this can happen anywhere."

Foster toted chicken nuggets to school lunchrooms and delivered passionate sermons as part of his ministry. But behind the scenes, he was prolific in his flirtations, using cellphones and laptops to message multiple girls at Second Baptist and later at a different church.

He asked girls as young as 12 for graphic details about "temptations." He shared his sexual fantasies and masturbated online, displaying himself via social media webcams or describing his activities in texts. He urged his favorites to send their own explicit images and to visit the suburban tract home where he lived alone, Harris County court records show.

Second Baptist quietly fired him in 2010 after receiving complaints about lying and other inappropriate behavior, court records show. Church members and employees were among those who pointed out problems before his dismissal.

But church leaders did not inform youth group members and parents that Foster had been fired or why. Nor did they tell leaders of another church, the Community of Faith Church in Cypress, a non-SBC church that hired Foster to run its youth group in 2011. He found more targets there, court records show.

Second Baptist officials stayed quiet about Foster's 2010 dismissal, even after Harris County detectives arrested Foster in 2011, investigators say.

Southern Baptist churches are the nation's largest Protestant group, but they lack common hiring protocols or standard pastor training programs. They do not have uniform policies for sharing information about pastors fired or convicted of inappropriate sexual behavior, sexual abuse or assault — the kind of transparency that could protect churches and their congregants from sexual predators such as Foster.

Second Baptist officials declined an interview request. But in a statement, the church said that Foster's termination on Dec. 6, 2010, had "nothing to do with sexual abuse or allegations of sexual abuse." The church said "Second Baptist was not made aware of any sexual misconduct by Foster until he was arrested in November 2011, almost a year after his termination."

The church, however, had received complaints about Foster's general conduct and about his behavior with an adult girlfriend, court records show. Those complaints included questions about his dishonesty regarding going on a job interview, exceeding time and texting limits on his church-provided cellphone, and sharing a hotel room with his girlfriend on an out-of-town trip.

Regardless, Second Baptist gave Foster a "great reference," according to testimony from the pastor of the church that later hired Foster, Community of Faith.

In 2013, Foster begged a female Harris County judge for leniency after pleading guilty to five felonies that were uncovered after he had become youth pastor at Community of Faith. Three victims – two who had met him at Second Baptist and one at Community of Faith — requested a long sentence.

Foster was sentenced to five years in 2013, a fraction of the maximum possible penalty. He was released in 2017 and is now living in College Station as a registered sex offender. He declined to comment for this story.

The view from prison

Former Southern Baptist youth pastor Gary Welch says he prays for forgiveness every day for having abused his church position to groom and then repeatedly have sex with a teenage girl.

Welch was married and nearing his 40th birthday when he began to cultivate his victim, who was then 13. They met at his church in Navarro County south of Dallas.

Clandestine meetings and sexual contact continued until the victim was 16 and sought help. When confronted, Welch quickly confessed. He pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated sexual assault in 2012 and was sentenced to 55 years in prison.

He's incarcerated in a dorm reserved for participants in a faith-based program in the Wynne Unit prison on the outskirts of Huntsville.

Like many other Southern Baptist preachers and youth pastors, Welch never attended college or seminary. His father was a preacher and he was a teenager when he felt called by God to teach Sunday school. He worked in churches for years before being formally ordained as a youth minister by a church in Corsicana.

The process was simple. He was observed by the pastor. Deacons posed a few questions, and then they voted him in. At a ceremony, the whole congregation clapped and cheered. He's still proud of what he accomplished in the name of the Lord, including taking children on mission trips to build a cinder block church in Mexico and pray with the homeless on the streets of Austin.

Welch said all youth pastors need training and strict guidelines. His church offered both, but when he took the wrong path, no one noticed. Supervisors saw only his successes, he said. And teens tend to glorify their pastors.

"For students, a lot of times, students will say that's what Christ looks like," he said. "... and when you do something that causes them to question what Christ is or who Christ is ... it causes a lot of destruction in people's lives."

'Ruining the mood'

Foster's ordination was delayed after Second Baptist leaders received complaints, including reports that Foster lied about a trip he took, sent excessive texts and behaved inappropriately, court records show. But ultimately his certificate was signed by a group that included Ed Young, a nationally-known religious broadcaster, longtime pastor of Second Baptist and a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Foster later told a Harris County judge that he lacked any training in how to teach or counsel adolescents in his youth group at Second Baptist's fast-growing Cypress campus.

The only advice Foster contends he received before being dispatched to save the souls of dozens of junior- and senior-high kids was to "become friends" and "become popular" and let the parents know if children were actively suicidal, according to a sentencing transcript.

That simple formula seemed to work. Soon after Foster began as youth pastor in 2007, the Cypress campus' youth group population boomed. Junior and senior high girls fought over who would bring him coffee, recalls Nicole, who initially admired Foster but later counted herself among his victims. She asked that her last name be withheld.

Nicole, now in her early 20s, described herself as naive and deeply religious as a teen. Foster began to break down boundaries with her and others by sending flirty texts, sharing bus seats on a church trip and inviting girls to his house, she said. Receiving sexually-charged missives from the man who delivered sermons and performed baptisms left her troubled and confused. As a young teen, she didn't realize she was one of several targets.

Later, she and her parents left the Baptist faith.

For years, Second Baptist Church leaders have denied that they knew Foster was behaving inappropriately with teenagers before his well-publicized arrest.

Foster was fired by Second Baptist in late 2010 and told to cease communicating with church teens, according to court documents and his sentencing transcript. His confused youth group members and their parents got no explanation.

In its statement to the Chronicle, the church noted that the youngest victim, who first met Foster at their church when she was 12, was hit with a barrage of sexual texts that were the subject of criminal charges only after Foster was terminated by Second Baptist.

Second Baptist later settled at least two lawsuits filed by two of Foster's victims.

Foster first attracted his 16-year-old victim — whose name is being withheld because she is a sexual assault victim — during a 2011 summer church camp for his new church, Community of Faith. He visited the girls' dorm late one night to share his message about being saved by God from the depths of drinking and divorce and later managed to get her alone on the beach in Alabama. On the way home from camp, they exchanged cellphone numbers.

A few days later, she began texting Foster about a problem she was having with a boy when he stopped her. She was "ruining the mood," he said. When she asked why, he replied that he was masturbating, according to Harris County court transcript. Foster then began to share his detailed sexual fantasies, swore her to secrecy and pressured her to begin a "relationship."

Foster had been leading the youth group at Community of Faith for less than a year when the mother of the 16-year-old spotted his texts. By then, Foster had already invited the girl alone to his home and illegally engaged in sexual intercourse with her at least three times.

The 16-year-old suffered an emotional crisis. She confided in a teacher who alerted police; police alerted the church. Her pastor at Community of Faith quickly reached out to others.

That's when a second victim came forward — the girl who first met Foster at Second Baptist when she was just 12.

The same girl testified that Foster began texting her with inappropriate messages when she was 12 and 13, but his behavior accelerated to web-cam displays of his erections and ejaculations after she got a computer for Christmas in 2010. Over the next year, she received 15,000 texts as well as Skype and Facebook messages from Foster, including explicit live videos of masturbation, invitations to send him nude photos and warnings to delete all logs and never tell anyone.

"My life has turned upside down. I can't relate to what people are going through any more. My innocence is gone," his youngest victim later said in court, breaking down in tears. "I no longer have a relationship with God, and that was once something very special to me. I don't trust anyone in churches anymore."

As part of the criminal case and civil lawsuits that unfolded after Foster's arrest, Second Baptist officials were informed that Foster had aggressively flirted and sent sexual texts to the 12-year-old as well as at least three older youth group members during the time Foster still worked at their church — including one who testified under oath that he seduced her five to 10 times while she was still in high school, court records show.

It's unclear from court records whether church officials reviewed the content of Foster's cellphone texts or the contents of his church computer email either after receiving complaints prior to firing Foster in 2010 — or later when police and a parent requested help to identify additional youth group victims.

Youth pastor pornography

The methods Foster used to cultivate Houston-area teens show up in dozens of other cases nationwide. Other sexually abusive youth pastors have changed churches, left the state or received support for mission trips abroad even after complaints surfaced or criminal probes began, court records show.

Some predatory youth pastors were caught and charged only after they began distributing images of teenage victims across state lines.

Two brothers — guitar-playing music minister Jordan Earls and his brother, Joshua, a newly-ordained youth pastor — worked together with a youth group at a Southern Baptist Church in Garland for nearly four years beginning in 2009.

They were the sons of a Southern Baptist preacher and rented an apartment where they threw pool parties. The brothers were single and still in their 20s. They sent girls explicit texts and exchanged pornographic photos and videos with the teens, criminal and civil court files show. The younger brother inappropriately touched girls while in the church and elsewhere, according to the Dallas civil lawsuit.

"Essentially, these men, who lived together in a one-bedroom apartment, ran a child pornography ring using their positions of authority and (church) facilities to exploit impressionable pubescent girls," parents of one youth group victim alleged in a lawsuit that the church settled.

Those parents alleged that the younger of the two brothers, Jordan Earls, sexually molested their daughter inside the church and attacked another girl in a home. A related Dallas County prosecution was dropped after federal charges were filed.

The pair left the church before Garland police sought to formally question them about complaints of inappropriate contact with teens, according to court records and interviews with a Garland police detective and a federal prosecutor. Both Jordan and Joshua continued to work with youth in other churches despite the ongoing criminal investigation.

The Earlses ultimately were caught mainly because they continued to contact Texas victims after leaving the state. Federal prosecutors got involved because both exchanged graphic images of masturbation with teen victims via the internet and cellphones.

Joshua Earls had moved to another church at the time of his arrest in 2013, and Jordan Earls had traveled to South Carolina to work at a church run by their father.

Ultimately, the brothers were convicted of possession of federal pornography for sending and receiving lewd images of their victims and themselves across state lines. At sentencing, Joshua Earls in 2015 begged forgiveness from his victims, from his family and for "having sinned against the government."

"And most importantly, I am sorry to God. I sinned against him, and I should have known better."

Both remain incarcerated: Jordan Earls was sentenced to 15 years and Joshua 12.

Arapaho Road Baptist Church in Garland settled lawsuits filed by parents of two victims and declined comment because of a confidentiality agreement. Leaders "continue to pray for all parties involved," said spokesman Carolyn Alvey. "From the moment they learned there was anything inappropriate going on, they wanted it to be in the light and they wanted to make sure the parties responsible were held accountable."

In other cases, pastors made arrangements to meet victims online, using Back Page ads, chat rooms or email to meet and seduce minors from out of town — sometimes encountering undercover police instead.

It's not just youth pastors who cruise online for teenage victims. Joe David Barron, then a 52-year-old pastor at Prestonwood Baptist in Plano, drove 200 miles after arranging online in 2008 to meet someone he thought was a 13-year-old girl. He primed her for the experience by sending along an image of himself in his underwear with an erection. He arrived at the meeting place, an apartment building just outside Bryan, with large box full of condoms after promising to be gentle when he took her virginity.

Barron was arrested by undercover officers who intercepted his SUV as he circled the parking lot. Barron was fired by his church, which cooperated with investigators, according to Bryan Police Detective Travis Hines.

In a letter to the Chronicle, Barron said he took responsibility for his "choices and behaviors." He attended treatment and has had no reported problems in a decade as a registered sex offender. He now works with ex-offenders in a nonprofit.

"I determined my life would not be defined by my failure," he wrote. "Rather I want my life to be defined by how I responded to my failure."

More victims?

Chad Foster was found guilty of three sexual assaults of the 16-year-old and two more felonies for his obscene online behavior with the younger girl. During his 2013 sentencing hearing, he asked a Harris County judge for mercy and probation.

At Foster's sentencing, three victims testified. Nicole, the eldest of the trio, took the stand first to tell the judge that there were even more youth group members who were afraid to speak out.

"Although these girls didn't come forward, this is not an isolated incident, and there are a lot more that have come to me," she said.

In an interview with the Chronicle, she described a long-term pattern of aggressive flirtation or abuse that Foster conducted with her and at least five other youth group members at Second Baptist.

Nicole said Foster started with a barrage of texts and detailed personal questions about what she would do in various sexual scenarios. His behavior with her escalated after she turned 17 — the age of consent in Texas — and after her parents moved away from Houston. She stayed in the region as a college student and au pair.

In 2013, she testified about an incident that began when Foster offered a ride after her car broke down. Instead of driving her home, she said, he illegally supplied her with beers and then took her to his place, invited her to sit on his couch and put his hand on her upper thigh.

In an interview, she told the Chronicle she had to repeatedly request to be taken home before Foster finally agreed.

After that episode, she suffered nightmares and panic attacks for years. She still has trouble staying alone in locked rooms, she said.

Two lead investigators at the Harris County Sheriff's Office told the Chronicle that Foster likely groomed and sent suggestive texts to more girls from the Second Baptist youth group, based on texts and emails they reviewed, along with other evidence.

Harris County Lt. J.D. Philpot, who has investigated sex crimes for decades, described Foster as a particularly prolific sexual predator who used his position and "charismatic personality" to build trust and cultivate multiple victims simultaneously.

"There is no doubt that the victims in this case truly believed themselves special to him and that they were boyfriend and girlfriend," he said.

Foster's computer contained a trove of inappropriate, explicit or obscene messages and images addressed to many girls who appeared underage but were identified only by first names or emails and could not be readily identified, according to documents and interviews with Philpot and Gary Spurger, another investigator who also worked the case.

Philpot and Spurger said Community of Faith officials were cooperative but that Second Baptist church leaders didn't supply information.

"We obviously knew he'd worked at a previous church," Philpot said. He said Second Baptist didn't tell detectives Foster had been fired and didn't provide information to help identify other victims.

Second Baptist and Community of Faith were later involved in confidential settlements of two civil lawsuits filed by the families of the two girls who were the subject of Foster's criminal convictions, according to civil court records and interviews. Family members and attorneys declined to comment.

As part of the lawsuits, another teen who attended Foster's youth group before he was fired by Second Baptist provided sworn testimony that Foster seduced her at least five times while she was still in high school and began doing so after she turned 17.

Harris County prosecutors and victims opposed Foster's parole. Nicole's mother informed Texas officials in a letter that her daughter and others still suffered from Foster's long pattern of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior.

"He is a predator and a manipulator," she wrote in 2015. "It sickens us to know that he had us all fooled and did a very good job of it."

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/All-too-often-Southern-Baptist-youth-pastors-13588292.php?utm_source=article&utm_campaign=chron&utm_medium=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.chron.com%2Fnews%2Finvestigations%2Farticle%2FAbuse-of-Faith-series-concludes-shedding-by-light-13611623.php
9   curious2   2019 Feb 15, 12:03am  

Kakistocracy says
Southern Baptist sexual abuse spreads as leaders resist reforms


But if you don't let Southern Baptist pastors abuse underage girls, then who will protect closet cases from the temptation to get gay married? Just imagine, one day a closet case is blowing Teamsters at the Reseda truck stop, as per usual, when a hunky driver proposes marriage. How to tell the wife and her kids from a previous marriage?

10   anonymous   2019 Feb 15, 10:36am  

Entire Baptist Church Still Pretending Not To Drink

BILOXI, MS—Sources at Biloxi Seventh Baptist Church confirmed Tuesday that the entire church body is still pretending never to drink alcoholic beverages.

Based on the church's strong convictions, every member of the church is staunchly committed to pretend to abstain from alcohol while in the presence of other Baptists.

"It's important to avoid the appearance of evil," said church member Fred Myers. "That's why I committed a long time ago to never let on that I love downing a few craft beers during a ball game on the weekends."

Myers always orders a Diet Coke when with his Baptist friends and family, though he's been known to order a beer on tap as long as he's in another state where no one can recognize him.

Other members of the church share the same commitment. Take Ethel Carver, 82. She credits her long life to her zealous dedication to the Lord, eating lots of fruits, vegetables, and casseroles, and pretending not to down two shots of whiskey before bed every night.

"Ever since I was a little girl, my parents raised me right, the Baptist way," she said. "We don't smoke, we don't chew, we don't drink alcohol unless no other Baptists are around. Just like the Bible says."

Church members have developed advanced strategies to prevent other church members from finding out they drink, from buying their alcohol hundreds of miles away and carrying it into the house in paper bags to drinking their favorite beer out of a fountain drink cup, just in case the pastor drops by unannounced.

At publishing time, Pastor Buck had announced a new sermon series entitled The Evils of Letting Other People Find Out You Drink Alcohol.

https://babylonbee.com/news/entire-baptist-church-still-pretending-not-to-drink

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions