Nanette Miles, a former member of First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana, has filed a civil lawsuit against the church, Hyles-Anderson College, and David Hyles, the son of the late Jack Hyles.
A former Hammond resident claims in a federal lawsuit she was repeatedly raped as a young student more than four decades ago by the son of the then-pastor and president of the First Baptist Church of Hammond and Hyles-Anderson College.
Nanette Miles, who agreed to be named publicly for this article, said then-youth director David Hyles, who was son of then-Pastor Jack Hyles, called her into his office in September 1976 when she was 13. She alleges in the lawsuit she was given a drink and then blacked out.
She claims she woke up on the office floor while being raped by David Hyles.
Following the alleged attack, she was instructed to leave through the back door so she would not be seen by a secretary, the lawsuit claims. David Hyles said he would want to see her again, according the the lawsuit.
She was raped again by David Hyles in his office a week later, and he continued to rape her weekly “unless he was out of town on church business,” the lawsuit alleges. The sexual abuse allegedly continued for five years on church and college property.
“Defendants stole something innocent, sensitive and sacred from every minor they abused,” according to the lawsuit filed in the Northern District of Illinois by the Dallas, Texas, law firm of Forester Haynie.
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The lawsuit is just the latest in a history of civil and criminal accusations of sexual abuse of underage girls by officials at the church, which was founded in 1887.
Joy Ryder, who now runs a support group for sex abuse victims, filed her own federal lawsuit earlier this year claiming David Hyles repeatedly raped her as a teenage girl in the late 1970s.
(Please see my post on Joy Ryder’s lawsuit.)
I have written numerous articles about David Hyles:
Serial Adulterer David Hyles Receives a Warm Longview Baptist Temple Welcome
UPDATED: Serial Adulterer David Hyles Has Been Restored
David Hyles Says “My Bad, Jesus”
Is All Forgiven for David Hyles?
Disgraced IFB Preacher David Hyles Helping “Fallen” Pastors Get Back on Their Horses
IFB Preacher David Hyles’ Latest Sex Scandal
I have also written a number of stories about his father, Jack Hyles:
Sexual Abuse and the Jack Hyles Rule: If You Didn’t See It, It Didn’t Happen
The Scandalous Life of Jack Hyles and Why it Still Matters
The Mesmerizing Appeal of Jack Hyles
1991 Current Affairs Report: Jack Hyles Stole My Wife
Jack Hyles Tells Unsubmissive Woman to Kill Herself
News Stories About IFB Preachers Jack and David Hyles
About Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 62, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 41 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.
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David Hyles was born into an abusive fundamentalist evangelical Christian family. He did not meet the challenge of lifelong abuse well, did not get emotional help, therapy and was therefore embedded for life as a serial abuser, a criminal for Jesus, a God-product whose great commission is to harm, harm, harm…
One might wishfully embrace the idea that Jesus saves but this is a good example of the terrible damage done by religion that condones and confirms the very hatred it claims to oppose. In the case of David Hyles, what ‘Christ’ saved was a child molester’s opportunity to harm. Sick. Sick. Sick. Three in one, one in three…
Brian, as a survivor of sexual abuse from a priest, I couldn’t agree with you more. “In the case of David Hyles, what ‘Christ’ saved was a child molester’s opportunity to harm.” Indeed.
‘Die to the past…wake up every morning a new man..’ This quote makes me want to scream. It equates ”healing” from sexual abuse with healing from a minor cut finger. An official UK government commission on sexual abuse in high places took evidence from over 1000 survivors and found high levels of self-harm, addictions, suicide attempts etc. One survivor said ‘I can be at a party having the best time, but one touch, one smell and I’m right back in the abuse and that’s not going to change till the day I die.’ I’m a pacificist kind of person but it would give me the greatest pleasure to attach a millstone to the necks of these sub-human monsters and push them into the sea myself!
Evangelical institutions are grooming factories for abusers and those to be abused. Authoritarianism, submission, complementarianism are the tools in the toolbox.
Looking at the photos of David Hyles, you really can see the hate in his eyes. It’s old hatred from systematic abuse from his father,Jack ,. I think it’s great that his victim’s are now filing lawsuits and fighting back. I hope it results in his final downfall. Serving notice to these abusive pastors that their reign of oppression is over !