The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Bob Stine, the pastor of Midvale Baptist Church in Madison, Wisconsin, and operator of Kid’s Best Child Care (a ministry of Midvale Baptist), stands accused of sexually assaulting several children during a trip to a local state park.
The Rev. Bob Stine, former president of the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention, will be required to answer questions in court in September after police in Madison, Wisconsin, recommended he be charged with sexual assault.
The Dane County district attorney’s office said the case involving Stine, pastor of Midvale Baptist Church in Madison, is under review. No charges have been filed.
“The DA’s Office has received the referral from Madison Police Dept,” the DA’s office said in an email about Stine. “He is scheduled to appear for an Initial Appearance on 9/7/23 at 8:30 AM.”
Police have investigated allegations that Stine inappropriately touched children during a group visit to a state park in 2021, according to television station WISC in Madison. That investigation led the state’s Department of Children and Families to revoke the license for Kid’s Best Child Care, a day care run by Midvale Baptist, in late June.
“The Department has received credible information that licensee Robert Stine is the subject of an investigation, which has resulted in referral to the Dane County District Attorney’s office for criminal charges of sexual abuse of a child,” said a letter from DCF to the church, posted online by WICS. “The Department has concluded that these findings substantially relate to the care of children and have created a condition that directly threatens the health, safety, and welfare of children in care.”
The church’s day care facility was reportedly shut down in April. Neither Stine nor his attorney responded to a request for comment.
According to his bio on Midvale’s website, Stine is a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and has been pastor since 2007. He is also a former leader of the Baptist Student Union at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The church is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Despite the investigation, Stine’s bio remains on the church website and the television station reported that he has continued to preach at the church, though videos of recent services were recently reportedly removed from the church’s YouTube page.
Stine had been president of the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention until May, when he resigned because of the police investigation, said Leo Endel, the convention’s executive director.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
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On my father’s death, my mom put me in a church daycare for the summer until school started. A couple years later, she read in the paper that the leader had been arrested for sexual assault on children and producing child porn. He was taking photos of the kids, telling them their parents consented to it. The center was closed down. I was spared because I was too old for their taste. How old is too old? I was 11.
He operated a day care?Talk about a fox in a chicken coop!
Missi—I’m glad you were “too old” for that “leader!”
Yeah. I know someone who was a victim. That place was was abusive in many other ways, too. If I had kids, I’d never put them in daycare.
Missi, that’s seriously messed up! How disturbing that you were “too old” to be of interest to that pedophile.
Again, this is not a drag performer.
Floyd (the abuser’s name) had a van. He was in charge of the little kids, age 5 to 9. He was considered to be a nice guy because he took the kids to the park and bought them treats with his own money. Now we know why. Someone who lived through it told me when the rest of us were out doing stuff, he brought the kids back to the church basement (where we ate our meals) to take Polaroid photos of them nude. Him and a couple other guys. He had all the parents fooled. I hated that place. The other workers were assholes, and untrained on top of that. I complained to my mom, but she was too wrapped up in her own issues to care.
Missi— It’s bad enough that you had to be anywhere near Floyd. But to have a self-absorbed mother on top of that!
Some of us who are sexually abused (in my case, by a priest) don’t tell because we don’t have the language or expect to be discredited, or even blamed. But now I wonder how many kids don’t tell because their parents (or other “responsible” adults in their lives) are preoccupied or indifferent.
There was sexual abuse in our family too. My mom was deep in denial about my dad’s alcoholism and abusive tendencies. About 2 weeks before her death, she confessed to me she knew everything that was going on, but she chose to ignore it and concentrate on her life and career. “I sacrificed you to save myself” were her exact words. And, she cried because now she thought she wouldn’t go to Heaven.
Missi—Please pardon me for sounding trite, but I am really sorry for what you experienced while growing up.
If anyone needs evidence that Christian beliefs don’t make people more loving, caring, empathetic or simply moral, your mother provides it. After what she did to, and didn’t do for,
you, all she could worry about was not going to Heaven. That’s the capstone, if you will, of her edifice of self-absorption and plain selfishness. What a piece of shit!