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.
Robert Crouse, pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Columbia City, Indiana, stands accused of raping three mentally disabled children. Faith Baptist is a King James-only Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation.
Robert M. Crouse, 57, 835 W. Dogwood Drive, Columbia City, is charged with three counts of rape when the victim is mentally disabled or deficient, all level 3 felonies.
On Dec. 17, 2020, an officer met with a woman at Faith Baptist Church in Columbia City. The woman told the officer that Crouse admitted to having sex with three children and that she believed the incidents occurred in the church. In court documents, the children are also described as young adults with special needs.
A Columbia City detective spoke with Crouse about what occurred. Crouse said the children willingly participated in the acts with him and that they would all watch pornography at the church.
According to court documents, Crouse said they watched pornography as a group about two to three times a month for the past two years. He allegedly said the children performed sexual acts in front of him and also onto him. Crouse also said he engaged in the sexual activity with them as well.
Crouse told the detective he didn’t record any of the sexual acts; he said he had sexual intercourse with one of the children about 10 to 15 times. Crouse said no alcohol, drugs or weapons were used during the activities.
He also said he didn’t engage in any sexual activity with anyone else aside from the three children. When asked why, Crouse said it was because they were willing participants.
Crouse said the majority of the acts happened at his home but that some occurred at the church. He told the detective he spoke with the three individuals and asked for forgiveness.
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In their interview, the first child said Crouse, who they referred to as “Pastor Bob,” hadn’t done anything sexual to them. The child reported having no idea if anything sexual had occurred between Crouse and the other two children. When told that Crouse had already confessed to committing the sexual acts on them, the child didn’t disclose any further information.
The second child said Crouse showed them pornography at the church and asked them to perform a sexual act on him. When the child told him no, Crouse allegedly smacked the child’s face. The child said Crouse would make them call him ‘master’ and if they didn’t, Crouse would smack them.
The child also recalled an instance where the woman walked in on Crouse and them naked while at Crouse’s home. Crouse told the woman to leave. The child discussed in detail their sexual encounters with Crouse and also told the interviewer about the third child’s sexual interactions with Crouse. They also said Crouse would make the three of them call him ‘master.’
The third child discussed being inappropriately touched by Crouse and elaborated on how Crouse engaged in sexual activity with them. They said they had to call Crouse ‘master’ and that Crouse would occasionally hit them.
On Dec. 28, 2020, the detective interviewed the woman who reported the incidents to officers. The woman said she never walked in on Crouse and the children having sexual intercourse. She said she had suspicions that something was going on with Crouse and the children but didn’t investigate to see if it was true.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Jeffrey Forrest, a youth pastor, daycare worker, and camp worker at Abilene, Texas churches and camps, was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison after he was convicted on two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child. According to news reports, Forrest worked for Pioneer Drive Baptist Church from 1990 to 1998. According to the church, Forrest was an intern in the church’s Child Development Center, Pre-Teen and Recreational Ministries.
Jeffrey Winston Forrest, 43, is accused of molesting a boy while working with children in the 1990s. The specific case occurred in 1993.
Police say at least one other victim has come forward. They are asking other victims to come forward as well.
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A spokesman for Pioneer Drive Baptist Church has said Forrest worked at that church from 1990 to 1998. Forrest was an intern in the church’s Child Development Center, Pre-Teen and Recreational Ministries.
The church spokesman recently said the church has had no affiliation with Forrest since then.
Forrest was arrested April 3 for having sex with a boy who attended the daycare where he worked in 1993.
Abilene police say at least three victims have come forward saying Forrest abused them.
KTXS-12 recently posted a timeline detailing Forrest’s crimes (1990s), indictment/arrest (2015), failure to appear for trial (2016), and subsequent arrest in Mexico in 2020.
The manhunt for a U.S. Marshals 15 Most Wanted fugitive ended Friday with the arrest in Mexico of Jeffrey Winston Forrest, 47, wanted by the Taylor County Sheriff’s Department in Abilene, Texas, for two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, bail jumping, and failure to appear.
According to a Zapopan police release, Forrest was arrested Friday afternoon by members of the State Attorney’s Office, Zapopan Police Department, and the National Institute of Immigration (INM). He was located in a drive-through store in Zapopan, Jalisco, after his presence and identity were confirmed with the existing alert in the U.S.
Forrest was deported today and brought back to the Northern District of Texas, where he will answer the charges against him.
Forrest’s capture in Mexico is a direct result of information that was developed from a tip that was provided to “In Pursuit with John Walsh” on Investigation Discovery after the show profiled the case.
In 2015, charges were filed against Forrest when four victims came forward and accused him of sexually assaulting them. The victims stated Forrest repeatedly assaulted them from the ages of 8 to 15. Investigators believe he used his position as a youth minister at several different churches to gain access and groom his victims. On April 2, 2015, Forrest was arrested on two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child. Following his arrest, Forrest was released on bond and a trial date was set for Aug. 29, 2016. Unfortunately, he failed to appear for his trial, and after an investigation into his disappearance, authorities determined he never intended to.
While investigators found credible evidence of his travel to Mexico, his trail had grown cold due to his use and knowledge of the dark web and communication software such as Tor to mask his digital footprint.
Let this story be a reminder of the fact that sexual predators often hide in plain sight, often wolves among sheep.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Last month, Wayne Aarum, a former senior high minister at The Chapel at Crosspoint in Getzville, New York, current pastor of First Baptist Church in Arcade, New York, and the operator of Circle C Ranch youth camp in Delevan, New York, was accused of sexually assaulting at least twenty-one girls in the 1990s.
Aarum denies the allegations against him and continues to operate the Circle C Ranch. Daryl Dekalb, a Circle C board director, says that Aarum is a True Christian®. Dekalb stated:
He totally denies any wrongdoing whatsoever. Wayne has ministered to thousands and thousands of kids over the years, and we never heard anything from anybody.
This is why we’re suspicious of these charges. We’ve seen nothing, heard nothing, and they’re operating from an anonymous standpoint with everybody, and we believe they have an agenda … to take over the ranch.
Uh, twenty-one women have leveled accusations against Aarum. So much for “we never heard anything from anybody.” And the same women are behind a conspiracy to take over Circle C Ranch. Sure . . .
Previously, Dekalb — a true defender of women (that’s sarcasm, by the way) — said:
There is absolutely no credibility to any of these things. I worked in the ministry, my wife and I have worked in this ministry, all of those same years that they’re talking about. We never saw anything even approaching this.
It’s all lightweight stuff they’re bringing up anyway. It’s common for women as they get along in life…to see how their lives are not going well and when they sit down, like with a social worker…and they start hearing stuff from a social worker that says to them, ‘Well, have you ever had something in your life where maybe this is set off, the condition that you’re in now?’ I mean, none of these women had any complaints at all until they were contacted by this group and suggestions were made to them.
The longtime director of a Christian youth camp in Delevan is refusing to step down despite complaints that he inappropriately touched young women and girls at the camp and when he was a youth pastor in the 1990s at one of the area’s largest churches.
The Chapel in Amherst said it cut ties with the Circle C Ranch following an internal investigation by a Texas lawyer that found Wayne Aarum had engaged in a “pattern of inappropriate behaviors,” such as stroking the legs and touching the clothed breasts and genital areas of young women and teenage girls.
Attorney Kimberlee Norris said she interviewed 21 women who alleged “inappropriate touch” by Aarum. Some of the allegations date back to 1990s, when Aarum ran a ministry program for high school students at the Chapel. Other inappropriate behaviors allegedly occurred during his time as Circle C Ranch director, since 2000, although none of the complaints related to behavior within the past five years.
Aarum, 54, denied the allegations and has refused to step down as camp president. He has the backing of the camp’s board of trustees, which released a response to Norris’ report stating that “there is no substantial evidence supporting” the claims.
Norris also wrote to the New York State Office of Children and Family Services with a list of dozens of inappropriate actions alleged against Aarum, including entering cabins without knocking or announcing himself, while girls were changing clothes; meeting alone with girls in his office after lights out; whispering intimate statements to girls, such as “I love you” and “You are so beautiful”; and giving back massages that included rubbing of girls’ buttocks.
“Girls, now women, who participated in the investigation said that the behaviors became so normalized that they assumed others, including parents and ministry leaders, knew and approved,” Norris wrote in her letter to the state office.
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Officials at the Chapel said they were first made aware in 2019 of allegations about Aarum’s inappropriate behavior at the camp and took that information to the Circle C Ranch board, according to a statement provided to The News and posted on the Chapel’s website.
Chapel leaders learned a few months later about additional allegations of inappropriate behavior by Aarum during his time as a church staff member from 1991 to 2000. They spoke to Aarum, who denied any wrongdoing, according to the Chapel’s statement.
The church hired Norris last October to investigate. Norris runs MinistrySafe, which provides training and screening to prevent child sex abuse in churches, camps, youth sports and other settings.
“The membership was advised that the independent investigation credibly confirmed a pattern of inappropriate interaction with young women involved in The Chapel’s student ministry in the late 90s and also uncovered ongoing inappropriate interaction with young women not associated with The Chapel who had been involved in the previously referenced local youth camp over the last two decades,” The Chapel said in its statement.
Chelsea Carnahan, 28, recounted how Aarum would stroke her back and hair, hold her hand and touch her legs during one-on-one counseling sessions and talks when she was a Pioneer High School student from 2006 to 2010. She also attended First Baptist Church of Arcade, where Aarum is pastor, and volunteered at the Circle C Ranch in the winter.
“He’d get uncomfortably close to my face, and I remember thinking as a teenager about the tension of him being so close to my face, like is he trying to kiss me?” said Carnahan, who now lives near Tampa and works in a restaurant. “I remember a lot of hugs lasting a little too long.”
Sometimes he would grab her from behind and pull his pelvis tight to her body, she said. Carnahan described Aarum’s actions as “grooming” and “sexual predation.” She also accused Aarum of inflicting what she termed “religious trauma” on her.
Carnahan said she was not among the 21 unidentified women cited in the investigative report. She said she reported her complaints to Camardo after Aarum’s denials were posted online at the camp website.
Aarum and his supporters have maintained that he is unable to properly address claims being brought against him because he doesn’t know who has made them. But Carnahan said she has made clear on social media who she is and what she alleges Aarum did.
“I’m not anonymous,” she said. “I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what I went through. I don’t want any more children to be affected. I don’t want any more children to come through his camp.”
According to Circle C’s board of directors, this story is just a case of these women (and people like me) “misunderstanding” Aarum the True Christian’s behavior; that Aarum has a deep, Jesus-fueled love for teen girls, and his actions were just Aarum showing affection for these women, many of whom were “troubled.”
In its response to Norris’ report, the Circle C Ranch board suggests that the volume of complaints against Aarum was related to the work he did, often with troubled teenagers. But the allegations are from a small percentage of the young people Aarum has worked with over the years.
“Wayne’s work prevents teenage suicides, avoids teen pregnancies, postpones too-young marriages, helps confront bullying at school, teaches how to respond appropriately to parents and authority figures, how to survive peer pressure, and how to defend their faith in a kind, positive way,” the board said. “It is very difficult to do this kind of work successfully from across the room. That always raises the risk that someone will find the teacher to be too close for comfort. Speaking the truth to a difficult situation can be met with hostility, fear, and a wide variety of other responses.”
The board’s own investigative report also suggested that the unidentified women cited in Norris’ report may have misinterpreted Aarum’s gestures of good will because of a “common type of trauma in their past … that makes them ultra-sensitive to certain kinds of verbal Bible teaching or certain physical actions such as hugs that are entirely appropriate and not at all offensive to other women in the same circumstances.”
According to Randy Fancher, a former trustee of the Circle C Ranch, the Ranch’s board has known about Aarum’s inappropriate sexual behavior for years.
At one point in the meeting, Randy Fancher, a former trustee of the Circle C Ranch, said the camp’s board hired an attorney more than a year ago to investigate an allegation against Wayne Aarum. The attorney advised that Aarum step down as president and camp director, but the board didn’t follow through on that advice, said Fancher, who no longer is on the camp’s board.
Fancher said the camp had documented instances in which other camp leaders had approached Aarum about his actions.
“There was documentation of people going to Wayne and saying, ‘Hey listen, like, we love you, but you need to be careful of this.’ And this started 20 years ago,” said Fancher. “I, myself, personally 20 years ago sat down with Mr. Wes (Wayne Aarum’s father) and said, ‘I love Wayne with all my heart, but I saw him interact in a way that was just inappropriate.’ ”
Fancher said he also has heard firsthand accounts from women “who are truly victims.”
Kudos to Buffalo News reporter Jay Tokasz for his fine reporting on this story.
Now that I have laid the background for the sexual misconduct allegations against Wayne Aarum, I want to address a comment left today by an eighty-year-old female defender of Aarum. Here’s what she had to say:
I went to the Chapel when Wayne was active there. When either he or his brother entered the building it was like Elvis had entered. The girls flocked around them. Did they hug him, did they kiss him, did they stand too close, maybe. Did he hug, kiss and get too close, maybe. Most people do when they hug!! But as a mother and as I remember it, I sure didn’t see any of these girls back away or push him away. .
My husband and I used to laugh and he would often joke and say, “what does that guy have that I don’t?) I would remind him youth and he is single!! As for myself, no offense to the girls and I hope I am wrong and I am not condemning them, they were young and naive but, I never heard him ooh and ah about the girls, he was their leader so naturally he would befriend them. I have never been to Circle C Ranch but i have never heard anything bad about it. My son was familiar with it and thought it was a great place. Circle C Ranch has probably done more for the youth that attended there than most other places. I think as an older women what you have here are a bunch of younger women who are remembering their youth as they get older (we all do that! The would of, should of, could of makes us laugh or haunt us), and, with all the hype in the world today and all the hype about suing for sexual misconduct some might be misconstruing what really happened.
As for Bruce, the article sounds like you really aren’t an atheist, but you are trying to make us all believe you are. God bless you my friend. I feel sorry for you, you are missing out on the good life.
PS: I am going to be 80 years old this year, so I have seen just about everything
Yes, she really did say these things. Yes, she really did defend Aarum’s abhorrent behavior, saying — much like Elvis back in his womanizing days — the girls didn’t back away or push him away, so they must have been okay with it. I have seen this same argument used numerous times by predatory preachers and their defenders. Sure, Pastor Billy had sex with a church teen, but she came on to him or didn’t turn away from his advances. Instead of Pastor Billy being the adult in the room, an authority figure who has a moral and legal obligation to care for and protect others, he is viewed as just another hapless, helpless horn dog. If the victim didn’t want to be sexually harassed, abused, or raped, she should have done a better job protecting her virtue. In other words, IT IS ALWAYS THE WOMAN’S FAULT!
Years ago, the subject of sexual abuse came up in a discussion my wife and I were having with an older family member, a pastor’s wife who spent her entire life in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches. Instead of agreeing with us about the seriousness of sexual abuse, the woman said, “well, that’s just what boys do.” Polly and I were stunned by her words. According to the Bible, older women are to teach the younger church women. What, exactly, are these older followers of Jesus teaching their charges? That sexual harassment and abuse are just a part of life; that unwanted sexual attention from preachers, deacons, Sunday school teachers, choir directors, and Christian school principals is an expected part of life; that these grown-ass men are just horny teenager at heart; that the best thing girls and women can do is hide their bodies from the leering gazes of men? (Please see Beware of Deacon Bob.)
I have been writing about Evangelicalism’s sexual abuse scandal for almost thirteen years. The Black Collar Crime series now numbers over 800 stories about sexual misconduct by (mostly) Evangelical “men of God.” It should be clear to anyone who is paying attention that Evangelicalism has a huge sexual misconduct problem. Throw in the consensual sexual affairs Evangelical preachers have with church members (often women who are barely “legal”) who are not their wives, and it is clear, at least to me, that this not just a problem of a “few bad apples.”
The commenter mentioned above concludes her comment with this:
As for Bruce, the article sounds like you really aren’t an atheist, but you are trying to make us all believe you are. God bless you my friend. I feel sorry for you, you are missing out on the good life.
Normally, I would give Grandma the “Bruce Treatment,” but I won’t do so today. I don’t want to detract from the focus of this post: Wayne Aarum’s alleged predatory behavior. I will say this: I am indeed an atheist. However, if I weren’t, I sure as hell wouldn’t trust my children and grandchildren with this woman. I sure as hell wouldn’t send them to Circle C Ranch. And I sure as hell wouldn’t trust the board members of Circle C to protect and care for them. If this is the best that God/Jesus/Holy Spirit can do, no thanks.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Prosecutors say Swain sexually abused three boys between the ages of 8 and 16 from 1997 to 2004.
The three victims, who are now in their 30s, were members of the church and trusted Swain, investigators say.
“Bishop Swain is accused of using his position of trust and authority to ingratiate himself to his victims and their families, grooming them in order to gain access to targets for his sexual abuse,” Suffolk County District Attorney Rollins said in a statement Thursday. “He allegedly preyed on his victims’ faith and used it as an entryway into their lives.”
“He was seen as a role model, and the victims’ families all looked up to him,” Assistant District Attorney Audrey Mark said in court last year.
Investigators allege Swain abused two of the boys at Greater Victory Temple and the third boy at his Dorchester home where the youngest child sometimes spent the night.
The abuse went on for years, prosecutors allege.
Greater Victory Temple is a Pentecostal church that has been part of the Boston community for 19 years, according to the church’s website.
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In her statement, Rollins commended the strength and courage of the survivors who came forward in order to make sure Swain has to answer in court for his actions.
“It can be incredibly difficult to disclose childhood sexual abuse, whether as a child or as an adult survivor. The survivors who came forward to disclose abuse by Bishop Swain showed a tremendous amount of strength and bravery,” she said. “It can take decades for victims to make the decision to come forward about sexual abuse, as is what happened here.”
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
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.
Wayne Aarum, a former senior high minister at The Chapel at Crosspoint in Getzville, New York, current pastor of First Baptist Church in Arcade, New York, and the operator of Circle C Ranch youth camp in Delevan, New York, stands accused of sexually assaulting at least twenty-one girls in the 1990s.
The report stated that 27 people came forward to corroborate some of the alleged behaviors, including “hand rubbing inside of thigh…failing to honor preference NOT to be touched” and “meeting 1/1 with girls late into the night.”
Leaders at The Chapel said they, through MinistrySafe, also reported the allegations to law enforcement.
“I still don’t know, although they [the church and the victims] have accused me and pretty much condemned me, I don’t know what I’m accused of. We’ve asked for any information they can give us . . . they’ve given us nothing.
There is absolutely no credibility to any of these things. I worked in the ministry, my wife and I have worked in this ministry, all of those same years that they’re talking about. We never saw anything even approaching this.
It’s all lightweight stuff they’re bringing up anyway. It’s common for women as they get along in life…to see how their lives are not going well and when they sit down, like with a social worker…and they start hearing stuff from a social worker that says to them, ‘Well, have you ever had something in your life where maybe this is set off, the condition that you’re in now?’ I mean, none of these women had any complaints at all until they were contacted by this group and suggestions were made to them.
According to DeKalb, putting your hands on the genitals and breasts of teen girls is “lightweight stuff.” Makes one wonder what kind of man DeKalb really is. Instead of, at the very least, withholding judgment until the alleged crimes have been investigated, DeKalb says he didn’t see the crimes happen, so he’s sure Aarum is innocent of all charges; that the accusations are just a smokescreen meant to cover up an attempt to take over the camp.
Several news reports say that Aarum may not face criminal persecution for his alleged crimes due to the statute of limitations running out.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, Georgia, stands accused of a string of Asian massage parlor shootings that left eight people dead. Long, a devout Southern Baptist who frequented massage parlors, felt guilty over his “sin” and decided to atone for his sins by murdering eight people.
Long attended Crabapple First Baptist Church, a Fundamentalist Southern Baptist congregation in Alpharetta, Georgia. The church has made its website and social media accounts private. Last Sunday, First Baptist’s pastor, Jerry Dockery, had this to say in his sermon:
We’ve had, what, 45 presidents in our brief history as a nation? How many other kings around the world? How many other rulers have sat upon thrones, claiming to be in charge? The King is coming again.
When Christ returns, he will wage war against those who have rejected his name.
There is one word devoted to their demise. Swept away! Banished! Judged. They have no power before God. Satan himself is bound and released and then bound again and banished. That great dragon deceiver — just that quickly — God throws him into an eternal torment. And then we read where everyone — everyone that rejects Christ — will join Satan, the Beast and the false prophet in hell.
This sermon has since been deleted. I wonder why?
First Baptist is a member of Founders Ministries — a Calvinistic group dedicated to reclaiming the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) for the glory of John Calvin’s God and five-point Calvinism.
guy who was very active in his Baptist church. He prayed a prayer and was baptised at 8 but later confessed that he had been a false convert, who was now truly regenerate. He was baptised in 2018 and his testimony circulated online.
Most news media sites have focused on the victims’ race, treating these murders as a racially motivated hate crime. Long has already disputed that claim, but that narrative continues to drive discussions about his crimes. I want to posit a different motivation for Long’s murderous rampage: Evangelical teaching on sexuality.
Long frequented massage parlors, I assume even after he really, really, really got saved. Getting re-saved is common in churches with Calvinistic leanings, especially Southern Baptist and Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregations. People who walk the aisle, pray a prayer, and are pronounced born again, often have second born again experiences later in life after hearing the TRUE gospel of sovereign grace. I recently read a book about a Sovereign Grace congregation in Texas (which I pastored for a time in 1994) that detailed some of its members’ conversion stories. Almost to the man (and women), the members testified that they had made false professions of faith, and upon hearing the TRUE gospel, they repented of their sins, and Jesus saved them. This happens so often in Calvinistic churches that I think it is fair for me to conclude that this is the norm.
Despite Long’s latest conversion experience, he still struggled with what new reports are calling “sex addiction.” While I know nothing about Crabapple First Baptist Church and its pastor, I think I can safely assume that Pastor Dockery preached the gospel of sexual purity; that he preached against fornication, adultery, homosexuality, premarital sex, masturbation, and pornography. As many Evangelical teens and men do, Long struggled with staying on the straight and narrow sexually. Instead of being taught to embrace and own his sexuality, Long likely heard guilt- and fear-inducing sermons about how the thrice-holy God viewed sexual “sins.” While I am in no way justifying what Long did, I can envision how overwhelming guilt drove him to massacre those he believed were the locus of his sin problem. Long planned to murder more sex workers, but fortunately, he was stopped before he could. Imagine how great a blood atonement he planned to make to Jesus to expiate his sexual sins.
Evangelical church leaders are falling all over themselves to “explain” Long’s heinous behavior. I wonder if they will take a long, hard look in the mirror and see that their “Biblical” teachings and preaching are the problem? Evangelicals will distance themselves from Long, deconstructing his life, and even saying that he was never a REAL Christian. However, the evidence suggests that Long was a Jesus-loving man who took his faith seriously. A man who attended high school with Long had this to say about him:
He was very innocent seeming and wouldn’t even cuss. He was sorta nerdy and didn’t seem violent from what I remember. He was a hunter and his father was a youth minister or pastor. He was big into religion.
“As many of you may remember, when I was 8 years old I thought I was becoming a Christian, and got baptized during that time. And I remember a lot of the reason for that is a lot of my friends in my Sunday school class were doing that.
And after that time, there wasn’t any fruit from the root that is our salvation.
[Long goes on to say that when he was in seventh grade he attended a youth group and a speaker was discussing the biblical story of the prodigal son.]
“The son goes off and squanders all that he has and lives completely for himself and then, when he finds he’s wanting to eat pig food, he realized there’s something wrong and he goes back to his father and his father runs back to him and embraces him. And by the grace of God I was able to draw the connection there and realize this is a story between what happened with me and God. I ran away living completely for myself, and he still wants me, and so that’s when I was saved.”
There’s little doubt that Long was a born-again Christian, that he truly loved Jesus. There is also little doubt that he had problems with his sexuality, and this led to the deaths of eight innocent people. While race and misogyny played a part, they were secondary to his religious beliefs.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Recently, William Thornton, a semi-retired Southern Baptist pastor, wrote a post about the Ravi Zacharias scandal and the Billy Graham Rule (BGR). Zacharias, a darling in the Evangelical apologetic community, has been exposed as a sexual predator.
The influential evangelist Ravi Zacharias, who died last spring, engaged in “sexting, unwanted touching, spiritual abuse, and rape,” according to a report released on Thursday by the global evangelical organization he founded.
After initially denying accounts of his misconduct, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries announced that an investigation had found credible evidence of sexual misconduct spanning many years and multiple continents.
The announcement was the result of an investigation by a Southeastern law firm, Miller & Martin, which RZIM hired in October to investigate accounts of sexual misconduct by Mr. Zacharias.
“We believe not only the women who made their allegations public but also additional women who had not previously made public allegations against Ravi but whose identities and stories were uncovered during the investigation,” the ministry’s board of directors said in a statement accompanying the report. “We are devastated by what the investigation has shown and are filled with sorrow for the women who were hurt by this terrible abuse.”
When Mr. Zacharias died of cancer in May at age 74, he was one of the most revered evangelists in the United States. Former Vice President Mike Pence spoke at his memorial service in Atlanta, calling him “a man of faith who could rightly handle the word of truth like few others in our time” and comparing him to Billy Graham and C.S. Lewis.
Though the report adds shocking new details, accounts of Mr. Zacharias’s sexual misconduct had arisen in recent years. In 2017, he settled a lawsuit with a Canadian couple whom he had accused of attempting to extort him over intimate text messages he had exchanged with the wife.
Then last fall, several months after Mr. Zacharias’s death, the magazine Christianity Today reported on allegations that Mr. Zacharias had groped and masturbated in front of several women who worked at two day spas he co-owned near his ministry’s headquarters in Alpharetta, Ga. After initially denying those claims, RZIM acknowledged in December that an interim report from Miller & Martin confirmed that he had engaged in “sexual misconduct.”
The full report paints a stark portrait of that misconduct. The law firm interviewed more than a dozen massage therapists who treated Mr. Zacharias. Five of them reported that he had touched or rubbed them inappropriately, and four said he would touch his own genitals or ask them to touch him. Eight said he would either start the massage completely nude or remove the draping sheets during the treatment.
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The law firm also found a pattern of intimate text and email-based relationships with women. In reviewing his electronic devices, they found the phone numbers of more than 200 massage therapists and more than 200 selfies, some of them nudes, from much younger women. Mr. Zacharias also used the nonprofit ministry to financially support some of his long-term therapists. The report also reveals that he owned two apartments in Bangkok, where he spent 256 days between 2010 and 2014. One of his massage therapists stayed in the other apartment.
Mr. Zacharias said in 2017 that in 45 years of marriage, “I have never engaged in any inappropriate behavior of any kind.”
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In 2014, Mr. Zacharias met a Canadian couple, Brad and Lori Anne Thompson, at a fund-raising luncheon in Ontario. They stayed in touch, and eventually Mr. Zacharias invited Ms. Thompson to correspond privately on BlackBerry Messenger. The evangelist was 30 years older than Ms. Thompson, and she saw him as a “spiritual father,” she has said. After she confided in him about her history of abuse and trauma, she has said, Mr. Zacharias began soliciting sexually explicit messages.
When Ms. Thompson told Mr. Zacharias that she needed to tell her husband about their relationship, Mr. Zacharias threatened suicide, according to leaked emails first published by the blogger Julie Anne Smith.
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After a lawyer for the Thompsons approached Mr. Zacharias privately in 2017, he sued the couple, portraying them publicly as serial extortionists and saying that Ms. Thompson had sent him the explicit messages against his will. The suit ended in private mediation, and all parties signed a nondisclosure agreement.
RZIM’s board expressed regret on Thursday for its response to Ms. Thompson’s allegations. “It is with profound grief that we recognize that because we did not believe the Thompsons and both privately and publicly perpetuated a false narrative, they were slandered for years and their suffering was greatly prolonged and intensified,” it said in the statement accompanying the report.
Mr. Zacharias co-owned two day spas near RZIM headquarters between 2004 and 2015, an unusual venture for an evangelist but one he made no attempt to hide. At the grand opening of Jivan Wellness at a strip mall in 2009, speakers included the comedian Jeff Foxworthy; Sonny Perdue, then the governor of Georgia; and the pastor Johnny Hunt, who was the president of the Southern Baptist Convention at the time.
As they are wont to do, Evangelicals are busy removing Zacharias’ visage from the Mt. Apologetics Rushmore. Some self-righteous Evangelicals are even saying that Zacharias was never a True Christian® Which makes one wonder about the lack of discernment among Evangelical pastors. Thousands of pastors attended Zacharias’ apologetics conferences and read his books, yet not one of them “discerned” that he was a sexual predator. Even J.D. Hall, the editor of Protestia (Pulpit & Pen) — a site known for its muckraking reporting on Evangelical sexual peccadilloes and alleged heresy — failed to sniff out Zacharias’ perverse behavior.
Ravi Zacharias
As of today, only Zacharias’ son, Nathan, thinks he is innocent:
First, RZIM does not speak for me. They have formed their own opinion. But it does not dictate mine. I do not agree with them for legitimate reasons. I will not, however, debate those differences publicly.
…Regarding some specific individuals who were once my colleagues, how “brave” you are to aggressively take on a man who can’t even defend himself, as well as attack his grieving family who is far more blindsided and hurt by this situation than you can ever be. And how “righteous” you are to think that we must continually pile on our punishment AFTER he has already faced the ultimate judge.
…God chose to spare Dad from all this by calling him home when he did. But how “virtuous” of you to insist that you hand out the relentless punishment and humiliation that God saw no place for in dad’s lifetime.
Even *if* these allegations are true, there is no doubt that God actively blessed my dad and did so right up until he passed. His impact was only getting greater. So what these individuals are saying – along with any person or organization that wants to cancel my dad – is that God was wrong to do so, so we must now correct God’s blessing/mistake by erasing my dad and his voice. To that I say, “That’s a bold strategy, Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for him.”
Finally and most importantly, nothing could change how much I love my dad and miss him. I am still proud to be his son.
Now back to Thornton’s post. Thornton used the Zacharias scandal to talk about how male pastors should handle their interactions with women — especially privately. Thornton also discussed what is commonly called in Evangelical circles the Billy Graham Rule (BGR).
One aspect of it that has arisen is that the BG Rule, the man of God (pastor, evangelist, or other male Christian figure) will not be alone with any woman not his wife, Billy Graham and his team establishing that practice early on in his evangelistic ministry.
The rule has been adopted by many of the brethren (it was recommended to me as a ministerial standard when I was ordained decades ago) and is held up as a shield against the wiles of the devil and all those devilish women who would “take a pastor down.” The phrase with quotes is the way I’ve often heard it described.
If a brother wants to pattern his relationships and interactions with females in this manner, he may do so. But he might be apprised that such is highly sexist, presumes all women to be potential steamy seductresses, and makes it appear that he, the pillar of male rectitude, is powerless to resist; thus, the hard and fast rule about ever being with any woman alone other than his beloved wife.
Zacharias, as you probably know, was a BGR follower, except when he needed those medical massages. One can see how that played out with numerous victims, accusations of rape in some cases, and a lifetime of ministry totally undermined by his own decisions and choices.
I’m curious if the rule which is in its seventh decade now, is still applicable, useful and practical. The changes since the 1940s are considerable: females in the workplace, including church staffs; the manner business is conducted; the ubiquitous use of social media for relationships and contacts.
I was a single staff guy most of my ministry. If my church had an administrative assistant, always a woman, it was impossible to always have a third person at the church at all times. It’s also a brazen and thoughtless insult to all women to be treated thus.
Embedded deep into the thinking of Evangelical pastors is the notion that women to whom they are not married are dangerous creatures who must be kept at a distance, lest they tempt men of God to commit sexual sin. As a young ministerial student, I was taught that there were Jezebels in every church, and that I must never, ever allow myself to be alone with any woman who was not my wife. According to my professors and chapel speakers, there would always be women lurking in the shadows of the steeple, ready and willing to “steal” my sexual purity. Men, including pastors, were, by nature, weak-kneed, visually stimulated horn dogs. Allow the doors of your office or study to be shut with you and a woman alone, and, why, anything could happen! This kind of thinking, of course, teaches men a warped view of women and human sexuality. While I agree that humans are sexual beings — a trait necessary for our species’ propagation — it does not follow that every time two people of the opposite sex are alone with each other, sexual intercourse is a real and distinct possibility. Common sense tells us otherwise.
This view of women and human sexuality found its nexus with Fundamentalist Baptist evangelist Billy Graham. Graham had three rules he lived by when it came to women who were not his wife. Graham would not travel alone with a woman, meet alone with a woman, or eat alone with a woman. These rules, over time, were called “The Billy Graham Rules.” While Graham was viewed as a liberal by Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preachers, his three rules were taught and preached in IFB churches and colleges alike. Simply put, stay away from women who aren’t your wife. Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! Abstain from the very appearance of evil, the Bible says. Eating a meal with a woman who is not your wife, offering her a ride in your car, or counseling her alone with the door closed, all give forth the appearance of evil. I knew of some pastors who wouldn’t even counsel female church members out of fear that their ministry could be compromised.
Most non-Evangelicals had never heard of the “Billy Graham Rule” until Vice President Mike Pence let it be known that he, too, avoided being alone with any woman who was not his wife. Moderns were astounded by the Vice President’s Puritanical view of women, but to my ears his words were what I had heard over and over again as an Evangelical pastor.
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According to Ellis [Can Men and Women be Friends], all men should live according to “Billy Graham-Mike Pence Rule.” I say all, and not just married men, because Ellis, who describes himself as a conservative Christian, likely believes that it is a sin for unmarrieds to have sex. Thus, not only should married men abstain from being alone with women who are not their wives, so should unmarried men. Women, for married and unmarried men alike, are the problem. If married men want to keep themselves morally pure, then they must never, ever put themselves in positions where they are alone with women. For married men, the wife of their youth awaits, legs spread wide, ready and willing to satisfy their sexual needs. Unmarried men have no such fire extinguisher awaiting them — the Apostle Paul said it is better to marry than to burn — yet they, too, are implored to avoid being alone with the opposite sex. So what are these young men to do? Many of them, if they marry at all, do not marry until their late twenties. This means that they must wrestle with unsatisfied raging hormones for twelve to fifteen years. And remember, masturbation — lustful self-gratification that leads to homosexuality — is verboten too. (Please read Good Baptist Boys Don’t Masturbate, Oh Yes, They Do!)
This kind of thinking breeds immature, juvenile men; men who are weak; men who are not in control of their sexuality; men who see women primarily as objects of sexual gratification. Ellis, Graham, and Pence would likely object to my characterization of their beliefs, but it seems clear, at least to me, that women are treated as dangerous, seductive beings who must be avoided lest being alone with them leads to intercourse on office and study floors. This kind of thinking objectifies women, turning them into chattel used for male sexual gratification. Since the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God condemns all sexual behavior except married heterosexual vaginal intercourse, (preferably in the missionary position, and primarily for human propagation), any relationship or circumstance that could, even remotely, lead to moral compromise must be resolutely avoided. (A separate discussion is whether consensual adult sex with someone other than your wife or sex between unmarrieds is necessarily “wrong.”)
As I have stated time and again on this blog, Evangelical men need to grow up and own their sexuality. If they can’t control themselves when around physically and sexually attract women, the fault is theirs. Plenty of men are around women publicly and privately, yet they, somehow, keep themselves from having sex with them. These men have learned how to control their thoughts and behaviors. I have viewed countless women whom I have found attractive. My wife and I, now that we no longer concern ourselves with thoughts of God, judgment, and hell, are free to say to the other, that’s an attractive man/woman. Both of us have found it interesting the type of people the other is attracted to. Men I thought Polly would consider hot often elicit a meh from her — she really likes gay guys. Similarly, the kind of woman Polly thinks I would be attracted to often elicits a shrug from me. It’s liberating to be able to express my thoughts, interests, and desires without worrying that it could lead to adultery — a sin, according to the B-i-b-l-e, that lands offenders in the Lake of Fire.
While I generally agree with Thornton’s sentiments, many of the Southern Baptist pastors who commented on his post didn’t.
The BGR isn’t just useful because there might be certain unholy women after the man of God. It also helps the man of God [pastor, elder, brother] avoid his own internal temptations to act unbecomingly with a younger woman.
More often than not, at least lately, I hear of the minister grooming the younger lady.
The BGR helps him by helping him “flee” from lusts and sexual immorality.
Ah yes, Baptist preachers need to watch out for those younger women who are out to seduce and fuck them. These “men of God” must battle their “internal temptation” to give in to these temptations or take sexual advantage of young women who come to them for help. (For the record, I only had one woman try to seduce me in the twenty-five years I spent pastoring Evangelical churches.)
If you can stomach it, take a gander at the rest of the comments. My conclusion? If you are a young woman, I advise you not to be in the same zip code as a Southern Baptist pastor. These horn dogs can’t be trusted around women.
Makes all the females in your church to be latent seductresses. Care to find out which is the greater problem? pastors preying on women on their church or women who seduce or falsely accuse their pastor? When men, especially clergy, discuss this, why does it end up being so degrading and demeaning to women in general and women in the church specifically?
We don’t have a huge scandal in the SBC of women falsely accusing their humble and selfless pastors but of pastors abusing women and children.
The absurdity and lack of awareness of some of these comments is astonishing.
And to that, this atheist preacher says, AMEN!
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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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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.
Previous posts about McFarland can be read here and here.
John McFarland, pastor of Orangethorpe United Methodist Church in Fullerton, California, was charged with sexually assaulting seven children. Before his tenure at Orangethorpe, McFarland was the pastor of Surf City Church in Huntington Beach from 2011 to 2016, Fountain Valley United Methodist Church in Fountain Valley from 1988 to 2016, and from 1981 to 1988, he was the pastor of Calexico United Methodist Church in Calexico — all located in California. McFarland was also a chaplain for 20 years for the Fountain Valley Police Department until his retirement a few years ago.
John Rodgers McFarland, who has been the head pastor at Orangethorpe United Methodist Church in Fullerton since 2014, was arrested on a warrant Thursday charging him with seven counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor younger than 14 and four counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor 14 to 15 years old.
The 56-year-old Fullerton resident is accused of molesting the children between 2003 and 2017, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, which did not release the genders of the alleged victims.
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McFarland, who’s being held in the Orange County Jail in lieu of $2 million bail, faces up to 179 years to life in prison if convicted, prosecutors said.
In San Diego County, McFarland was arrested and charged in December with molesting a girl younger than 14 in Escondido between 2012 and 2013. The alleged molestation occurred when he was visiting relatives, said Lt. Chris Lick of the Escondido Police Department.
McFarland is due in court in San Diego June 18 for a pretrial hearing and July 9 for a preliminary hearing, according to Tanya Sierra, a spokeswoman for the D.A.’s office in San Diego County.
Last week, McFarland pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for his crimes.
McFarland initially pleaded not guilty to all charges in 2019. In response to his guilty plea Friday, he received a sentence of 15 years to life in state prison with 12 other sentences to run concurrently. He was also ordered to pay restitution, be tested for HIV/AIDS and participate in an AIDS prevention program, court documents indicate.
McFarland is scheduled to appear in court Feb. 22 for a firearms relinquishment hearing at the West Justice Center in Westminster.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
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.
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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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.
Edward Thompson, a music ministry leader at Christ Fellowship Church in Eugene, Oregon, and a former member of Eugene Faith Center, was convicted of “repeated acts of rape, sodomy and sexual abuse of a child” that started when the victim was a toddler. Thompson was sentenced to life in prison.
The jury convicted Thompson on charges of: 4 counts of Rape in the First Degree,Sodomy in the First Degree, 5 counts of Sex Abuse in the First Degree.
Thompson was sentenced Tuesday afternoon to 125 years in prison.
Prosecutors say the charges stemmed from “repeated acts of rape, sodomy and sexual abuse of a child.”
“The abuse began when the victim was a toddler, spanning from 2012 to 2018,” the Lane County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement. “The District Attorney’s Office appreciates Presiding Judge Debra Vogt’s recognition of the seriousness in this matter and reflecting that in sentencing Mr. Thompson.”
Thompson had been a leader in Eugene church communities.
“At the time of his arrest, it was reported that Thompson was a long-term member and a music ministry leader at Christ Fellowship Church in Eugene and former member of Eugene Faith Center,” Eugene Police said.
FBI agents and Eugene Police officers arrested Edward Samuel Thompson, age 38, at his Eugene home on Tuesday, August 21, 2018, following the service of a federal search warrant. Agents filed a criminal complaint against Thompson, charging him with accessing, receiving, possessing, and distributing child pornography. The arrest was without incident.
At his initial appearance on Tuesday, August 21, a federal magistrate ordered Thompson held. He is currently lodged at the Springfield Municipal Jail.
Thompson is a long-time member and a music ministry leader at Christ Fellowship Church in Eugene and former member of Eugene Faith Center where he still plays on a volleyball team at the church. The FBI offers this advice to concerned community members:
Parents who have a child who has come in contact with Thompson should let that child know that Thompson has been arrested for inappropriate behavior. Parents should tell that child that if Thompson did, or said, anything inappropriate to the child to let the parents know. If a child discloses an incident that did happen to him or her or that the child observed an innappropriate incident happen to someone else, the parent should not ask the child detailed questions about the incident. Instead, please contact Eugene Police Detective Chris Mackey at (541) 682-5175 or call the FBI at (541) 343-5222.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
