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.
In April 2024, Bret Bymaster, a former youth pastor at The River Church Community in San Jose, California, was accused of six felony counts of child sexual abuse.
The San Jose Spolightlight reported:
A prominent Silicon Valley leader and former pastor has been arrested and charged with six felony counts of child sex abuse, after being under investigation this year for allegations that surfaced about his time as a youth ministry leader at a popular South Bay church.
Brett Bymaster faces time behind bars for alleged lewd acts with a child who was as young as eight during his time at The River Church, according to charges by county prosecutors. He was arrested and booked at the Elmwood Correctional Facility on Thursday. His bond was set at $400,000, but at a Friday arraignment hearing, Judge Hector Ramon revoked his eligibility for bail at least until the next scheduled hearing on April 19, according to prosecutors. San José Spotlight first reported Bymaster’s alleged abuse in January.
Ramon ordered Bymaster not to contact the victim documented in the charges. He was also ordered not to contact another unnamed individual, according to the case’s prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Christopher Paynter.
Paynter said it’s too early to tell how much jail time Bymaster faces if found guilty of all charges. The trial date is a moving target.
“It’s an ongoing investigation,” Paynter told San José Spotlight.
Bymaster’s attorneys Renee Hessling and Dana Fite did not respond to requests for comment.
The arrest comes after a second investigation by The River Church in three years regarding Bymaster’s action, when five parishioner families say a 2021 probe led by church leaders failed to uncover the extent of his abuse and excluded one of the most serious claims — sexual abuse.
At the time, Bymaster denied the allegations in a statement to San José Spotlight.
“In recent months, we have discovered that there were profound flaws in the original pastoral inquiry process and in the denominational report (which was never released publicly but only summarized by senior leaders),” church families wrote in an open letter in January. “We now believe that the inquiry process and the senior leadership withheld crucial information about the nature and scope of the abuse.”
Bymaster, a recognizable figure in advocacy and political circles, was still listed as a founder and executive director of the Healing Grove Health Center, a clinic that serves low-income families, on its website as of Friday afternoon.
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Bymaster served as a youth pastor and director at The River, nestled on Lincoln Avenue, for five years beginning in 2014. He quit after getting a critical job review in August 2019 based on complaints about his leadership from church families.
Yet two years later, youth from the congregation raised more significant concerns about Bymaster.
The church launched an internal inquiry in 2021 led by its own leader the Rev. Theresa Marks, according to an email sent in January from three top church leaders, including lead pastor Brad Wong.
Marks found that Bymaster was a “toxic leader who was spiritually abusive,” and encouraged church leaders to summarize her findings in a letter. The probe from Marks, which included interviews with 25 individuals, also questioned the church’s management of Bymaster.
“We take full responsibility for not doing the job of keeping our youth and youth volunteers safe in our youth ministry. We did not provide adequate oversight of the youth program or our former youth pastor,” church leaders wrote in an August 2021 letter.
But parents of the alleged victims say the letter swept damning details under the rug and questioned whether some of the incidents should’ve been categorized as sexual misconduct, harassment or abuse.
In November 2024, more charges against Bymaster were filed.
A well-known nonprofit director was hit with more charges alleging that he sexually abused a minor when he formerly worked as a youth pastor, following a separate case alleging sexual abuse against another minor was filed in April.
Brett Bymaster, 48, the executive director of Healing Grove Health Center, was charged Nov. 19 with one felony count of lewd and lascivious acts on a child under 14 years old and one felony count of lewd and lascivious acts on a child aged 14 or 15, according to court documents. The alleged abuse began in 2013 and continued through 2019.
He was arrested and charged in April with six counts of lewd and lascivious acts on a minor who was between the ages of 8 and 14 during the time of the alleged abuse — a similar range of years, from 2013 to 2019. Bymaster was released on $50,000 bail that same month pending trial.
He was placed on leave from Healing Grove Health Center following the first charges. Bymaster posted $100,000 bail on the new charges, according to the DA’s office. His arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 14.
Bymaster formerly worked as a youth pastor at The River Church in San Jose between 2014 and 2019. He resigned in 2019 due to his leadership style not aligning with the teachings of the church, according to court documents.
The new charges allege that Bymaster took advantage of a position of trust to commit the abuse and befriended the victim, referred to as Jane Doe in court documents, in the pursuit of committing the sexual abuse. Documents added that the victim was “particularly vulnerable.”
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Bymaster’s attorneys, Renee Hessling and Dana Fite, said in a statement: “These are not new allegations; in fact, the District Attorney’s Office has known of this alleged victim since the beginning of their crusade against Mr. Bymaster. These new accusations were originally considered meritless, but in an attempt to bolster a weak case against Mr. Bymaster, (prosecutors) elected to file these additional charges which stem from an ever-evolving story.”
In response to the statement by Bymaster’s lawyers, Sean Webby, director of communications at the DA’s office, said: “We’ll try our case in court.”
Allegations against Bymaster arose in January when The River, the church where he formerly worked as a youth pastor, sent a letter to the church community detailing their independent investigation into his behavior when he worked there between 2014 and 2019. The church had first investigated Bymaster in 2021 due to complaints about his leadership and concerns about sexual misconduct, according to court documents.
The church’s investigation alleged that Bymaster was too graphic when teaching sex education classes to youth, that he showered naked with teen boys at a camp, that he made a comment about a minor girl’s chest and that, in one instance, he touched a female’s upper thigh inappropriately, according to court documents.
The church conducted its second investigation in 2023 after parents complained that the first investigation “downplayed some of the possible criminal elements” allegedly committed by Bymaster, according to court documents. Between 12 and 13 students made “complaints related to the sexual misconduct” to the church, according to court documents.
The San Jose Police Department began an investigation into the allegations in January.
A civil lawsuit was filed earlier this year against The River Church by a former church employee claiming that the church had been warned of Bymaster’s alleged actions and attempted to cover them up. The church disputed the allegations.
Brett Bymaster’s wife, Angela Bymaster, contacted the Bay Area News Group on Tuesday and strongly defended her spouse.
“My husband is completely innocent of all of these charges,” Angela Bymaster said. “He is guilty only of preaching the gospel of Jesus and building a successful Christian clinic which serves the poor, which has somehow made us a lot of friends and a lot of enemies.”
Angela Bymaster characterized the allegations as attempts by enemies to destroy his reputation and their clinic.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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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