Let’s not forget amidst all of the uproar over Roy Moore that a sexual predator currently occupies the Oval Office. What follows is a video about Donald Trump’s predatory ways — detailing the abuse stories of sixteen women who have accused Trump of sexual improprieties.
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.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to turn over internal documents detailing reports of church leaders who have been accused of sexually abusing children:
The governing body of the Jehovah’s Witness church received another rebuke this week by a state appeals court for “obstinately” refusing to turn over internal documents about knowledge of church leaders who have been accused of sexually abusing children.
The ruling, filed Thursday by the 4th District Court of Appeal, upholds a $4,000-a-day penalty against Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York for its failure to comply with a court order in a lawsuit filed by a man who claimed to have been molested in the 1990s.
Here, Watchtower has abused the discovery process. It has zealously advocated its position and lost multiple times. Yet, it cavalierly refuses to acknowledge the consequences of these losses and the validity of the court’s orders requiring it to produce documents…,” the opinion concluded.
The fight for these internal documents has been at the center of not only this lawsuit, but a similar one that accuses the same leader of molestation.
Church elders knew Gonzalo Campos had molested a boy as early as 1982 but did not remove him from interacting with children, according to evidence revealed in the cases.
In one lawsuit filed in San Diego Superior Court in 2012, Jose Lopez said he was 7 when a church elder in a Linda Vista congregation suggested Campos mentor him. Campos molested the boy at Campos’ La Jolla home one day in 1986, according to the lawsuit. When church leaders were told, they said they would handle the situation, the lawsuit says.
Campos became more involved with another congregation in La Jolla in 1987. In 1994 or 1995, Campos molested Osbaldo Padron, a church member there, when he was 7 or 8 years old, according to Padron’s 2013 lawsuit.
Campos later confessed to abusing at least eight children between 1982 and 1995. He fled to Mexico around 2010, said Irwin Zalkin, the lawyer for both alleged victims.
Watchtower has argued that the court’s order to turn over the documents is too burdensome and overbroad, and also that Watchtower does not have access to such records after 2001, but a church corporation does.
In both lawsuits, Watchtower has rebuffed court orders to produce documents about current of former leaders accused of molesting children and has heavily redacted the records it has turned over.
In the Lopez case, a Superior Court judge found Watchtower to be noncompliant and eventually terminated the organization’s right to be heard in the case.
Watchtower appealed, questioning why the judge didn’t use lesser measures to gain compliance, such as monetary sanctions. The appeals court agreed last year, saying the terminating sanction had been too harsh and reversed a $13.5 million judgment that had been imposed. That case is still being litigated.
But when the issue came up in the Padron case, and a different Superior Court judge imposed financial sanctions — $4,000 a day for not producing or searching for the ordered documents — Watchtower complained it was unfair.
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If you are familiar with vampire lore, you know that pure silver and garlic can protect you from vampires. Vampires are real, dammit. I watched all seven seasons of HBO’s hit series True Blood, and I am currently watching the final season of From Dusk till Dawn: The Series. After watching these shows, I have absolutely no doubt that vampires are real.
I’ve lost my mind, right? Anyone with a bit of common sense and reason knows that vampires died out with the dinosaurs. Okay, I am just pulling your leg. Vampires aren’t real. I have been reading all the defenses of Roy Moore, along with the emails I receive from Christians saying their pastor couldn’t have committed the crimes he is accused of in the Black Collar Crime Series, and I am starting to wonder if Evangelicals think Christian salvation — being born from above — is some sort of talisman that protects Christians from committing sex crimes.
I frequently receive emails from people who object to one of my Black Collar Crime stories. One woman told me her pastor couldn’t have committed sex crimes. Why? He’s a man of God, and true men of God don’t sexually molest girls. I didn’t respond to her, knowing that any attempt to talk sense into her Bible-addled mind would be futile.
As you know, Evangelical darling and Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore has been accused of sexually assaulting minor girls back when he was a thirty-year-old district attorney. He has also been accused of having a creepy obsession with female teenagers when he was younger. Moore is now married. His wife Kayla was in her early twenties — fifteen years younger than Moore — when they married. Moore’s wife says they met at a Bible study and she considers him to be one of the nicest men she has ever known. He certainly couldn’t have done what these women are accusing him of.
Dean Young, a Republican political consultant who calls himself Roy Moore’s “number one adviser,” resolutely believes that Moore is innocent of sexual misconduct. Why? Young believes that the fact Moore is a Christian inoculates him from doing such things. Young is quoted in the Washington Post as saying:
“Who says you all aren’t paying someone to do that? Go pay more people to say stuff. It’s a waste of money because people here know Judge Moore and we know he does believe in a Christian God, so that fake stuff doesn’t work with us.”
Evidently, much like vampires with garlic and silver, asking Jesus to save Evangelicals from their sins immunizes them from committing crimes. Yet, every day in the Fake News are stories about pastors, missionaries, evangelists, TV preachers, parachurch leaders, Sunday school teachers, deacons, worship leaders, church workers, and Christian family values politicians committing crimes — including rape, child abuse, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. Based on the evidence at hand, it is clear that Christianity does not provide immunity from committing crimes; that Evangelicals can and do behave no differently from the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world. Character, not Christianity, is what inoculates people from doing the things Moore is accused of. One need not believe in Jesus to treat women with respect. One need not be washed in the blood of the lamb to keep his hands off of children. All Evangelical Christianity does for perverts, predators, rapists, voyeurs, and child molesters is give them a façade to hide behind as they commit their crimes. Knowing that Christians are inherently naïve and quick to forgive and forget, these perverse men of God and followers of Jesus act with impunity, quickly explaining away whispers about their behavior. Much like vampires in the light of day, many Evangelicals cannot or will not see what is right in front of them. Their unwillingness to see things as they are only emboldens abusive Christians, leading to greater depths of depravity. This kind of thinking must cease, with Christians being brutally and critically honest about their culpability in the explosion of Evangelical sex crime stories.
It’s time to put a wooden stake through the heart of the belief that Christianity makes people morally superior. It doesn’t. The majority of Americans are Christians. This means that the majority of crimes committed in the United States are perpetrated by people who believe Jesus is their savior. I know of no evidence that suggests that atheists or other non-Christians are more likely to commit crimes. (Please read Misinformation and Facts About Secularism and Religion.) Thus, it is clear that Christianity, in and of itself, does not keep people from doing anything — legal or illegal. We know that purity vows and thunderous preaching against premarital sex doesn’t keep Christian teens from having sex. Much like their secular, non-Christian counterparts, Evangelical teens, with hormones raging, lustily engage in sexual conduct which Evangelicals deem “immoral.”
Did Roy Moore do what he is accused of? It is likely that he did. Like Bill Cosby before him, Moore is now facing an increasing number of accusations of sexual misconduct. If there were just one accusation, it could be chalked up to he-said, she-said. But now that there are numerous women claiming that Moore acted inappropriately, there is little doubt of his guilt. As is often the case with Christian family values politicians, their talk is cheap. Pay attention to what they do, not what they say. In Moore’s case, it’s evident that he had a thing for teen girls, and sometimes his behavior went beyond that of an older man hitting on high school girls.
The same goes for Evangelicals who object when I turn the Black Collar Crime spotlight on their pastors and church leaders. In most instances, there are numerous reports of criminal/sexual misconduct. The likelihood of collusion or conspiracy is remote. I know it is hard for people when the sins of their religious heroes are exposed for all to see. Surely, everyone is lying, right? Occam’s razor applies here. The shortest, simplest explanations are usually the truth. Evangelical churches (along with Catholic churches) have become havens for bad men to commit despicable acts. Worse yet, it is unlikely that these “fallen” Christians were caught the first time they acted inappropriately. More often than not, these men left behind a trail of victims, fearful people too ashamed to speak out. I hope we are reaching a point in our society where children, teenagers, and women can, without fear of recrimination, stand tall and expose religious predators for who they really are.
About Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 60, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 39 years. He and his wife have six grown children and eleven 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.
Bruce is a local photography business owner, operating Defiance County Photo out of his home. If you live in Northwest Ohio and would like to hire Bruce, please email him.
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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.
Ronald Paquin, a former priest with the Boston Catholic diocese, was indicted last week on 31 counts of sexual misconduct.
Seacoast Online reports:
A York County Grand jury re-indicted a former Catholic priest from Boston on additional charges alleging he repeatedly sexually abused young boys in Kennebunkport in the late 1980′s.
Ronald Paquin, 75, was originally indicted on 29 counts of sexual misconduct last February stemming from an investigation by Kennebunkport police after one of the victims contacted them. He was re-indicted last week with two new charges, bringing the total now to 31.
Paquin has been held at the York County Jail since his arrest in February at a homeless shelter in Boston.
According to Kennebunkport Police Chief Craig Sanford, the two new charges filed last week stem from one of the victims remembering two more events during the course of the ongoing investigation.
The defrocked priest, formerly of the Boston archdiocese, served more than a decade in a Massachusetts prison for abusing an altar boy from 1989 to 1992 while serving as associate pastor of St. John the Baptist Church in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He was a central figure in the Boston archdiocese’s sex abuse scandal. He pleaded guilty to raping an altar boy in 2002 and was released in 2015.
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Keith Townsend of Seabrook, New Hampshire, said in an interview with Seacoast Media Group in February that Paquin’s release from jail in 2015 prompted him to contact Kennebunkport police again, leading to the indictments. He first met Paquin when he arrived at St. John the Baptist Church, his family’s church, in 1981.
Townsend said he was molested by Paquin approximately between the ages of 8 and 13. He said Paquin used alcohol and drugs to control and sedate him during the period of abuse. He said he was one of about 10 other young boys abused together during trips to a camp in Kennebunkport, and that he personally knows the other victim tied to the new indictments.
….
cal coverage, including for medication. He then decided to go to the Kennebunkport Police Department, where he told an officer in a video interview about the abuse, but said he did not contact the department again until Paquin was freed in 2015.
“I was under the impression he was in jail for the rest of his life,” Townsend said. “When they released him, simple outrage. Nobody is safe as long as this guy’s on the street.”
Satirist Andy Borowitz “reports”
Breaking his silence on Alabama’s embattled Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, Donald Trump warned on Wednesday that dumping Roy Moore could start a “dangerous trend” of believing women.
“I think we need to be very, very careful here,” Trump told reporters. “This is not just about Roy Moore. This is about our country deciding that we are going to start believing women, something that we have never done before.
“This is a very dangerous road we’re heading down,” he said.
Trump cautioned that, if instituted, a new practice of believing women would “totally destroy” the system that the country already has in place. “For years we’ve had a system of believing men,” he said. “It’s worked very well. It’s done a great job.”
He said that he was considering a number of measures to stem the tide of women’s credibility, including an executive order banning women from giving believable accounts to the press. “That’s something we’re looking into,” he indicated.
Trump painted a doomsday scenario of what might happen if the “very bad trend” of believing women gained traction in the country. “If people believe Roy Moore’s five accusers, what happens to a man who has, say, about twenty accusers?” he asked. “I don’t like where this is going.”
— Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker, November 15, 2017
The Catholic Church in New Brunswick, Canada faces fifty-six lawsuits filed as a result of decades-long sexual abuse by New Brunswick priests.
Gabrielle Fahmy, a reporter for CBC News, writes:
Almost every month for a year, lawsuits have been filed against the Catholic Church in New Brunswick by alleged victims seeking compensation for sexual abuse by priests.
Many of the priests are dead, but that hasn’t stopped the lawsuits in Moncton, Bathurst and Edmundston from piling up.
CBC News has found at least 56 lawsuits are still before the courts, despite an extensive conciliation process a few years ago.
At least 11 priests are targeted in the accusations, and one name appears far more often than others.
“It’s very difficult to see all these new allegations coming in,” said Moncton Archbishop Valéry Vienneau.
“We are going through a very difficult time. It certainly has not helped our credibility, as priests and as a church.”
Thirty-two of the accusations are against one individual — Camille Leger.
Leger was the priest in the Sainte-Thérèse-d’Avila Parish in Cap-Pelé between 1957 and 1980. He died in 1990 without ever being accused or convicted of any crimes. His accusers all came forward after his death.
The archbishop said he was surprised by the sheer number.
“It seems that he was a predator all the years that he was in that parish,” Vienneau said.
According to the court documents, most of Leger’s alleged victims were young boys, generally between seven and 15 years old.
Many of them were altar boys at the parish, or boy scouts, who were chaperoned by Leger.
They all allege in court documents that Leger developed a close relationship with them, where he was able to be alone with them.
The sexual abuse often took place in Sainte-Therese-d’Avila church itself, in Leger’s car, during church-organized trips or at boy scout camp, it’s alleged.
….
Between 2012 and 2014, retired judge Michel Bastarache, who was brought in by the church, spoke to hundreds of victims and worked out a compensation formula for the church to pay them all.
In the end, the Archdiocese of Moncton had to come up with $10.6 million for victims, and the Diocese of Bathurst $5.5 million.
Victims received between $15,000 and $300,000, depending on the severity of the abuse, how old they were when it started, and how many years it lasted.
Bastarache said the conciliation process had to be delayed three times to accommodate new victims, which is why he’s taken aback by so many lawsuits still before the courts.
“I’m just surprised that the numbers are so high,” he said.
He also wonders why these alleged victims didn’t take advantage of the process and are choosing to go to court instead.
“I heard about a hundred victims in Bathurst, another hundred in Moncton, and those people — 90 per cent of them, wanted absolute confidentiality,” said Bastarache.
“A lot of them never told their story to anyone, not even in their family.”
The Catholic Church is named in all the lawsuits, accused of knowing or saying it should have known about the alleged abuse.
The allegations haven’t been tested in court.
One lawsuit claims the church knew Leger took an unusual interest in children, that some parents had made complaints about him, that he spoke of his “sins” to other priests during confession, and that he was even reported to archdiocese officials for sexual misconduct, yet nothing was done to stop the abuse.
Fernand Arsenault, a priest for 20 years before he chose to leave the church, knew members of the community and is saddened every time he hears of new allegations of sexual abuse.
He accused the church of turning a blind eye to the abuse and concealing the crimes of those priests.
“It’s a terrible mistake,” said Arsenault. “Because we would have saved many lives.”
Arsenault said that years ago, if a priest reported another priest, he would have been punished, not the abuser.
But the church, in every filed statement of defence, has systematically denied knowing about any of the abuse at the time.
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Last year, Jehovah’s Witness elder Jason Gorski was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a minor while employed as a teacher at Southwestern Longview Private School in Long Beach, California.
In June 2016, the Orange County Register reported:
Police arrested a man they say sexually assaulted at least one minor while he worked as a private school teacher and church leader between 2007 and 2009.
Jason Gorski, 43, of Fort Mill, South Carolina, surrendered to officers at the Buena Park Police Department without incident after he was contacted by investigators, Sgt. Mike Lovchik said.
Police say Gorski spent several years working as a teacher at Southwestern Longview Private School in Long Beach, which shuttered in 2007, where he met his victim. He also attended the Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall, a congregation in Cypress, and was appointed to a church elder position in 2007.
“The abuse came to an end when it was reported to the Jehovah’s Witness church in 2009, but it was only recently reported to authorities,” Lovchik said.
Police say Gorski relocated to South Carolina sometime around 2010, after news of the abuse broke within the church and lead to him being stripped of his title of church elder.
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Yesterday, the Orange County Register reported:
A 44-year-old former teacher and Jehovah’s Witness church elder pleaded guilty Tuesday to sexually assaulting one of his 13-year-old students.
Jason Morris Gorski pleaded guilty to two counts of lewd acts with a minor younger than 14 and is expected to be sentenced to six years in prison on Jan. 26, defense attorney Brian Neal Gurwitz said.
Gorski was a teacher at the now-shuttered Southwestern Longview Private School in Long Beach, where he met the victim, from 2003 to 2007, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. He also attended the Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall, a congregation in Cypress, and was appointed to a church elder position in 2007.
He had sex with the teen at various locations in Buena Park between June 2007 and June 2008, prosecutors said.
The victim reported the sexual abuse to authorities and Gorski was arrested in June 2016.
Terrence Smalls, a nursery volunteer at The Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Maryland pleaded guilty Tuesday to sexually abusing a 4-year-old girl.
In December 2016, Fox-5 reported:
A man who worked with children at a Baltimore County church is accused of sexually abusing a 4-year-old girl.
Police are investigating only one case at the church, but detectives fear there could be more victims.
The suspect is Terrence Smalls, 26, of Cockeysville. Police arrested him on Thursday, December 8. Smalls faces sex abuse of a minor and other offenses. Police say Smalls worked as a nursery volunteer at The Church of the Nativity in Timonium. Investigators say the incident happened November 27 when the man took the child to a bathroom in the day care room.
“The 4-year-old girl told her mother that a church volunteer had sexually abused her during nursery time, during Sunday worship service,” said Cpl. John Wachter, a police department spokesman.
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Yesterday, Smalls pleaded guilty to sexual abuse of a minor.
A Cockeysville church volunteer was sentenced to 18 years in jail for abusing a 4-year-old girl during Sunday Mass at the Church of the Nativity in Timonium.
Terrence Smalls, 27, pleaded guilty to sexual abuse of a minor and was sentenced to 25 years with all but 18 suspended, according to a news release from the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office Tuesday.
He will be on five years’ probation upon his release.
The 4-year-old girl told her mother after a November 2016 church service that Smalls, a volunteer in the daycare room of the church, had abused her in the bathroom, according to the news release.
He encouraged her to go to the bathroom and abused her while the two were alone, according to the investigation.
He has also served as an aide at the play center at Pot Spring Elementary, the Ultimate Play Zone in Cockeysville, the Little Gym of Hunt Valley and as a teacher’ aide at Pot Springs Elementary School.
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 Coy, the one-time pastor of Calvary Chapel — Fort Lauderdale in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, stands accused of sexually molesting a girl. What follows is an excerpt from an investigatory report written by Tim Elflink, the managing editor of the Miami New Times. I hope readers will read the entire article. You might want to have a barf bag handy as you read Elfrink’s detailed story about not only Bob Coy, but the entire Calvary Chapel church movement:
The call came from California. A woman told Coral Springs Police she had recently learned something terrible: A South Florida man had molested her daughter for years. It began when the girl was just 4 years old.
An officer noted the information and called the victim, who was then a teenager. She confirmed the story in stomach-churning detail.
The man had forced her to perform oral sex, she said. He would regularly “finger and fondle her” genitals, make her touch his penis, and “dirty talk” to her. The abuse lasted until she was a teenager, she told the cop. She’d never even told her family about the crimes.
By the end of that harrowing call on August 20, 2015, police knew the accused predator was no ordinary suspect. His name was Bob Coy, and until the previous year, he’d been the most famous Evangelical pastor in Florida.
Over two decades, Coy had built a small storefront church into Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale, a 25,000-member powerhouse that packed Dolphin Stadium for Easter services while Coy hosted everyone from George W. Bush to Benjamin Netanyahu. With a sitcom dad’s wholesome looks, a standup comedian’s snappy timing, and an unlikely redemption tale of ditching a career managing Vegas strip clubs to find Jesus, Coy had become a Christian TV and radio superstar.
But then, in April 2014, he resigned in disgrace after admitting to multiple affairs and a pornography addiction. Coy shocked his flock and made national headlines by walking away from his ministry, selling his house, and divorcing his wife.
The sexual assault claims, which have never before been divulged, raise new questions about the pastor, his church, and the police who handled the case. Documents show that Coral Springs cops sat on the accusations for months before dropping the inquiry without even interviewing Coy. His attorneys, meanwhile, persuaded a judge with deep Republican ties to seal the ex-pastor’s divorce file to protect Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale from scrutiny.
The revelations come at a sensitive moment for Calvary’s national network of about 1,800 churches, which have been riven by legal infighting and dogged by claims that bad pastors have been allowed to run amok. In fact, at least eight pastors, staff members and volunteers in Calvary Chapel’s network around the United States have been charged with abusing children since 2010. In one case, victims claimed the church knowingly moved a pedophile to another city without warning parents.
“Religious leaders have a tremendous amount of power over their flock,” says Scott Thumma, a professor of sociology of religion at Hartford Seminary who has studied the Calvary movement. “If Calvary gives these pastors this much authority and they use and abuse it with no accountability, they have to blame themselves.”
Coy, who was never charged with a crime, lay low after leaving Cavalry but recently turned up at Boca Raton’s Funky Biscuit, where he helps manage the club. Tracked down at the bar on a recent weeknight, the well-dressed ex-pastor looks no different from the days when he preached to thousands of followers. He declined to discuss the child abuse case except to say he is innocent and passed a polygraph test to prove it.
“I can’t discuss it on the record,” he said, before adding cryptically: “If you’re foolish enough to go through with this story… it would hurt a lot of people.”
Were there other abuse claims against Coy during the nearly three decades he controlled Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale? The church won’t say, though a spokesman says the chapel was “saddened to hear of the allegations.” That’s not good enough, critics say.
“There could be other victims out there,” says Michael Newnham, an Oregon-based pastor who runs a blog critical of Calvary Chapel. “We need answers.”
….
On a Sunday evening in April 2014, thousands packed into Calvary Chapel’s sanctuary, a cavernous space that looks more like a midsize city’s convention center than a church. As they sank into plush, arena-style seats and flipped open well-thumbed Bibles, Coy’s followers quickly noticed something was very wrong. The rock band that usually played raucous hymns to start services was missing. And a grim-looking assistant pastor, gripping a letter, was walking across the stage.
Pastor Bob had suddenly resigned, the assistant pastor told the stunned crowd. He had admitted to a grave “moral failing.” Ushers passed tissue boxes down the rows as his followers wept.
“People were really, really hurt,” says Colleen Healy, a Broward resident who began following Coy in 1995. “I was really hurt. I’ll never forget that meeting.”
Coy’s preaching career ended with shocking speed, but his sex scandal was far from the first for Calvary Chapel. In fact, the church had been battling accusations nationwide for years that it empowered predatory pastors while demanding little accountability.
The root of Calvary’s problems, critics say, lies in its unique structure. Unlike many Protestant churches, which set up powerful boards of elders to oversee ministers, Calvary used a management style Smith called the “Moses method.”
“Moses was the leader appointed by God,” Smith told Christianity Today in 2007. “We are not led by a board of elders.”
Instead, the pastors Smith installed in his hundreds of megachurches, which are similar to Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale, had nearly unlimited power over budgets, personnel, and message. And even if complaints arose, Smith’s answer was often to give wayward preachers second and third chances.
In 2007, Christianity Today spoke to numerous Calvary pastors across the country. Some complained anonymously that Smith was “dangerously lax in maintaining standards for sexual morality” among his preachers. “Those men cannot call sin sin,” one 20-year veteran of the church complained to the publication.
There were ample cases to make that point. In 2003, John Flores, a pastor at Smith’s flagship in Costa Mesa, was arrested for having sex with the 15-year-old daughter of another pastor. According to Christianity Today, he’d been fired twice before for sexual misconduct, including once after getting caught having sex on church grounds, but kept getting his job back. (Flores was eventually convicted of sex with the minor.)
Two years later, a Calvary Chapel in Laguna Beach fired its pastor for adultery and embezzlement — but Smith quickly rehired him to preach at the nearby Costa Mesa church.
That same year, the church found itself in a bizarre scandal centered on a lucrative, 400-station radio network and its head, Idaho-based Pastor Mike Kestler. He had been in hot water in the ’90s when multiple women in his church claimed he’d sexually harassed them, but Smith gave him another chance.
In a lawsuit, a woman named Lori Pollitt said after she had moved from Texas to Idaho to work for Kestler, he repeatedly demanded she divorce her husband, give up her children to adoption, and marry him. When she rebuffed him, she said he stalked her and put a “hangman’s noose” in front of her house.
This time, Smith and his son Jeff actually turned on their pastor, pushing him out. They ended up locked in dueling lawsuits, with the pastor accusing Calvary’s leaders of skimming profits and the Smiths charging that he used his influence running the radio stations to pressure women into sex. (The cases were settled out of court.)
The next year, Santa Ana police investigated the Costa Mesa chapel after a 12-year-old told a staffer that a pastor had been touching her inappropriately. Police said they couldn’t find enough evidence to press charges, but the staffer claimed the church forced him to resign for alerting the authorities.
In 2006, Coy’s church in Fort Lauderdale landed in court over claims of lax oversight. A Calvary Chapel member named Rodger Thomas was arrested that year and charged with repeatedly molesting a 15-year-old girl at a high school run by the church. Two years later, her family sued Calvary, alleging leaders should have done more to stop Thomas. A jury awarded the family $360,000 but ruled Calvary wasn’t culpable.
The most serious claim against Calvary’s national church came in 2011, when four men in Idaho filed a federal suit alleging a youth minister named Anthony Iglesias had molested them between 2000 and 2003. Even worse, they said church officials knew full well he was a pedophile: He’d been kicked out of another Calvary youth ministry in California after being charged with sex crimes there.
That case was settled out of court, but the attorney who brought the case says that, in general terms, Smith’s habit of forgiving and rehiring pastors who have committed sexual offenses is a recipe for disaster.
“Typically, how it goes in these cases is you have a violator in the church, but the leaders will have this notion that if he repents, he’s forgiven, and then we don’t have to talk about it any more,” says Leander James, who specializes in church child abuse cases. “That whole approach always ends up hiding pedophiles.”
Neither Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, the movement’s flagship, nor the Calvary Chapel Association returned messages from New Times seeking comment for this story.
It’s still not clear how Coy’s sexual indiscretions came to light in 2014. But two weeks after his surprise resignation, Assistant Pastor Chet Lowe filled Coy’s followers in on what had happened.
“Our former pastor was caught in sin,” Lowe said April 16, according to the Sun Sentinel. “Our pastor, he committed adultery with more than one woman. Our pastor, he committed sexual immorality, habitually, through pornography. Rest assured, God will not be mocked.”
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Coy’s faithful didn’t know it, but just over a year after the pastor’s resignation for adultery, Coral Springs Police launched their investigation into a far worse allegation. It’s unclear how seriously they took the claim of the teenager — whom New Times is not naming in accordance with our policy on reporting on victims of sexual abuse — who said Coy had forced her to have sex even when she was only 4 years old. But the case soon stalled.
The department assigned the case to Det. Jeff Payne, a veteran investigator in the usually sleepy, affluent suburb of 120,000. Payne had experience with sensitive cases involving sex crimes; earlier that year, he’d investigated a high-ranking cop for allegedly assaulting a 13-year-old girl. Payne had taken his case against Fort Lauderdale Police Maj. Eric Brogna to the Broward County State Attorney’s Office, but prosecutors declined to press charges.
In the Coy case, though, Payne never made that kind of headway. Shortly after resigning, the disgraced pastor moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Calvary Chapel has another affiliate church. (It’s unclear if he worked there.) Coy says he was never approached by the police about the allegations.
Indeed, police records show no progress on the case until eight months later, on April 4, 2016, when Coy’s young accuser showed up at Coral Springs Police headquarters. She told Payne she was “moving tomorrow [overseas] on a mission trip with the church, and asked if it was possible to destroy any record of [her] abuse,” the detective wrote in a closeout memo. The woman told him “she had an experience with God and has found forgiveness” for Coy over his abuse.
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Coy has never been criminally charged, and if there were other cases of sexual harassment or abuse in the decades he ran Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale, neither the church nor cops have revealed them. The church didn’t respond to a detailed set of questions from New Times, instead sending a general statement about the former pastor.
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This year, Calvary has been hit by even more sexual abuse claims. In May, Matt Tague, an assistant pastor at North Coast Calvary Chapel in San Diego, was arrested on 16 counts of lewd and lascivious acts on a minor under 14 years old. Police say the victim wasn’t a church member, and Calvary Chapel says it immediately fired Tague upon learning about the claims.
Then, on July 18, police arrested 41-year-old Roshad Thomas, who had spent 13 years as a volunteer youth pastor at Calvary Chapel Tallahassee. He’s accused of molesting at least ten children aged 13 to 16 over several years, victimizing members of the youth group he led after taking them back to his apartment.
Police say Thomas has admitted to the abuse (though his criminal trial is pending). The chapel’s founder, Kent Nottingham, told a local TV station that there’d been no suspicion of abuse and that he was “shocked.”
Coy has also been dragged through legal battlefields since his resignation from the church. In January 2016, he and Diane filed for divorce in Broward County. They’d already sold their Coral Springs house about six months after he resigned; the settlement divided their substantial remaining assets — including a $330,000 Hillsboro Beach condo he still owns — and defined custody of their two children. The divorce file includes nearly 30 pages of documents related to their finances and settlements.
But on February 22 of that year, the case went to Judge Tim Bailey, a member of a powerful conservative family; his father, Patrick, founded the Pompano Beach Republican Club, and both father and son had chaired Broward’s Judicial Nominating Commission. That body recommends candidates for higher legal office to the governor. In Coy’s case, Bailey made a relatively unusual ruling: All financial documents would be kept secret. Why? To “avoid substantial injury” to Coy’s former employer — Calvary Chapel — according to the court file.
To critics such as Newnham, there’s only one reason to fight for a ruling like that: to hide from churchgoers the amount of cash the church gave Coy to go away. The case reeks of political favoritism. “These guys have been covering for Coy for a long time,” Newnham says, “and they’re still covering for him now.” (Judge Bailey didn’t respond to messages from New Times to comment on this story.)
You an read the entire story here.
Elfrink concludes his story with this:
But Newnham says the pastor still has more to answer for — especially because his sources say Coy has been trying to mobilize investors to start a new church.
“He’s contacted many former associates to try to get funding. There’s no question he wants back in the game,” Newnham says. “We need to stop him. In my opinion, if he did this [to one victim], it’s just a question of how many others are out there. He can’t be put in a position of power ever again.”
That’s right, Bob Coy is trying to get back in the “game.” And I have no doubt that he will find people who are willing to play along with him. Much like King David — a man after God’s own heart — who committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband murdered, Coy will surely convince people that his “sins” are under the blood — forgiven and forgotten.
Update
A November 16, 2017 Miami New Times report states:
As New Times revealed in an investigation published Tuesday, former Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale Pastor Bob Coy — who once led the largest megachurch in Florida — was accused in 2015 of molesting a girl for more than a decade, beginning when she was 4 years old. Coy was never charged in the case and had already resigned from Calvary over an admitted string of extramarital affairs.
After his preaching career ended, he landed work managing the Funky Biscuit, a nightclub in Mizner Park in Boca Raton. The club now says that it has terminated any relationship with Coy and that the owners had no inkling he’d been accused of child abuse.
“Yesterday, through an article published by Miami New Times, we were made aware of certain allegations involving one of our associates, Mr. Bob Coy,” the club says in a statement. “Neither The Funky Biscuit nor any of its employees were aware of these allegations prior to yesterday. Because of the nature of these allegations, The Funky Biscuit has decided to terminate our consulting arrangement with Mr. Coy, effective immediately.”
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Youth pastor Ellis Simmons spent five years in prison for sexually molesting three girls ages seven to ten. Released in 2016, Simmons now faces new sexual abuse charges.
Tom Olsen, a reporter for the Bemidji Pioneer, writes:
Prosecutors can move forward with the case against a former Duluth youth pastor accused of sexually abusing two girls more than a decade ago, a judge ruled recently.
Ellis William Simmons, 38, is accused of sexually assaulting two victims between approximately 2000 and 2005. He was charged with three felonies in June, shortly after being released from an Illinois prison where he was incarcerated for similar crimes that occurred after he left Duluth.Sixth Judicial District Judge David Johnson in late October denied a defense motion seeking dismissal of the charges on the basis that they were barred by statute of limitations.
Simmons served as a pastor to the alleged victims and a babysitter for the family of at least one of the girls, according to a criminal complaint. The charging document indicates that one victim reported two incidents that occurred when she was 11 years old; the other reported an incident when she was 14.
Both alleged victims told police that they were sleeping when they awoke to sexual contact from Simmons, according to the charges. The contact allegedly included penetration.
While partial reports were made to law enforcement in the early 2000s, St. Louis County prosecutor Jon Holets said the victims only recently came forward with additional information — including, in one instance, Simmons’ name — that made charges possible.
Under Minnesota law, charges in child sexual abuse cases must be filed within nine years of the offense date or three years of the initial report to law enforcement, whichever comes later.
But Johnson noted in an eight-page order that the time requirements are suspended for any period of time when the defendant is not a resident of the state. The judge said evidence indicates that Simmons moved from Minnesota shortly after the reports were first made.
“The limitation time was tolled on September 12, 2005, leaving a little over four years before the statute of limitations ran out,” Johnson wrote of the oldest charge. “Because … Defendant never returned to Minnesota prior to being extradited from California to St. Louis County in July of 2017, the State has not violated the statute of limitations provision by filing charges.”
Simmons was released from an Illinois prison in December 2016 after serving nearly five years of a seven-year sentence for sexually abusing three girls ranging in age from 7 to 10.
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In July of this year, I posted the following:
Ellis Simmons, former youth pastor of St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church and Calvary Baptist Church in Duluth, Minnesota, has been charged with “two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of second-degree criminal sexual conduct.” Simmons previously served five years in prison for sexually abusing other girls.
The Duluth News Tribune reports:
A former youth pastor who recently served five years in Illinois prison for sexually abusing several young girls is now facing similar charges stemming from a stint in Duluth more than a decade ago.
Ellis William Simmons, 38, is accused of assaulting two girls between 1999 and 2005, when he was living and working in Duluth. The girls were 11 and 14 years old at the time of the reported incidents.
Simmons was formally charged last month with two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of second-degree criminal sexual conduct. If convicted, the most-serious charges each carry a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.
While the incidents were reported to police in the early 2000s, St. Louis County prosecutor Jon Holets said the victims only recently came forward with the alleged perpetrator’s name and other information that made charges possible.
“It still bothered them, and they realized what he had done in Illinois,” Holets said Monday. “It was their desire to continue coming forward (that led to charges).”
Simmons served as a pastor to the alleged victims and a babysitter for the family of at least one of the girls, according to a criminal complaint. The charging document indicates that one victim reported two incidents that occurred when she was 11 years old; the other reported an incident when she was 14.
Both alleged victims told police that they were sleeping when they awoke to sexual contact from Simmons, according to the charges. The contact allegedly included penetration.
Simmons served as a pastor at St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church and Calvary Baptist Church in Duluth, while also attending the College of St. Scholastica and the University of Minnesota Duluth, according to News Tribune articles from the time.
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The decision by the alleged victims to provide additional information came around the same time Simmons was being released from prison in Illinois.
He was arrested in January 2012 and charged with sexually abusing three girls ranging in age from 7 to 10, according to a report in the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star. Simmons at the time was working at a juvenile detention center; authorities said the abuse was not related to his employment, but the victims were known to him.
Records indicate that Simmons was released from prison in December after serving nearly five years of a seven-year sentence. He was re-arrested in California after a warrant was issued in the Duluth case on June 19.
Simmons made an initial appearance in State District Court in Duluth last week. His bail was set at $300,000, and he remained in the St. Louis County Jail on Monday.
