What does it look like when churches choose to provide cover for child predators?

“Look around the courtroom. Remember what you have witnessed these past seven days. This is what it looks like when institutions create a culture where a predator can flourish unafraid and unabated. And this is what it looks like when people in authority refuse to listen; put friendships in front of truth, fail to create or enforce proper policy, and fail to hold enablers accountable” – Rachael Denhollander speaking of the hundreds of Larry Nassar’s victims who should have been spared.

Rachael Denhollander statement at Nassar Sentencing January 24, 2018

The sad reality is that many people, myself included, see what it looks like when abusers are hidden within churches and institutions in the name of “grace.” I thought back to Rachael’s words when I spoke over the phone with Kyle Cowden a few days ago. He reached out to me after listening to one of my podcasts and wanted to share his frustration with our nation’s broken sex offender registry and the church’s covering up of abuse. He has officially lost track of the serial abuser who molested his daughter. We connected and he told me about his daughter Rena’s abuse that happened in 1995 at Webb Chapel Church of Christ in Farmer’s Branch, TX. Rena was thirteen. James Apple, her abuser, was fifteen.

When Kyle found out his young daughter was abused, he approached the elders, one of whom was the father of the perpetrator. Kyle’s family was gossiped about and Rena and other victims of James were ostracized by the congregation. Kyle only became more emboldened to fight for his little girl. The elders, despite being mandated reporters, never went to the police. It was Rena’s mom and dad who reported to police. James Apple served two years probation for Rena’s case. Kyle’s gut feeling would prove to be right. More victims were discovered and, in 2000 James was given a six year prison sentence. He is listed as a high risk offender in Texas and is a lifetime registrant-a registration that is only reserved for those deemed to be unsafe for the rest of their lives.

I used to wonder if church leaders who give abusers free reign simply don’t know how dangerous they really are. Perhaps it’s a matter of ignorance, I thought. Sadly, this isn’t the case with Rena’s abuse. She lamented, “When the elders found out, they requested that I write a letter describing what happened. It took three pages and when it wasn’t reported, I felt so betrayed.”

Of course she did. They got to read the most humiliating details of what happened to her, only to turn around and accuse her of making up allegations that weren’t true. This wasn’t the only time she had to tell humiliating details of how her abuser had forced himself onto her. The police report is only one paragraph containing details that Rena shared. After rumors kept circulating, Rena and the other girls were asked by the elders to write letters. Rena’s was three pages long. And they still didn’t report, despite being required to do so by law.

Neither did they tell the church. According to Kyle, the elders were divided. Some thought the congregation should know. Others were adamant that the leaders handle it internally. According to Kyle, “We were chastised for pressing charges even after the DA had told us we could be charged for not reporting to them as soon as we knew and reporting to the elders instead. Hubert Smith was the most vocal and had called my wife when he knew I was on shift and chastised her for trying to “ruin James’ life. We also had our advocates, Bill Keith, Dan Camp and Don Petty (eventually).”

Rena recalled, “After charges were filed, it went to court pretty quickly. His attorney asked me what I was wearing and how far my legs were spread when he was abusing me.” As is common, Rena remembers the courtroom being pretty full. When I asked if the spectators were there to support her, she said, “I don’t remember anyone besides by family coming to support me. They were either there to support James or were just curious.”

Kyle pushed and pushed, and eventually was permitted to read a letter to the church that he had written about their ordeal. James Apple’s victims and their mothers who went forward as Kyle read the letter filled two pews. When James Apple was arrested, angry church members continued pointing the finger at Rena’s family for “making up false allegations.”

Webb Chapel wasn’t the only church organization to cover up James Apple’s abusive behavior. Kyle described an event when he was at a Christian camp at about the same time his daughter was abused:

I was the camp medic assigned my own cabin as I would be seeing campers in a medical setting. James and another boy (who were like “junior counselors” to younger boys) were suddenly moved into my cabin for “inappropriate” conversations. It was later, maybe a year, that we held camp in Cisco, TX. James’ father was there and I was told that he had reassigned James because “something had occurred”. It was years later that the youth minister intern, now a pulpit minister, was tearfully telling me how awful James had been and how mad he was because he wasn’t allowed to have him removed and how his dad had intimidated him and anyone else that knew about it.

After Kyle’s letter was read to the church the Apples quit attending church. A simple announcement was made from the pulpit that “the Apples will no longer be attending Webb Chapel.” The Apples moved to Prestoncrest Church of Christ in Dallas. Much to Kyle’s surprise, “My wife saw something showing James was involved in the youth ministry and called them. She was chastised for gossiping. I read where Ron was up for an eldership there and called. Their pulpit minister and one of their elders asked me to come in. They then told me they were well aware of the “persecution” James and the Apples were receiving and I should repent of gossiping and pursuing my agenda.

Kyle and Rena have attempted to know where James is, because they feel it is their duty to warn other parents. Rena tells me that Apple had several aliases on Facebook and even attempted to friend her. A few years ago, Rena was shocked when her mom discovered a picture of her abuser at a Chuck E Cheese in Washington state. Apple, a lifetime registrant, is not on Washinton’s sex offender registry, despite being a resident there. Rena went so far as to call Washington state police and send police reports and records of her abuse. They finally told her, “Sorry, there’s nothing we can do.” Kyle also notified the local sheriff. He seemed sympathetic and asked for more information. Kyle sent James’ records along with a brief description of what happened to his daughter Rena. Nothing was ever done to put James on Washington’s sex offender registry. Rena and her father both told me that they are sick not knowing where he is or what church he may have been able to reinvent himself inside of.

If this were the only case I had come across, I’d be mortified enough. It is not. Last year I received an anonymous message from an abuse survivor who attended Downtown Church of Christ in Searcy, AR-a church that I attended for several years while in college and seminary. The survivor told me that a man had really set off all her alarms and that he stuck out like a sore thumb, in a church of well over 1,000 people. She looked up the Arkansas sex offender registry only to be mortified that he was listed as a tier 3 offender. According to the Rogers, AR government website, tier three offenders “have a history of repeat sexual offending, and/or strong antisocial, violent, or predatory personality characteristics,” and require notification throughout the community.

Mr. Smith was a minister and doubled as a youth leader when he abused multiple little girls, including his own daughter Leachelle. Leachelle bravely wrote about her story in June. Last year, as soon as I was notified anonymously, I contacted the church’s minister, a former Bible professor of mine. I informed him that a church member found out about this dangerous predator who was actively involved in the life of the church, and that she was aware that at least some of the elders knew of this sex offender but had not informed the church. I’ve been down this road many times with churches and suspected what kind of response I’d receive. An elder from that church returned an email to me informing me that they take the protection of all seriously and that they “do not require our members wear their past sin on a label or announce it to the world unless they choose to do so.” I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest people not hold their breath waiting for a high risk serial offender to voluntarily inform a church with hundreds of minor children that he is on the sex offender registry.

The line that jumped off the page was, “If you know of some specific current activity or behavior of the person named in your e-mail to _____, please respond directly to _____ and _____.” If I know of some specific current activity!? I live 1,000 miles away! I never met this offender, though his family members inform me that he did premarital counseling for a couple at Downtown–a direct violation of probation. He and his wife also baby sit some children who are family members. And trust that if I hear of any “current activity,” the church will be very far down my list of people I will be contacting about it. Tier 3 offenders must remain on the registry forever because of violent, predatory behavior.

Arkansas requires the public to be informed of tier 3 offenders. The Arkansas Sex Offender Assessment Committee website says of tier 3 offenders:

Notification must be made to any member of the community whom the
offender is likely to encounter, based on the offender’s prior history,
recreational or religious interests, employment, or the characteristics of
the offender’s victims.

The problem is that the website doesn’t spell out exactly who is supposed to do the notifying, when they do it, or how often. State police are supposed to, but this often does not happen. For example, we had a Tier 3 sexually violent predator move in just a few feet from my church office window. Pennsylvania law requires everyone within a one mile radius to receive a flyer from police. We were never informed. I only found out by checking the registry, which I do every few months. Another problem in Arkansas is that individuals and agencies who are notified by law are not authorized to notify people within and apparently can use their own judgment as to who “has a need to know” within the agency. This is ambiguous. Who are the ones who “have a need to know” within any agency? In most cases, this is interpreted as the leadership only.

Notification given to any individual or agency does not authorize that individual or agency to disseminate information beyond those residing with the individual, or beyond those who have a need to know within the agency.

I believe that parents of minor children within an agency have a need to know, and should always be notified when a high risk predator is a member of a church. What those parents do with that information is entirely up to them, but shouldn’t they have a right to know? Furthermore, a repentant serial offender would be completely transparent and would ask that his information be shared so that there is never a chance he or she could gain access to children again. I am not alone in this thinking. Nor am I the only one who notified Downtown with concerns. Christine Fox Parker is a survivor advocate, has 27 years ministry experience, spent several years as a therapist at a private practice where she developed a specialty in trauma stemming from abuse at the hands of church leaders, and is the founder, president and executive director of PorchSwing Ministries. She and her son, a former member at Downtown, met with an elder in person to express the urgency for parents at the congregation to be notified. Christine told me that the response was similar to what I received–the elders take the protection of everyone seriously and are monitoring the abuser.

Leachelle (the abuser’s own daughter) has sent multiple emails to the elders begging them to notify unsuspecting parents about her father and was assured that, though they empathize with her as a survivor, they will not notify the congregation.

What purpose does a public registry serve if church leaders are able to and choose to ignore it? None of us suggested that the elders remove Mr. Smith from church (though it is my stance that he shouldn’t be at a church with hundreds of minors). We simply were asking them to inform parents of young children that a high risk sex offender is among them. So how did the church respond after repeated emails from Leachelle, describing her abuse and begging elders to inform parents that they have a serial offender in their midst? They read a letter to the church about “some blogs” that created “this situation” and that, though they have a sex offender in the church, they won’t be naming him:

The major problem I have with this (and there are many) is that they continue to circumvent the sex offender registry by hiding a high risk offender’s identity. The only biblical reason they can find for publicly stating the name of a church member “caught up in sinful behavior is for continuing, deliberate sin.” Even still, naming such a person “would only be for the purpose of winning the sinner back to Christ.” I’m dumbfounded. What about protecting innocents? Is that not a biblical reason to name a serial, high risk criminal who is already on the public registry? Ezekiel 33 and John 10 come to mind as biblical reasons to speak up and warn. Parents of children often befriend abusers, not knowing they are abusers, and will spend time in their homes and vice versa. In my opinion, when leaders fail to inform churches of high risk serial predators, they are wielding a moral superiority to the rest of the church by intentionally keeping them blind. The leaders, in effect, are the ones who have the benefit of remaining in the know and they have the power to keep the rest of the congregation in the dark.

And if these two cases aren’t enough, I reported a serial predator in 2013 who was a missionary in Haiti a few years prior. Bob Valerius, who had a clean Facebook profile as a missionary, had an alias on Facebook as “Milton Hargrave” and was asking a mess of young boys to show their penises to him. I saw with my own eyes the disgusting things he was saying to these little boys. I gathered a file folder full of evidence and spoke with state police, the US Marshall Service, and eventually the Department of Homeland Security. I found out through an investigation that Cyrus Sibert conducted in Haiti, that the Southwest Church of Christ in Ada, Oklahoma–the church that funded the orphanage where Bob worked–black listed and disciplined a Haitian preacher, Pierre Ludovic, who reported that “Bob is in relationship with the little boys he help (sic).” Valerius was reported by Mr. Ludovic in 2010. Mr. Ludovic was banned from the orphanage and the Southwest church, to my knowledge, never reported it. They did, however, blacklist the preacher who did. Southwest eventually removed Valarius from his post as director of the orphanage. Three years later, I personally witnessed Valerius asking multiple minor children for pictures of their penises while saying, “You should know that makes my cock hard.”

Unlike the Southwest church, I reported immediately and fully cooperated with this investigation only to find out that Bob Valerius, who fled Haiti and is currently wanted by the Haitian justice department, was spotted by one of his victims in August while roaming the streets of Cap Haitien.

Posted by Cyrus Sibert

Translation: Saturday, August 24, 2019 Mandate to bring against the American Robert (Bob) Valerius accused of pedophilia in Haiti.- The American citizen Robert (Bob) Valerius is wanted by the Haitian justice for sexual abuse on children. Mr. Valerius picture taken by one of his victims, was noticed Saturday, August 10 in the city of Cap-Haitien, a few years after he fled Haiti. #LeReCit

What’s incredibly frustrating about all of these cases is that our governments do all they can to track serial abusers because they have a pattern of being dangerous. The church, on the other hand, works very hard to keep abusers’ identities hidden and to allow them unfettered access to children. Churches think that by putting a few restrictions on where an abuser can be inside the church building, they are keeping children safe. This simply is not true. James Apple produced several more victims after Rena was abused because the church failed to report. Bob Valerius produced many more victims after he was quietly removed from the orphanage he was employed at. He still defiantly visits a country where he violated many young boys and is wanted by the justice department. The Southwest Church of Christ failed to protect more innocent children and even blacklisted a preacher who warned them about the predator. And Chuck Smith continues to enjoy anonymity as he worships at a church with hundreds of minor children. I have to wonder, at a church that size, how many other dangerous predators are being kept hidden within the pews.

Rachael is right. This is what it looks like when institutions create a culture where a predator can flourish unafraid and unabated. And this is what it looks like when people in authority refuse to listen; put friendships in front of truth, fail to create or enforce proper policy, and fail to hold enablers accountable”

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

10 Replies to “What does it look like when churches choose to provide cover for child predators?”

  1. Thank you for putting this together, Jimmy. It’s so hard to read, and it’s so depressing. But it’s so needed. And if everyone just spoke up and refused to go to these churches, things would change.

    1. Thank you, Sheila. This one was particularly hard to write for me because the people protecting these abusers are friends of mine. I did my practicum hours for my seminary degree at Downtown and know quite a few of the leaders there. We also know the family of the abuser really well. I went to his parents’ home Bible study for several years. My heart aches when people put friendships above the safety of children. It’s never OK to protect an abuser and put children at risk, not matter our relationship to the abuser.

      Thank you for all you do to protect justice.

  2. Can you put a link to this article as a google review or something so the congregation may have some way of seeing it? How do we stop elders from seizing authority that is not theirs (to decide child safety issues independently of parents)?

    The whole point of the registry is to prevent others from keeping this secret anymore.

    1. I’m positive they are aware of this article by now. How do we stop elders from seizing authority that is not theirs? We stop giving it to them. A good friend of mine rightly said that elders only have as much power as the congregation gives them. When elders behave badly they should be removed. If they refuse, the church can find another pasture. It’s hard for a shepherd to shepherd if all the sheep are gone.

      You are right that the registry exists to prevent others from keeping secrets. It is meant to make people in the community aware of people who relied on secrecy, lies, and deception to steal the innocence of children.

  3. There’s only one Biblical response to abusers. Millstones. We have leadership thinking they can be nicer than Jesus by feeding the lambs to the predators.

    1. Many churches have a weak theology that doesn’t make a distinction between wolves and sheep. They lump us all together as sheep. I think it’s crazy to intentionally keep a church blind to someone who has a history of violating innocent children in the worst possible way.

  4. Thank you for this valuable information. When I was a child, there was a deacon in our church by the name of Elde Hunt who was abusing little girls b/tn the ages of six to ten. He was very clever about how he did it. He would sit them on his lap and jiggle them up and down while carrying on a conversation with their parents in their own home. It stimulated him and caused him to have pleasurable feelings, possibly even an erection. One Mom caught on and asked her husband to jiggle one of their daughters on his lap the way Elde did. The father was shocked to find out that it did indeed cause pleasurable feelings. He reported this to his wife. Nothing was done about Elde, as far as I know, until he tried to abuse me. I was ten. I had been dropped off by my Mom at the Sunday School annex building for kids my age ( which was separate from the main church building) early one Sunday morning before Sunday School started. She and my brother went to the main church building where their classes were located. I was in the annex building by myself, sitting and waiting quietly, until it was time for Sunday School to start. Pretty soon, the door opened and in came Elde Hunt. He was a Sunday School teacher for kids my age (4th – 6th graders). He was startled to see me there, said,”Hi.” and went to his Sunday School classroom with a small cardboard box that I assumed had his Sunday School materials in it. Shortly after he entered his classroom to, I suppose, get set up by taking his materials out of the box, I heard him call my name. Thinking maybe he needed help to set things up in his classroom, I went to see what he wanted. The minute I set foot in his classroom, he scooped me into his arms in a romantic type of embrace and began kissing me all over my face as if I were, his wife, Marie. It was all very mushy and disgusting. He held me tight so I could not get away or resist him in any way. He told me not to tell. When he finished, he let me go. I said nothing, went back out to the main room for opening excersizes, and sat down quietly. By that time some other kids were coming in. I waited all through Sunday school and the church service until we were in our car and on the way home before I said anything about what Elde did. Until then, I remained calm, acted normally (as if nothing had happened) as I sized up what to do about this. I figured if I went running out of the S.S. annex, over to the main church building screaming and yelling like a banchee about what Elde did, that he could chase me and possibly do something really harmful to make me shut up. I did not want to give Elde any indication of what I might do or that I might possibly tell on him. But tell on him is exactly what I did as soon as I was in a safe place (our car, with the doors shut, and no one else beside my mom and my brother to hear what I had to say). We were just pulling away from the curb when I began telling my mom what had happened. I posed it as a question. Is it O.K. if an adult does such and such to a child? My mom was shocked and horrified and said “No, it isn’t”. I then told her what Elde did to me. She believed me and contacted the pastor. I had to go have a meeting with the pastor. He asked me if I understood how serious my allegations were. I said, “Yes”. I was very nervous and could not tell if the pastor believed me or not. It did not seem to me that he did but there was a big deacons meeting about it. Elde was the head deacon. He was so jolly, personable, charming and well liked by everyone.
    He also said many wonderful things about God and was adamant about his faith. He could quote scripture real well. The meeting was heated and much discussion was had. At the end, Elde was retained as head deacon. Two other deacons and their families left the church in protest along with me, my brother, and mother. We attended church elsewhere. The deacons told my mother she would have to be the one to tell Marie Hunt what Elde had done to me since I was her daughter. So she did. Marie got so upset, she jumped in her car and drove like a crazy woman, so out of control she almost wrecked and killed herself. The police were never contacted. I don’t know what would have happened if they had been. This was back in the 1960’s. The pastor of the church was close personal friends with my grandparents on my father’s side of the house. Elde had befriended my father (prior to this incident) and Dad liked him a lot. There’s more to the story but I should probably end it for now.

    1. These cover ups are infuriating. The perps have free reign in the church (and elsewhere, of course) while victims are berated. It’s so frustrating. I’m sorry that you never saw justice.

  5. The mandatory reporters who don’t report can be sued, but that means more stress for the victims. These leaders only a use power because the congregation gives them power. Why do people keep attending and supporting a church who has given safe haven to a predator?

Comments are closed.