THE SET-UP: One of the most overlooked stories I’ve seen in recent years is the epidemic-like level of sexual abuse at the hands of Protestant pastors, preachers, televangelists and youth ministers.
I regularly enter “pastor sex abuse” into search engines and, almost without fail, I get a list of local news reports on a fresh roster of Protestant church-related sex abuse cases. I suspect that I’m only seeing a sampling the problem. As we’ve learned from the Catholic example, religious figures and institutions are adept at covering for abusers and silencing accusers.
In fact, today’s first story is an deep investigative dive by the Washington Post into the story of a serial abuser who moved from one Episcopal church to another, leaving a trail of young victims behind him. Meanwhile, the Southern Baptist Convention is still coping with the fallout from its “widespread” sex abuse scandal and predictable cover-up. Then there’s Gateway, a Texas megachurch located at the buckle of the Bible Belt … that was founded by a pedophile. As you’ll see, he’s got a lot of company. - jp
TITLE: Minister accused of sex abuse landed one high-profile job after another
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2025/falls-church-sex-abuse-allegations/
EXCERPTS: One weekend in early 1991, Jeff Taylor, the youth minister at a centuries-old church catering to Washington’s elite, invited a boy in his congregation to a religious retreat in Illinois. The 13-year-old from the Falls Church Episcopal in Northern Virginia felt flattered, he later recalled. He said he had admired Taylor, a married man with children, even if Taylor bothered him with questions about how often or whether he masturbated.
On their last night, the man said, he and Taylor stayed at someone’s home in suburban Chicago. Somehow, he said, the pair wound up sharing a bed. Then, Taylor — who years later would lead a Red Cross chapter in Georgia and a fundraising arm at the University of Cincinnati Foundation — fondled the middle-schooler with lotion in the middle of the night, the church youth group alumnus recalled.
“He kept saying, ‘You seem stressed out, you seem anxious,’” said the youth group alumnus, now a partner at a financial firm in his 40s, who is speaking for the first time with a news organization about his allegations. “I recall feeling shame. The next morning, Jeff said, ‘Did you feel that, too? This was an evil room, and we need to pray about this room.’”
The alumnus was one of three Falls Church Episcopal youth group members who an independent investigation revealed in April were allegedly sexually abused by Taylor in the 1990s or the early 2000s when they attended the church. The report found that Taylor’s behavior during his employment there constituted “sexual grooming or sexual abuse.” Eleven male students reported that Taylor asked them how frequently they masturbated; six children said he talked with them about the sizes of their penises or his own.
The independent investigation was conducted by Eddie Isler, an employment attorney of the Northern Virginia-based law firm IslerDare. It was commissioned by the Falls Church Anglican, which was established in 2006 by leaders and other members of Falls Church Episcopal who chose to disaffiliate from the denomination. One of the report’s findings was that the church — first under the Rev. John Yates and later under the Rev. Sam Ferguson — failed to thoroughly investigate sex abuse allegations against Taylor when the rectors were first alerted.
In recent months, several youth group alumni told The Washington Post that the FBI has interviewed them about their experiences with Taylor.
The Post has uncovered details of Taylor’s alleged abuse that extend beyond the IslerDare report, including an account from a California man in his 30s who said in an interview that he began a physical relationship with Taylor when he was in eighth or ninth grade in Atlanta and that their encounters eventually involved intense sexual activity, including sodomy.
Ultimately, throughout three decades, Taylor ministered at multiple churches — two of them high-profile — despite many of those organizations either questioning his honesty, investigating him for possible rules violations or learning that Taylor had been accused of sex abuse with the boy on the Illinois trip.
After Taylor was forced out of his final church, was suspended from ministering and resigned his orders as a priest, none of the three institutions that later hired him — the Red Cross, the University of Cincinnati Foundation and the Cincinnati Nature Center — could tell The Post whether they vetted him with his churches.
“The abuse is horrifying in its own right, but what also concerns me is the number of times his behavior was overlooked, left unchecked and protocols broken, enabling him to move from church to church and gaining access to even more students,” said the Rev. Porter “Pete” Taylor, the oldest of Taylor’s four sons, and an Episcopal priest in Georgia.
TITLE: SBC can’t admit its problem with sexual abuse, Boz Tchividjian says
https://baptistnews.com/article/sbc-cant-admit-its-problem-with-sexual-abuse-boz-tchividjian-says/
EXCERPTS: The only solution for the Southern Baptist Convention to solve its sexual abuse problem is to dismantle the denomination entirely, according to Boz Tchividjian, one of the nation’s best-known attorneys representing abuse survivors.
“I can tell you the day a court holds that the SBC itself can be held liable for the abuse that occurs within a church or within one of the SBC ministries, that will be a huge opportunity for survivors to step forward and begin holding the SBC financially accountable and maybe that will cause them to make some changes.”
Tchividjian is an outspoken advocate for the people who have become his primary clients — survivors of sexual abuse, sexual assault and sexual harassment. His current practice focuses almost exclusively on representing child and adult abuse survivors throughout the country.
Previously, he served as an assistant state attorney in the 7th Judicial Circuit of Florida, where he created the first Sex Crimes Division at the Office of the State Attorney.
He also is founder and former executive director of GRACE, whose name is an acronym for Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment. This nonprofit equips faith-based organizations to correctly respond to allegations of sexual abuse and educates them on how to create safeguards to protect children and other vulnerable people.
Most recently, Tchividjian was involved in the high-profile case of influential televangelist Robert Morris, former pastor of Gateway Church in Dallas who was accused of serial sexual abuse of a minor that was covered up for years. The attorney’s work included a meeting with the nondenominational church’s elder board that led to what he considers an appropriate outcome.
On top of all this, Tchividjian is a grandson of the late Billy Graham. His mother, Gigi Graham, was the eldest child of the famous evangelist and his wife, Ruth. She was married to the late Stephan Tchividjian, with whom she had seven children.
His current work representing sexual abuse survivors is not because he had a bad childhood, he said. “I didn’t have a bad church experience. I grew up in a good home. I had a good childhood, went away to law school, and ultimately became a prosecutor. It really was during those days as a prosecutor that my eyes were open to the horror that I knew very little about regarding sexual abuse. Not only sexual abuse of adults but sexual abuse of children.”
“I had a front row seat to a lot of dark horrible stuff. I also had a front row seat of meeting with some of the most amazing people who are alive and people who have survived against all odds, along with how many of my cases were connected in some way to a faith community,” he explained. “I thought churches are supposed to be places of safety and refuge, but I learned quite the opposite.”
There are a lot of survivors who needed to reclaim their agency by holding institutions and offenders accountable in civil courts around this country. I understand the culture and dynamics of so much of the Protestant faith community. I started the law firm, which I run now, and that goes across the country representing sexual abuse survivors.”
Some of those claims are against the SBC, which has made national headlines for four years because of its alleged mishandling of sexual abuse claims.
“There were some valid, genuine voices within the SBC that wanted to see change but were really outnumbered by those who just didn’t see this as that important or who reframed the narrative as those who are complaining about sexual abuse are exaggerating it,” he said. “Organizations build walls up and defend themselves.
“A huge percentage of the SBC were some of the earliest supporters of Donald Trump, who is a sex offender, so why would we think a denomination that largely supports a sex offender would then turn around and make significant strides in addressing sexual abuse within their own denomination?
TITLE: Rocked by scandals, North Texas churches faced a reckoning in 2024
https://www.keranews.org/news/2024-12-31/north-texas-church-scandals-sexual-abuse-robert-morris-gateway
EXCERPTS: Cindy Clemishire was just 12 years old when she says she was first sexually abused by her pastor in 1982.
Robert Morris was close friends with Clemishire’s family and had been staying at their home for Christmas, she said. During a car ride, Clemishire said Morris asked her to visit him in his room later that night.
She thought nothing of it. But Clemishire said Morris told her to lie down and close her eyes before he molested her.
Before returning to her room, Clemishire said Morris warned her: “Never tell anyone about this because it will ruin everything.”
She said it continued for more than four years. Morris went on to found Southlake-based Gateway Church, one of the largest megachurches in the country.
Clemishire, now 54, detailed the ordeal on a church watchdog blog and later at a Texas House committee hearing in October, during which she said it took 20 years for her to understand what she experienced was abuse.
The scandal surrounding Clemishire’s story rocked Gateway Church — but it was just among the first dominoes to fall in a growing number of scandals involving North Texas church leaders this year.
The controversies sparked conversation about accountability against those in power — and the way churches handle abuse allegations.
Morris has not been arrested or convicted. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
While allegations against church leaders and staff members vary, this pattern of accused church leaders is familiar to Amy Smith, who runs a blog dedicated to sharing stories of abuse victims — and helped Clemishire reveal the alleged abuse.
Smith has been running WatchKeep for more than a decade, and for her, the effort is personal.
Her family began attending Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano during the 1980s. In 1989, youth music minister John Langworthy was quietly fired after child sexual abuse allegations.
But Smith said the church never publicly addressed the allegations or reported them to police.
“He left within a week, and he was gone,” Smith said. “It always haunted me, you know, but no one talked about it anymore.”
Twenty years later, Smith's friends confided in her that they were also victims of Langworthy.
After that, she made it her mission to warn anyone who would listen.
Langworthy eventually confessed and was convicted in Mississippi, but only after he'd been hired at another church Smith also tried to warn.
“It shatters even your faith,” she said. “This person that was supposed to be the most trustworthy had betrayed our trust and it harmed some our friends.”
That pushed her to continue finding and breaking stories about allegations against church leaders across the country.
Smith’s written about pastors like Scott Crenshaw in Fort Worth, who was accused of looking at inappropriate images online. He has not been arrested, but was fired from his position once the allegations came to light.
McKinney church leader David Scarberry was arrested in October on a family violence charge.
Another church leader, Marvin Scales in Waxahachie, was convicted of impregnating a 14-year-old child.
Smith said she she's seen the dark side of Christianity — but that's helped her understand her own faith and what she wants it to look like.
"What we're seeing is empowerment of people that say, 'this is not OK, this is my church,'" Smith said. "This is wrong."
During Clemishire’s hearing, North Texas Rep. Jeff Leach said Texas needs to do more to protect victims — and he wants to get rid of nondisclosure agreements like the one Clemishire was offered.
Clemishire told lawmakers Morris’ lawyers offered her $25,000 in 2007. But only if she signed a non-disclosure agreement and took blame for the alleged abuse.
She said she declined because she wanted to tell her story.
“I'm sitting here today because I did not accept that offer and refused to sign an NDA saying I couldn't speak about my life,” Clemishire told the lawmakers.
A month later, Leach filed a bill that could increase the criminal penalty for people who knowingly cover up child sexual abuse.
“We are behind in where we need to be and where we should be,” Leach said at the hearing. “And I fear if we don’t act, in a real meaningful and strong way, we’re almost going to become a sanctuary for these criminals who are preying on our children.”
SEE ALSO:
Lifetime registered sex offender once on ‘America’s Most Wanted’ leads church in Texas
https://www.christianpost.com/news/lifetime-registered-sex-offender-leads-texas-church.html
Living Word Church pastor accused of sexually assaulting girl for years rejects plea offer
https://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw-bay-city/2025/01/living-word-church-pastor-accused-of-sexually-assaulting-girl-for-years-rejects-plea-offer.html
Worship Leader Associated With Creation Museum Faces 80 Charges Related to Alleged Sexual Abuse of Teen Boy
https://churchleaders.com/news/503629-michael-howard-creation-museum-faces-80-charges-sexual-abuse.html
Megachurch fires student pastor after he confesses to ‘inappropriate contact with a minor’ 10 years ago
https://www.christianpost.com/news/megachurch-fires-student-pastor-after-confession.html
Frisco pastor fired after disclosing child abuse allegations
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/article298332073.html
Florida Church Leader Charged with Possession of Child Sex Abuse Material
https://julieroys.com/florida-church-leader-charged-possession-child-sex-abuse-material/
More ministries part ways with Bedford’s Daystar network amid child sex abuse allegations
https://fortworthreport.org/2025/01/07/more-ministries-part-ways-with-bedfords-daystar-network-amid-child-sex-abuse-allegations/
Televangelist Mark Barclay’s Son-In-Law Rejects Plea Deal in Sexual Assault Case
https://julieroys.com/televangelist-mark-barclays-son-in-law-rejects-plea-deal-in-sexual-assault-case/