Hey, What Was Trump Just Saying About Protecting Children?

Who abuses kids? Conservative Christian leaders abuse kids.

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OK, now let’s dive into the horribleness.

Screengrab, Trump signing executive orders. Trump just signed a viciously anti-trans proclamation declaring April to be child abuse prevention month. Because in his sick mind, LGBTQ+ people are the true abusers of children.

You might have missed this amid all the other craziness in the news — Trump’s tariffs, Trump’s kidnapping of innocent people and trafficking them into slavery and torture in El Salvador, to name just two things — but it seems important. With all the fanfare that accompanies Donald Trump picking up a Sharpie with his little meat fingers so he can sign executive orders, Trump signed a proclamation declaring April to be National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

Oh wow, if only!

And don’t you feel like the kids are in perfect hands with Donald Trump, who a judge clarified was found by a jury to be a rapist? Who has been accused of sexual assault and/or harassment by umpteen women? And with his administration, which may have more sexual assault allegations in it than people?

It struck us immediately, considering how this is the Project 2025 presidency, how all the evidence shows that literally the least safe place in America for a child to be is under the watchful care of conservative Christian youth pastors, regular pastors, and other similarly positioned religious leaders. Those are the headlines in the news constantly, youth group leaders and pastors being arrested for kiddie porn, and/or for raping kids, and so forth. It’s never drag performers. It’s never LGBTQ+ people. It’s always from the conservative church.

And who elected Donald Trump? It’s not drag performers. It’s not LGBTQ+ people. It’s the bad guys.

Nevertheless, it’s scarcely a surprise that the proclamation Trump signed — to protect the kids — was viciously anti-trans. MAGA is a Nazi movement, and it’s chosen trans people as one of its first targets.

Here is the third graf of Trump’s proclamation:

Sadly, one of the most prevalent forms of child abuse facing our country today is the sinister threat of gender ideology. Proponents of the gender ideology movement are outrageously indoctrinating our children with the devastating lie that they are trapped in the wrong body — and that the only way they can be truly happy is to alter their sex with hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and sexual mutilation surgery. The evil and backwards lies of gender insanity are robbing our children of their happiness, health, and freedom, while imposing unimaginable heartbreak on parents and families. As I stated during my Joint Address to the Congress last month, my message to every American child is simple: you are perfect exactly the way God made you.

Fuck you, son of a bitch.

So yes, it is time for an update of the Moral High Ground’s tracker of conservative Christian school teachers, pastors, youth pastors, youth group leaders, gymnastics instructors (not a joke) and more, who have been accused, sued for, and convicted of sexually abusing minor children. It’s not the first attempt to track such things and it won’t be the last, but click here for an explanation of how I am doing this and what I want to accomplish with my contribution to the mosaic.

There is no way I will find every one, because it’s so prevalent as to be reasonably considered endemic.

But again, one of the very basic things I want to drive home here is that it simply isn’t LGBTQ+ people or drag performers who are “grooming” or abusing children. It’s conservative Christians and their leaders. It’s the kinds of people who think Project 2025 would be good for America.

Who Grooms And Abuses Kids? Conservative Christian Leaders Groom And Abuse Kids.

They are the abusers they claim to want to protect children from. As of the March 14 update, the list had 51 people on it, since the beginning of the year. Today we’ll add more.

The newest updates to this ever-updating list are at the top, so you don’t have to scroll down through the whole list.

As always, trigger warning for all the obvious reasons. You may not want to physically read all of it. You might want to search it to see how often “King James” and “independent Baptist” come up (a lot). Just see it as the resource it is.

NOTE ONE on today’s update before we get started:

I specifically only include people who are specifically affiliated with churches and religious groups, even if they’re just volunteers. But it has to be relevant to the story. However, in the past month there have been a shit ton of stories of accused kid-abusers among people whose main signifier is simply “Republican.”

There was the Republican ex-New York City councilman who was arrested at the Miami airport for possession of child pornography and the Republican ex-North Dakota state senator who is going to prison for 10 years for traveling to Prague 14 times to pay to have sex with minor boys and the January 6 rioter who thinks his Trump pardon should cover his child pornography possession charges and the Republican former Minnesota state senator who is accused of soliciting a minor girl for sex and the MAGA influencer/Tucker Carlson guest/Jesse Watters guest who has been indicted for child porn production.

Those people are not on this list, because they’re not specifically religious figures. But maybe there should be another list that attempts to show that this kind of thing is also endemic simply among MAGA and Republicans, more broadly.

Perhaps, perhaps!

NOTE TWO: One thing you might notice as this list continues to populate is that almost all the perps and accused perps come from theologically conservative churches and traditions. But there’s variety in that — there’s Catholic, there’s protestant. There’s predominantly white churches, there are Black churches. There are Spanish-language churches, and undocumented people are among the accused.

I bring it up because right now in this country, MAGA Republican Nazis want us to turn against immigrants, and they want us to cry and cry every time a white woman is victimized by an immigrant, as if immigrant is the important characteristic here, the common denominator. Why do you care more about IMMIGRANTS than you care about their VICTIMS?!?!?! That’s what they’re basically shrieking. WHAT ABOUT LAKEN RILEY?!?!?!?! Her name is now code for “Spanish-speaking immigrant attacks woman,” at least in Republican circles.

Part of my point in making this list is that I want to identify the correct common denominator for the abuse of kids in this country. And it does appear to be conservative Christianity (and just fundamentalist/orthodox religion in general).

Now, today’s update:

The List.

UPDATE, APRIL 11, 2025

52. Bradley Colvin, 52, Rolla, Missouri. Pleaded guilty to child porn possession. Among his acts, he confessed to molesting a child at a Vacation Bible School pool party. None of the articles on this specify which church at he was a church youth ministry volunteer. Local journalists? You need to specify that information. It’s important.

53. Christopher Willett, Crystal Springs, Mississippi. Arrested for “statutory rape, sexual battery, intercourse (unnatural), computer luring of a person, and child pornography.” Willett is a minister at the First Presbyterian Church of Crystal Springs. First Pres is PCA, which I believe is the largest of the extremist right-wing Presbyterian denominations that had a temper tantrum and broke away from the normal Presbyterian church (PCUSA), because the normal Presbyterian church loves people too much. (Too loving to LGBTQ+ people, etc.) This author grew up in the PCA. It’s not a good place.

54. Jose Francisco Bernal. Fort Worth, Texas. The former pastor of the Tabernacle of Life Pentecostal Church (Tabernaculo de Vida) has been ordered to pay $124 million to a woman he reportedly sexually abused when she was a child. He was originally arrested in 2017 for allegedly sexually abusing two women when they were children, but that case ended in a mistrial. There are a number of churches with similar names in the area, but it appears to be affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church International. So, Pentecostal.

55. Christopher Hayes, 46, Spring Hill, Florida. Whole lot going on with this one. A realtor with Berkshire Hathaway, a youth lacrosse coach, a church deacon at the Idlewild Baptist Church in Lutz, Florida. Arrested on 90 charges involving not only child pornography but also bestiality, including his own dog. (His wife confirmed the dog’s identity, one article says.) The church no longer appears on his LinkedIn, but assuming this is the correct Idlewild — it’s a megachurch also in the Tampa Bay area — it’s a big ass Southern Baptist congregation.

56. Rodger Strong, 69, recently retired pastor from Orland, Indiana. He is charged with molesting a five-year-old girl a number of times. He was pastor of Orland Church of the Nazarene, which no longer exists due to Rodger Strong. Probably for the best. One less conservative church in existence.

57. Elvis Colenberg, Jefferson County, Mississippi, pastor and former school bus driver. Accused of repeatedly forcing two 14-year-olds to have sex with each other on his school bus. It appears we are talking about the Hollywood Missionary Baptist Church, in Fayette, Mississippi. Affiliated with the General Missionary Baptist State Convention of Mississippi. Damn, Mississippi comes up a lot on this list.

58. Tyler Selby, Ocean Springs, Mississippi. (AS I WAS SAYING!) Sentenced to 20 years for making child porn and sexually abusing a young boy. Selby was a worship leader at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Ocean Springs, and was fired as music minister at Robinwood Baptist Church in Harrison County upon his arrest. Both are Southern Baptist churches.

59. Joshua Lucero, 28, Thornton, Colorado. Arrested for multiple sexual assaults of juveniles from when he was a youth pastor at the Word Alive Church. The church refers to itself as “full-gospel” and non-denominational. Notably, his parents appear to be the pastors. That’s a scenario I’ve seen several times on this list.

60. Willie Leon Wright, Green Cove Springs, Florida. Arrested in an underage sex sting, and even brought his three-year-old son with him when he came to meet the fake 14-year-old girl. Nothing we’re seeing lists the church. In the same sting, ANOTHER Republican official was caught up, this one trying to meet up with a fake 14-year-old boy.

61. We’ll let the New York Times write this one: “Theodore E. McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington and the highest American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church to be accused of sexually abusing minors and seminarians — a charge that stripped him of his ministry, his place in the College of Cardinals and his priesthood, reducing him to the status of a layman — has died. He was 94.” Rest in hell, motherfucker.

62. Elmer Baca-Flores, Del City, Oklahoma. Accused of molesting an underage girl after he told her he spoke for God and that she was the “chosen one.” Lots of weird shit going on with this one, allegations of human and labor trafficking, etc. Sounds like some cult leader behavior. His church — the Ministerio Levantando Adoradores Para Cristo Inc. — “meets for services either in his home, at a park, or elsewhere,” says the local news.

63. Fr. Jaime Arriaga, 41. Priest at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Downey, California. Arrested and accused of raping a minor.

64. Village of Farwell, Surrey Township, Michigan. Harold Norman Cole, Jr., a former pastor of Farwell Trinity Baptist Church, sentenced to 365 days in prison after pleading no contest to aggravated assault of a child under 13. Details a bit scarce, but the original accusation was criminal sexual conduct against a child. Trinity comes up in the directory of KJV churches — King James — which tend to be independent fundamentalist Baptist churches that are both to the right of and even less biblically literate than the Southern Baptists. They believe only the King James version of the Bible is the real one, because God apparently only knows that version of English. These churches come up again and again on this list, and as the Preacher Boys Podcast explains, the real defining characteristic of these churches is control.

65. Britt Taylor, Horn Lake, Mississippi. (Memphis suburbs. Third Memphis appearance on this list!) Indicted for trying to send a sexual picture to an underage girl. Oops it was a cop. Taylor was the music minister at Calvary Baptist Church in Horn Lake. Calvary is a Southern Baptist church.

Finally, an update on Waymon Jordan, a pastor further down the list who was arrested for sex with a child under 15. He has died by suicide.

UPDATE, MARCH 14, 2025

24. Robert Morris. (SEE ABOVE.)

25. Bartlett, Tennessee. (That’s a Memphis suburb.) John Miller, 48, was a youth volunteer for years at Hope Church in the Cordova area of Memphis. Charged with rape of a child. The indictment says it happened in 2006-2007, and the victim was between three and 13 years old at the time. Hope Church is one of those megachurches that tries to act like it’s welcoming to everybody, and we’ve even heard occasionally of gays going there. Hope doesn’t like to lead with the fact that it’s affiliated with the severely bigoted Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC), but it is. I live in Memphis, and I tend to think Hope is fucking garbage.

26. Middletown, Delaware. Justin Lee Smith was the head of the St. Anne’s Episcopal School. Arrested for possession of child porn, featuring girls from six to 16.

27. North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Chadwick Branch, 55, arrested with “voluminous amounts” of child porn. He was apparently the former pastor of the Victory Baptist Church in Sutherlin, Virginia. Surprise, it’s one of those independent fundamentalist Baptist King James churches! Real quick, search the words “King James” on this page and see how many times they come up. It’s only March, y’all. I just started this project in January.

28. Derwood, Maryland. Ervin Alvaro-Lopez, 34, pleaded guilty to molesting four young girls, and was sentenced to prison. He was a teacher at the Elim Gaithersburg Church, which appears to be a Spanish language church of some kind. Surprise, a local Fox News affiliate headline on this was that he was an immigrant who had been previously deported. Really? Is that what makes him dangerous to children? Or does the rest of this list suggest perhaps it’s something else? Just curious.

29. Faith Life Church in Ohio seems to be a REAL charlatan operation. It’s a megachurch with multiple campuses, it looks grifty as hell, and as JoeMyGod notes, Drenda Keesee, one of the senior pastors (along with her husband Gary) is a conspiracy theorist who talks about things like “globalists, Democrats, the one world order.” They ascribe to Seven Mountains Dominionism (which is holyshitbonkers). Anyway, their son, Gary Thomas “Tom” Keesee, who has been an officer of the church, has been accused of molesting more than one person, including his own sister.

30. Granite Falls, North Carolina. Ashley Crouse, a former pastor at the New Vision Baptist Fellowship, sentenced to 10 years for child porn possession. He had it on his computer at church. New Vision is a Southern Baptist congregation.

31. Tupelo, Mississippi. Alexander Blackwelder, 28, was the youth pastor at the East Main Street Church of Christ, which is Church of Christ obviously, unless they’re trying to fool me. Sentenced to prison for 10 years for having an “inappropriate” sexual relationship with a 16-year-old minor girl.

32. Harris County, Texas. (Houston area.) Lance Hoffpauir, 42, nabbed in “To Catch A Predator”-type sting. Online solicitation of someone he believed was a minor. Initial reports said he was a church youth group volunteer and a former junior high history teacher, but didn’t say where.

33. Riverside, California. Matthew Johnson, 34, lately of Bryan, Texas, sentenced to 30 years in prison for making his own child porn, filming kids while working as a counselor at La Sierra (Seventh-Day Adventist) Academy in Riverside, and as a chaperone at a junior high Bible camp, hiding cameras in bathrooms and the like. If you are not familiar with the Seventh-Day Adventists, well, a lot of regular-type evangelicals believe they are a cult. They skew very conservative, though. The “seventh day” refers to how they observe Saturday as the Sabbath.

34. Fruitport Township, Michigan. Daniel Devries, a deacon, a Sunday school teacher, sentenced to four to 10 years in prison for child porn. He was a deacon at Unity Reformed Church in Norton Shores. Also, he “started and volunteered at an organization called Kids Hope Network, which runs a program with students at Churchill Elementary School.” Of course. Always note when you hear “Reformed” that you are probably talking about the same general neighborhood of extremely conservative Presbyterian churches as the type where Defense Secretary Christian Nationalist Pete Hegseth is involved, where Senator Josh Hawley has attended in the past, and many many many more of the most prominent Christian nationalists currently working to destroy America. That said, Unity’s denomination is the Reformed Church in America, which is conservative, but not so conservative that a bunch of churches didn’t split off in 2022 in a huff because the RCA isn’t viciously anti-LGBTQ enough.

35. Racine County, Wisconsin. Crystal Lachman, 30, a worker at a Christian daycare. Arrested for child porn. It was the Bright & Beautiful Christian Child Care Center, affiliated with Union Grove Methodist Church. Union Grove appears to be a regular old United Methodist church.

36. Cleveland, Tennessee. Richard Lee Sentell pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years in prison on child porn charges. He was the senior pastor of Cornerstone Church of God, which is some Holiness-Pentecostal shit. Holiness is a whole extremely conservative, pentecostal-adjacent movement. Those with experience in it should chime in, in the comments!

37. Yakima, Washington. David Franklin, 68, sentenced to 30 years in prison for making, transporting and possessing child porn. Franklin “was a former Assemblies of God pastor, a chaplain in the Civil Air Patrol, and a leader in the Royal Rangers, which is a Christian scouting-type organization for boys,” according to court documents. You know, just all the fucking things. Surprise, the Royal Rangers are suuuuuper anti-LGBT bigots.

38. Plain Township, Ohio. Jesse Santos, 59, pastor of the Canton Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a minor 14-year-old girl on a camping trip.

39. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. John-Paul Miller, accused of raping a 15-year-old girl more than 25 years ago and then assaulting her again in 2023. Christian Post notes that this is coming not even a year after the suicide of Miller’s wife Mica Miller, which seems to be viewed suspiciously. The woman’s lawsuit names both Miller and his father Reginald Miller, plus all their affiliated churches, and says of the two men: "Behind their religious facade, John-Paul Miller and Reginald Wayne Miller engaged in sexual abuse and predatory conduct — often targeting minors. They used their positions of power to manipulate and exploit vulnerable victims while concealing their actions from the public." Miller was pastor at a church called Solid Rock at Market Common, which appears to have just been sold. It looks like it’s become Living Water at Market Common, and … I don’t fuckin’ know. Somebody in Myrtle Beach have a better understanding of this story? Chime in! Seems like some major evangelical megachurch drama.

40. Asheboro, North Carolina. Lucas Hunt, 25, not a pastor or youth group leader, but apparently originated the idea for a very popular (?) campaign of “Thank You Jesus” signs? Uh yeah, anyway, arrested for child porn possession.

41. Trenton, New Jersey. Charles Brinson, 64, pastor (“bishop”) of the Brinson Memorial Church on Brinson Avenue — really — “arrested and charged with aggravated sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child following separate incidents that, allegedly, happened earlier this year.” On their Facebook page, they call themselves “interdenominational.” Brinson was also arrested in 2008 for molesting a 15-year-old boy.

42. Bentonville, Arkansas. Andrew Apple, 27, was arrested after being accused of sexual abuse and rape involving two minor boys at the church where he volunteered with the youth program. The website, which looks very pentecostal-y and high-tech-y, says it strives to become a “21st Century Apostolic Church.” So … yeah, megachurch, charismatic, pentecostal, all that shit. There seems to be a book that uses that very same terminology.

43. Highlands Ranch, Colorado, near Denver. Richard Merskin, 42, convicted of sexually assaulting his own daughter, who was under age 15. Merskin was a minister at The River Church, and oh boy, just go to the website, you’ll see what kind of high-tech laying-on-of-hands speaking-in-tongues kind of place it is. Denominationally, the website says they “are involved with and have roots in the Vineyard movement and we also are part of the 400 Gathering and the Aspen Family of Churches in the Denver area.” Second time the Vineyard movement has shown up on the list. Merskin also founded something called Way Of Life Ministries International.

44. A former Southern Baptist pastor named Matt Queen, most recently pastor of a church in North Carolina, won’t do prison time for lying to the feds as part of the abuse investigation into the Southern Baptist Church, the one that came after that HUGE independent investigation. There’s a lot to it, but not easy to summarize, but I’m including it on the list to remind us how much cover-up is often involved in these situations.

45. Pueblo area, Colorado. Stephen Hutto, 45, is the pastor of Highlands Baptist Church in Boone, Colorado, and used to be the youth pastor at Fountain Independent Baptist Church in Fountain, near Colorado Springs. The charge is felony child sexual assault, stemming from incidents 15 years ago. “Grooming” is specifically mentioned. Both churches come up in the King James churches directory, which has come up a number of times already on this list. Seems like these independent fundamentalist Baptist churches who are convinced Jesus spoke the King’s English (AND NOT ANY OTHER LANGUAGES) have a pretty serious child sex abuse problem!

46. Waxhaw, North Carolina. Waymon Jordan, 79, the senior pastor at Greater Blessed Hope Baptist Church. Arrested for “statutory sexual offense” with a child under 15. The church’s website describes it as a “community Baptist church,” and elsewhere calls the church Greater Blessed Hope Missionary Baptist Church. Missionary Baptists aren’t a denomination, but rather a movement, largely of Black churches, at least in the South, however, you’ll see the terminology on some other churches too.

47. Salem, South Carolina. William Franklin Galbreath, 57, the pastor of Harvest Holiness Church. Arrested on “a dozen counts of criminal sexual conduct, multiple counts of criminal sexual conduct with a minor, and assault charges.” JoeMyGod says in January Galbreath shared a post on Facebook thanking Donald Trump for banning Pride flags and “ending the celebration of the abomination of homosexuality.” Yep. His Facebook appears to have gone bye-bye, though, surprise, and the church doesn’t have an online presence.

48. Brentwood, New York, Long Island. Jose Saez, 29, a pastor at Iglesia Cristiana Alumbrando El Camino, has pleaded guilty on child porn-related charges. And if you want more information than that, hit the New York Post, because we don’t even want to fucking type it, it’s so awful. The church is one of those strip mall Spanish language evangelical-type churches. Doesn’t seem to have a web presence. Moving on.

49. Port Orange, Florida. Jeffery Summers, 51, the pastor of New Hope Baptist Church. Charged with … basically everything you see on “To Catch A Predator.” It was a sting operation, and the pastor got stung. He also worked with special ed kids in Volusia County public schools, Horizon Elementary to be specific. The Roys Report notes that New Hope doesn’t have a working website and all the lines seem disconnected — imagine that — but that New Hope is part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Florida & the Caribbean Islands.

50. Alpharetta, Georgia. Daniel Menelaou, 31, youth pastor at the Futures Church. Arrested on child porn-related charges. Futures Church describes itself as a non-denominational “multi-site megachurch” with campuses in the US, Australia and Indonesia. The website is so tacky.

51. South Beloit, Illinois. Anthony Dusso, 53, has been arrested on multiple counts of disseminating child pornography. South Beloit is on the Wisconsin border, and Dusso is the senior pastor of the Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Beloit, Wisconsin, which is part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. This is one of the not-so-common times when the clergy is associated with a non-conservative strain of Christianity. Trust us, it won’t happen that often.

Finally, two updates:

Firstly, UPDATE ON THE CPAC YOUTH PASTOR, Zachary Radcliffe, who has just been hit with 30 MORE felony child molestation charges. As this is the first time there’s been a duplicate on the list — an update — I’m putting this at the bottom of the update but being careful not to add a new number in the list, because I’m fair and honest. Here is my original entry if you don’t want to scroll down:

Augusta Township/Ypsilanti, Michigan. Update on Zachary Radcliff, a former youth pastor who is charged with 33 felonies for sexually abusing kids. He’s been denied bond because apparently he kept harassing an alleged victim who spoke out. He told this victim to “keep his … mouth shut.” An alumnus of Liberty University, Radcliff was the worship director and interim youth pastor at Oakwood Baptist Church in Augusta Township, where his daddy is the pastor. Oakwood is a Southern Baptist congregation. The alleged victims: 10 boys, one girl, one under 13. According to one alleged victim, who was 15 at the time, Radcliff called it their “cute little secret.” Radcliff has performed at CPAC, and oh boy, he’s a big Trump supporter. For a picture of him with Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle and Jerry Falwell Jr., click here. Hemant Mehta AKA The Friendly Atheist has so much more.

Also, Samuel McCall, a youth group volunteer in Troy, Alabama, who had been arrested for child porn, soon after died by suicide.

UPDATE, FEBRUARY 7, 2025

10. Thiensville, Wisconsin. Daniel Rick, 36, charged with sex crimes against children. Rick was a teacher and athletic director at Christ Alone Lutheran School. Excerpt: “A criminal complaint accuses Rick of picking ‘favorite’ boy students each year and having some of them sit on his lap, where he would touch their stomachs or rub their backs and kiss them.”

11. Here is an interesting one. Former New York Yankees Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera and his wife Clara are named in a lawsuit for “covering up the sexual abuse of a minor in their home and at a 2018 summer camp affiliated with an Assemblies of God church they founded in 2009 known as the Refugio De Esperanza (the Refuge of Hope),” per the Christian Post. The church is in New Rochelle, New York, and obviously the Assemblies of God are a whole tongue-speaking pentecostal situation. The lawsuit says there were multiple perpetrators, including, surprise, a youth pastor named Ruben Tavarez.

12. Cleveland County, Oklahoma. James McMillan, a former pastor, was arrested for the third time in as many months, for texting a nude to a teenager in Kansas, a classmate of his son’s. Previous arrests were for child sex crimes. KFOR in Oklahoma City says McMillan “was a former pastor at a minimum of two churches in Slaughterville and Konawa. [Sources] confirmed McMillan left both churches under strange circumstances several years ago, and hasn’t preached at either location since then.” They didn’t say which churches, but the Christian Post identified them as Slaughterville Baptist Church and First Baptist Church of Konawa, both of which I think are Southern Baptist Convention.

13. Tehachapi, California. Adrian Daugherty, 41-year-old youth pastor at the Tehachapi Church of the Nazarene, arrested for alleged sexual assault of a teenager.

14. Eric DeJaeger, 77, a former Catholic priest in Igloolik, Nunavut — that’s Canada — sentenced to seven years in prison for sexually abusing seven children between ages four and nine between 1978 and 1982.

15. Augusta Township/Ypsilanti, Michigan. Update on Zachary Radcliff, a former youth pastor who is charged with 33 felonies for sexually abusing kids. He’s been denied bond because apparently he kept harassing an alleged victim who spoke out. He told this victim to “keep his … mouth shut.” An alumnus of Liberty University, Radcliff was the worship director and interim youth pastor at Oakwood Baptist Church in Augusta Township, where his daddy is the pastor. Oakwood is a Southern Baptist congregation. The alleged victims: 10 boys, one girl, one under 13. According to one alleged victim, who was 15 at the time, Radcliff called it their “cute little secret.” Radcliff has performed at CPAC, and oh boy, he’s a big Trump supporter. For a picture of him with Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle and Jerry Falwell Jr., click here. Hemant Mehta AKA The Friendly Atheist has so much more.

16. Jackson, Tennessee. Former youth pastor Ryan McElrath, age 40, has pleaded guilty after being charged with “statutory rape by an authority figure, sexual battery by an authority figure, and aggravated statutory rape.” The victim was 17, and it happened at Fellowship Bible Church, which appears to be a nondenominational and extremely conservative, mostly white burgeoning megachurch. All the elders and pastors are men, and it takes about one second to find something homophobic on their website.

17. Longview, Texas. A “faith-based gymnastics coach.” (For fuck's sake.) Matthew Orban, age 52. Indicted for sexually assaulting a minor. Says he “intentionally and knowingly caused the penetration of the sexual organ” of the victim “by defendant’s finger.” The website for “Faith Flip” — yeah, really — appears to be offline now — surprise! — but the news article says it used to say that “God has put on our heart to reach out to those that might not be able to afford a gymnastics lesson or get to hear the word of God.” You see, they didn’t charge the kids. At least they didn’t charge money. Allegedly.

18. Mineola, Texas, just down the road from Longview. Timothy Nall, a former pastor at Mt. Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church. Arrested for sexual assault of a child, and this is not the first time or the first reported victim. He was also charged with sexual battery against a teen girl in 2013, and indicted in 2014 for molesting a six-year-old girl. This happened when he was pastor at Farmington Baptist Church, in Corinth, Mississippi. Farmington brags on its website that it’s the oldest Baptist church in north Mississippi. It’s another independent Baptist/King James church. On the website for Mt. Pisgah in Texas, the church lists as its affiliations the Baptist Missionary Association of Texas and Jacksonville College, a Christian junior college. Private Christian junior colleges are big with homeschoolers in East Texas. Ask me how I know this.

19. Welcome the Mormons to the list. Washington, Utah. Mark Stevens, 68, a former LDS bishop, charged with “one count of forcible sodomy, a first-degree felony, and two counts second-degree of forcible sexual abuse.” The alleged victim was 16 at the time, in 2006 and 2007.

20. Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Dwight Suttles, age 69, charged with rape of a child, plus five counts of sexual battery. Five alleged victims. All under 13. Suttles was the pastor of Liberty Baptist Church. This is another independent Baptist/King James church! Golly, at what point do we consider it endemic?

21. Troy, Alabama. Samuel McCall, a youth group volunteer, arrested for child porn. According to Beks, who monitors this stuff on Twitter and other places, the name of the church hasn’t been released.

22. Update on Mike Bickle, the predator founder of the Kansas City International House of Prayer, a pentecostal movement. A new 68-page report claims Bickle sexually abused “at least 17 females, including minors.” This reportedly started in the mid-1970s. One survivor says Bickle would make her read Psalm 51 after he abused her. (You have to read it to realize how fucked that is.)

23. Aaron Craig Gleason, Niceville, Florida, charged with “lewd and lascivious molestation of a child under 12.” He taught Bible and was the middle school soccer coach at Rocky Bayou Christian School, which is Southern Baptist. This one is just amazing, because Gleason has written for not only The Federalist but also Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, where Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles work and attack LGBTQ+ people daily. (For The Federalist, he wrote a review of The Sound Of Freedom, that total bullshit right-wing movie about, you guessed it, child sex trafficking.) Here is an archived version of Gleason’s author page at Daily Wire. Commenting on Twitter on a drag march in New York City in 2023, Gleason said, “No grooming going on here, they’re just coming for our children.” The marchers in the video were chanting that, but it was a joke making fun of right-wingers who say things like that. Gleason is apparently pretty big on accusing LGBTQ people of “grooming” children. I have long hypothesized that Christian conservatives’ true objection to that is that it gets in the way of their own grooming, in all the forms that takes, including when it’s the Bible teacher at the Southern Baptist school. (Alongside that is my hypothesis that, to conservative Christians, LGBTQ+ “grooming” consists of any action that helps LGBTQ+ kids have access to information that will make them accept themselves and love themselves, rather than live in self-hatred or die by suicide.)

SO THAT HAPPENED.

INITIAL LIST, JANUARY 17, 2025

1. Arturo Laguna Camas, a pastor at Iglesia Casa De Adoración in Phoenix, Arizona. Affiliated with the Disciples of Christ. Accused of recording women in the bathroom. Not about children, but related because of the war on trans people using the bathroom.

2. Jackson Gatlin, former young adult pastor at the Duluth Vineyard Church in Duluth, Minnesota, has been named in nine civil lawsuits over alleged sexual abuse of minors, aged 11 to 16 at the time. He pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault of a minor in 2023, while taking Alford pleas on four other counts. Also named in the suits are his parents, Michael and Brenda, who are respectively the former senior pastor of the church and a former church leader. Vineyard USA appears to be somewhere between evangelicals and Pentecostals.

3. Michael Ronald Goble, a 76-year-old retired pastor of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Adrian, Michigan. Accused of molesting multiple young boys under 13. Various sources have listed the church as “Methodist” (but not United Methodist) and also Mennonite.

4. Michael Howard, a worship leader connected with Ken Ham’s Creation Museum in northern Kentucky. Confessed to sexually abusing a teenage boy over the course of several years, beginning when the victim was 15. Has been part of TrueSong, which is The Ark Encounter’s and the Creation Museum’s resident praise and worship band, because of course the Ark Encounter has one of those. Went to Florence Baptist Temple in Burlington, Kentucky, and was a worship leader there too. It appears to be an independent Baptist church, and is listed in this directory of KJV churches, AKA churches that are obsessed with the idea that the King James Bible is the only real Bible, because I guess God is only able to communicate in the King’s English, and cannot understand these newfangled slang Bibles like the NIV.

5. Frank Gough II, friar at the Resurrection Anglican Church in Shalimar, Florida, arrested for possession of child pornography. Resurrection is affiliated with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), which stomped away from the normal Episcopal church in a huff because the Episcopalians are too nice to gay people.

6. Rodolfo Martinez-Guevara, former priest associated with Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic parish in Oxnard, California, among others. He “pleaded no contest to sodomy with a person under age 16 and a lewd act with a child age 14 or 15, according to court records,” and was sentenced to a year in jail. Also doing time concurrently for possession of child pornography.

7. Bernabe Leon-Alvarez, a former pastor in Racine, Wisconsin, has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for “attempted sexual exploitation by a therapist and child enticement.” Groping two teenage girls, in layman’s terms. His church, which no longer exists, was called Esperanza en Cristo, and he also worked at other churches in the Milwaukee and Illinois. I am unclear on what kind of affiliation this church had, if any.

8. Bruce Hollen, 63, a former pastor in The Woodlands, Texas, sentenced to two years for possession of child pornography. His former church was a Calvary Chapel. These are charismatic evangelical churches.

9. Lindsey Whiteside, Hernando, Mississippi. The first woman on this list. Former youth leader and coach at the Getwell Church. Charged with sexually assaulting an underage girl. Getwell Church Hernando, which appears to be a campus of Getwell Church Southaven (both are suburbs of Memphis), is non-denominational, and its website says they believe in biblical infallibility and ascribe to “orthodox” beliefs in the Wesleyan tradition. So conservative, evangelical.

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