UNITED STATES
Baptist News
By Bob Allen
Incriminating video that three years ago helped land a former Southern Baptist evangelist in prison for video voyeurism aired on national television Oct. 15.
Thursday’s installment of Crime Watch Daily, a syndicated investigative news magazine series that debuted in the United States and Canada on Sept. 14, opened with the story of Sammy Nuckolls, a once-popular speaker at youth events including LifeWay Christian Resources’ FUGE summer camps. He is now serving 10 years in prison for planting hidden cameras to spy on women in a bathroom at his home in Olive Branch, Miss.
The broadcast, shown in two parts, includes clips shown at his sentencing hearing in September 2012 of Nuckolls setting up spy cameras to capture video of female houseguests as they got undressed to shower. Victims testified to feeling shame and violation of trust with descriptions including “video rape.”
“From the first time that I ever entered their home, that was his objective of our friendship,” Ashley Fisher, one of a few of Nuckolls’ victims who has spoken publicly about the crimes, told Crime Watch Daily.
Her husband, Adam Fisher, a youth pastor and worship leader who once looked up to Nuckolls as a role model and mentor, said he had to put their friendship aside when confronted with the revelation that they and other couples like them were being manipulated and abused.
“Looking back, I see there were a lot of different red flags I could have noticed but just kind of threw to the side, because he was a traveling evangelist,” Fisher admitted. “I mean, you can trust those guys.”
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