WICHITA (KS)
KWCH-TV, CBS-12 [Wichita KS]
June 23, 2025
By Matt Heilman
Eastminster Presbyterian Church addressed one of the key questions surrounding allegations against former youth minister Bodie Weiss
WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – A couple of weeks after an east Wichita church confirmed an investigation surrounding sexual abuse allegations against a former staff member, the church addressed one of the key questions concerning the involvement, or lack thereof, of law enforcement’s awareness of what was reported to have happened.
Last week, Eastminster Presbyterian Church sent a letter to its congregation, admitting to knowing about past allegations of sexual abuse by former student ministries director Bodie Weiss before last year. Previously, the church shared that allegations against Weiss were brought to the governing board of elders last July.
In response to the allegations, Eastminster’s Session hired Fact Finding Ministry to investigate, but did not mention any investigation from the Wichita Police Department or the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office.
Fact Finding Ministry’s investigation stretched six months and found there was a total of 23 victims. Weiss, who began working with Eastminster as the director of senior high school ministries in April 1989 and resigned in July 2006, died in June 2020 at the age of 59.
In the letter sent out by the church on June 14, 2025, church leadership outlined knowledge of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct by Weiss prior to a blog post in July 2024, which was the first public disclosure of allegations.
“Although these previous allegations were investigated when they became known to Eastminster leadership, confidentiality concerns coupled with the determination that the allegations had not been substantiated meant that the allegations were not shared with Eastminster’s governing Board of Elders,” church officials said in the letter.
Fast forward to June 23, 2025, Eastminster said that it did contact law enforcement at the request of a former student, “and volunteered to cooperate with law enforcement in the event that they would like to review Eastminster’s investigation or conduct their own investigation.”
“Subsequently, said student requested that law enforcement do its own investigation,” the church said. “Eastminster remains committed to assisting law enforcement with anything they might need.”
Notably, in the latest update surrounding the case involving Weiss on its website, Eastminster does not say that the investigation report was turned over to law enforcement, just that “in the event that law enforcement would like to review Eastminster’s investigation or conduct their own.”
12 News spoke with Tyson Stuart, one of the 23 identified abuse victims, who is calling for Eastminster to turn over its reports to law enforcement.
“A true third party, law enforcement, is the only entity that can conduct the investigation that this case needs,” Stuart said. “And their non-credible report needs to be turned over to authorities as evidence. Eastminster has and continues to show itself as widely incapable of handling such serious allegations in an appropriate manner.”
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