DICKSON CITY (PA)
The Roys Report [Chicago IL]
June 26, 2025
By Josh Shepherd
Note: This story contains graphic depictions of predatory grooming and sexual abuse.
“I just feel like you need a special hug from a friend,” Darren Kizer, a 44-year-old pastor at Parker Hill Community Church in Dickson City, in northeast Pennsylvania near Scranton, told Steph, his 27-year-old employee.
At the time—Sept. 2, 2013—Steph thought she and Kizer were just enjoying a brief mid-day canoe ride as a break from work. This was something they had done before with other staff. But this time, it was just them.
Steph recounts that Kizer paddled upstream for about 20 minutes. They walked to a waterfall he’d discovered.
Steph told TRR Kizer hugged her once on the way to the falls. But on the way back, he pinned her against a stone wall, groped her breasts, then pressed his erect genitals into her back.
“I froze,” she said. “I don’t have a record of how long it went on, but it was not quick.”
About a month later, she claims he asked her to perform oral sex on him. She complied, but said afterward, “I sat there in front of him, weeping because I was so distraught.”
These interactions continued for about 11 months until August 2014, when Steph and her husband moved to Atlanta.
At the time, Steph thought the miles would create distance from Kizer. However, because of “side projects” he had initiated, contact continued.
The next year, Kizer moved to Atlanta to work for the leading church curriculum provider, Orange. And it was as a senior executive at Orange that Kizer began sexually abusing her again, said Steph, who began working for Orange in 2016.
Experts say that sexual contact between a pastor or spiritual authority and those under them classifies as adult clergy sexual abuse because of the power differential. Steph asked TRR to use only her first name, which complies with our policy of identifying alleged sex abuse victims only if they request it.
According to Steph, Orange—whose founder Reggie Joiner has been accused of sexually abusing multiple female subordinates and contractors—provided the ideal environment for abuse.
Steph said Orange operated with very few boundaries. Employees were expected to work after hours with little to no advance notice. And Orange maintained a condo, where employees would often work late into the night and even sleep over.
From 2016—2019, Steph said Kizer abused her at Orange and at an Atlanta-area lake property where Kizer often hosted ministry staff.
But it was only when the details of Joiner’s alleged abuse of other subordinates came out that Steph understood what had been happening to her and ended it.
Kizer, however, has implied their relationship was consensual, calling Steph an “affair partner” and adding, “We hold some different views on the situation.”
Although he declined to answer a series of specific questions about the allegations against him, he did give a brief statement to TRR:
“I deeply regret and take responsibility for engaging in a sexual relationship that was a clear violation of my marital vows and a profound lapse in the ethical canons placed in me as a pastor. My role as a pastor required me to uphold the highest ethical standards and to prioritize the spiritual and emotional well-being of those I served. These actions represented a profound failure to meet those obligations and a misuse of the trust placed in me.”
Steph responded: “I was never his partner; I was his prey . . . I couldn’t have given consent, given the power dynamic that he had all of the opportunity to offer and every ability to take away the opportunity.”
Steph said she is coming out with her story now to alert other women who have been groomed by predator pastors.
Clergyman’s grooming opens door to more abuse
Steph’s story begins in 2009, when she became a youth volunteer at Parker Hill—now a campus of Lives Changed by Christ Church. Kizer promoted her to a part-time administrative position, and over the years, her responsibilities grew.
Meanwhile, Steph and her husband struggled with infertility, which became a context for Kizer to ask increasingly personal questions.
“Darren kind of locked in about my marriage with Tim,” she said. “It was like he was feeling out my commitment level to my husband, asking about the frequency of our sexual intimacy and the challenges of keeping track of (fertility) dates.”
Then she said Kizer divulged he had not been satisfied in his marriage but that having kids had been “a great distraction” for years.
He then began fostering a boundary-less relationship with Steph, she alleges, telling her, “I’ll distract you, to help you find purpose outside of that role of wife or mother.”
After learning how Steph had dreamed of being an author, he suggested writing a ministry book together that would involve travel for research.
Then came the canoe outing, which Kizer reportedly downplayed.
“You know, if my wife saw that hug, she would be so upset. . .” Steph recalled Kizer saying. “I’m only being your friend, but nobody else would get it if anybody knew.”
Following the alleged assault, Steph began experiencing heightened anxiety, brain fog, and depression. “What I now recognize as symptoms of PTSD, I (then) believed were the result of deep regret for leading astray a man God had ordained.”
Any disclosure, she feared, would expose her sin. Plus, Kizer made it clear that her silence was the price for their upcoming trip to Dubai to conduct research for the book.
“You can’t make this weird,” Steph recalled Kizer saying. “If my wife finds out or has any sort of inclination that there’s a problem, we won’t be able to do this trip. And we won’t be able to write this book.”
No boundaries
Meanwhile, Kizer kept pushing boundaries by bringing up the size of his genitals and asking Steph how his compared to her husband’s. During church staff meetings, Kizer would brush up against her legs and knees under the table, she said.
The two journeyed to Dubai weeks later with Kizer’s wife, Becky, and the co-author of the planned book.
“He’d make flirty comments on that trip—like looking at a honey stand in a crowded market, he’d lean over and whisper, ‘I bet your lips taste like that honey,’” Steph told TRR.
Upon returning home, Kizer scheduled time with Steph at her home to work on the book. Steph claimed he would embrace her while the two were clothed, with him pressing into her.
Because the church was opening another campus location, Kizer often asked Steph to work from an empty building partially under renovation. When they were alone, Kizer would make sexual demands.
“I was truly isolated and alone in that situation,” Steph told TRR. “I am five foot eight, and Darren is six foot four. I don’t think I stood a chance against him.”
On October 9, 2013, a particularly egregious day when she was not feeling well, Kizer allegedly compelled her to perform oral sex on him. That evening, Kizer commented on her husband’s Instagram post, “Great day!”
Christian educator repeats predatory pattern
In the summer of 2014, Steph and Tim moved to the Atlanta area for his work, and the sexual contact with Kizer stopped.
But soon afterwards, Kizer left his pastoral role and began to work remotely for Atlanta-based Orange with the understanding that he and his family would move to Atlanta in mid-2015, following a child’s graduation.
Kizer stayed in regular contact with Steph via online chat. Steph said she tried to create distance, but Kizer’s grooming of her and her husband—inviting them to family dinners and offering ministry connections—convinced her that Kizer was still a friend.
With the co-authored book and Steph providing editorial help to Kizer, “both of our professional and ministry careers relied on each other’s work,” she said.
In 2016, Steph joined Orange to develop middle-school curriculum, hired by a director overseeing a department Kizer had no involvement in at the time. Eventually, Steph became part of Orange’s publishing division, where she observed what she described as a chaotic ministry culture.
She said she found Orange both laissez faire—with executives working out of a condominium where some staff slept at night—and demanding, with project meetings on Sunday nights.
Then, in fall 2017, Steph and Tim adopted a son, and Steph alerted Orange that she was leaving—until Kizer stepped in.
“Think about everything professionally you’ve worked for. Do you really want to give it all up?” she recalls him saying. “What if you contract for me part time? You can get out of the house and have a grown-up life, aside from caring for the baby.”
Steph agreed to stay on in 2018, thinking she’d be surrounded by people when at the office. But the office space Kizer assigned her was deserted.
Two other former Orange staffers confirmed to TRR details of Steph’s employment and the work arrangement with Kizer, then-Orange Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives.
Multiple times per week, Kizer again had opportunity to control her.
“I would come in in the morning and he would be like, ‘Okay, before we get to work, let’s make some coffee, make some tea, and make sure we’re all set up to work.’ Then he would close the blinds in the break room and say, ‘Let me give you a hug,’ and it would progress from there.”
Steph said that, whenever no one else was present, which was 80% of the time, he demanded sexual favors—mainly oral sex in the break room—and she would comply.
“Taking care of whatever he needed” became a part of her routine, she said. “My thinking was, ‘I want to do my job well, and this is the hurdle I need to get over to get to my job.’”
Because of the church bookings and royalties she’d received from co-writing a book with Kizer, Steph felt that revealing the secret would “blow everything up,” she said.
She added she would tell Kizer that she didn’t want to do certain acts anymore, and he would appear to agree to certain boundaries. Then, he’d negotiate it away later.
When pressed about whether she tried to fight back, Steph called it “a valid question.”
“Really, I was in a place where it was easier to be compliant than to put up a fight.”
Revelations at Orange spark reevaluation of relationship
Steph resigned from Orange in July 2019 and also ended intimacies with Kizer. But it wasn’t until this spring that she began viewing what had happened as not her fault, but Kizer’s grooming and abuse.
Though former Orange CEO Kristen Ivy claimed Joiner had sexually abused her at Orange, it was the more recent account of an anonymous woman that impacted Steph.
The woman said Joiner recruited her as a church assistant just out of high school. This progressed to the two spending significant time alone as Joiner reportedly confessed his fantasies about her and kissed her.
“The grooming she described was eye-opening,” said Steph. “I had overlooked how this pastor started a sexual relationship with me—a woman who reported to him.”
She texted the link to her husband. Later that day, for the first time, she confessed what had gone on for over five years, both at Orange and the Pennsylvania church.
“Let’s put it this way: she ripped the Band-Aid off very quickly,” Tim said in an interview. “Even though she was admitting to essentially a long period of lying to me, I also felt like I really trusted what she was saying in that moment.”
“One moment I’d be angry with her and then the next moment I’d think, ‘No, I need to direct my anger towards him.’”
Tim said he realized how Kizer had groomed him to never suspect anything. “This trusted family friend perpetrated abuse of my wife—and when he helped me or gave pastoral advice, it was really to get close to Steph.”
Christian educator loses ministry affiliations
This past April, Steph and Tim told Kizer they were cutting off all contact. They also requested that her name be removed as a co-author from the ministry book.
Since then, two Atlanta-area ministries led by former Orange staff members that had worked with Kizer have disaffiliated with him.
Curious Faith Media, a Christian apologetics ministry, removed Kizer’s name and content he authored from its website on April 15. And The Echo Group, which connects evangelical churches with youth ministry speakers, no longer lists Kizer as one of its communicators.
Due to fallout from the scandal involving Orange founder Joiner, the brand and assets of Orange were sold earlier this year by The ReThink Group to Dallas-based ministry Amazing Life Foundation (ALF).
In reply to TRR’s inquiry about Kizer, a representative of ALF stated that Kizer has never been employed by ALF and directed TRR to The ReThink Group.
Current staff at The ReThink Group, which still exists primarily to complete a third-party investigation of Joiner and the related scandal, did not respond to TRR’s request for comment about Kizer.
On May 19, in his statement to TRR, Kizer concluded: “I sincerely ask for forgiveness from my spouse, my family, the offended, and their family, and all those I have harmed. I express deep shame and remorse for my actions and the pain they have caused.”
Steph took issue with Kizer referring to her as “the offended” in his statement. “This is not an apology (and) belittles what has happened.”
This story was updated to correct a photo caption and accurately report certain details.