SPRINGFIELD (MO)
NBC News [New York NY]
October 30, 2025
By Mike Hixenbaugh and Elizabeth Chuck
NBC News uncovered a 50-year pattern of sex abuse, silence and cover-up in the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination.
This article is part of “Pastors and Prey,” a series investigating sex abuse allegations in the Assemblies of God.
A children’s pastor was caught filming girls in a church bathroom in Arkansas. Elders suspended him for a few weeks.
In Illinois, a preacher was accused of sexually abusing children. Church leaders sent him to therapy rather than call police.
In California, a worship minister went to prison for molesting boys. His congregation threw him a party when he returned.
All of these men remained in ministry in the Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination. All went on to abuse more children.
Since the 1970s, Assemblies of God churches have repeatedly reinstated ministers and volunteer leaders accused of sexual misconduct, returning them to pulpits and youth groups, an NBC News investigation found. While some of the other largest Christian denominations now require safeguards such as background checks and mandatory reporting, national Assemblies of God leaders have resisted, arguing such rules would increase legal risk, undermine its commitment to local church autonomy and defy a core biblical command: to forgive.
The result is a patchwork system that has protected accused predators and left generations of children in danger.
[PHOTO: Nobody called police after Stephanie Davis said she caught her children’s pastor secretly filming girls around 2004; he went on to sexually assault two children.Houston Cofield for NBC News]
NBC News identified nearly 200 Assemblies of God pastors, church employees and volunteer leaders accused of sexual abuse over the past half century, based on a nationwide search of lawsuits, criminal records and news archives. Together, they allegedly abused more than 475 people — the overwhelming majority of them children. The allegations stretch into this year, when a 10-year-old girl said in a lawsuit that her pastor groped her during Bible study.
Survivors say they were violated in sanctuaries, at pastors’ homes and in tents on camping trips. A California preacher was accused of holding knives to children’s chests while forcing them to perform sex acts on each other. In Louisiana, a youth leader confessed to drugging and assaulting three boys during a sleepover. A couple in New Mexico say their pastor used his spiritual authority to drive them apart, then coerced the wife into sex.
Of the alleged abusers, 123 were ministers, and nearly half of those were youth pastors. Others were church employees, youth group leaders or Sunday school teachers. Dozens were accused of luring boys through the Royal Rangers, a Pentecostal version of the Boy Scouts.
In about 30 instances, church leaders placed alleged abusers into positions of authority after they had been accused, freeing them to strike again. Convicted sex offenders led youth groups. Accused ministers were reinstated or quietly moved to new congregations. As a result, according to lawsuits and police records, dozens more children were abused.
In nearly 40 other cases, leaders allegedly covered up or dismissed reports of misconduct — often by failing to alert police or pressuring victims to stay quiet. Melody Meza recalled a leader in her congregation praying for lying, demonic spirits to leave her after she reported abuse by a church elder.
“They made me feel like something was wrong with me and not the person abusing me,” said Meza, one of nearly 20 people suing an Assemblies of God church in California accused of concealing decades of abuse.
Others said preachers twisted scripture to silence them. “Touch not the Lord’s anointed,” pastors warned, citing a verse from Psalms that some interpret as a command to never question spiritual leaders.
Courtney Blackburn said she wishes her church’s former leaders had looked to another passage, one in which Jesus commanded followers to protect children. When she reported misconduct by her youth pastor in Arkansas, she said, they left him in place. He went on to sexually assault two children, criminal records show.
[PHOTO: “We trusted the church to do the right thing,” Courtney Blackburn said. Now she’s calling on the Assemblies of God to make child safety policies mandatory across the denomination.Houston Cofield for NBC News]
“They preach every single day about following the Bible,” Blackburn said. “So why aren’t they?”
NBC News has spent the past year investigating sex abuse in the Assemblies of God. In May, reporters revealed that church officials let children’s pastor Joe Campbell keep preaching for years despite repeated allegations. In August, NBC News uncovered how an Assemblies of God college ministry funneled hundreds of students to the home of Daniel Savala, a sex offender some pastors hailed as “the holiest man alive.” In both cases, leaders dismissed warnings, allowing the abuse to continue.
Other denominations have faced reckonings and made changes. After journalists exposed the Catholic Church’s practice of shuffling abusive priests between parishes, leaders adopted sweeping child safety rules in 2002, including mandatory reporting and zero tolerance for sexual misconduct. In 2019, after a newspaper investigation found widespread abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention, that denomination made it easier to expel churches that shield abusers.
The Assemblies of God has not taken these steps. Denomination leaders acknowledged in the 1990s that sex abuse in its churches was a serious problem and urged congregations to implement safety measures — background checks for staff and volunteers, reporting protocols, prevention training. But without consequences or meaningful oversight, the guidelines amounted to little more than suggestions.
For decades, survivors have pressed the Assemblies of God to do more. They’ve taken their stories to church leaders — only to see alleged abusers pop back up at other congregations. They’ve filed lawsuits and police reports, some ending in settlements or long prison terms, others fizzling out because statutes of limitations had expired. They’ve prayed, quoted scripture and pleaded for someone in power to act.
For many, the trauma has lasted a lifetime. Some attempted suicide or struggled with anxiety and addiction; others saw their faith fracture, marriages collapse and sense of safety crumble.
The General Council of the Assemblies of God, the denomination’s governing body in the U.S., based in Springfield, Missouri, declined interview requests and did not answer questions about specific cases. In a statement, it said the church “grieves with anyone who has been hurt through the actions of an abuser” and described itself as “a leader in preventing and combating child sexual abuse.”
[PHOTO: For three decades, the Assemblies of God has promoted child safety guidelines published by the denomination’s former top legal counsel, Richard Hammar.Terra Fondriest for NBC News; Obtained by NBC News]
As a “voluntary cooperative fellowship,” the General Council said, it runs background checks and sets professional standards for credentialed clergy but leaves local congregations to govern themselves — a structure leaders describe as central to the denomination’s identity. “Affiliated churches share doctrinal beliefs, but are independent in virtually every other way, including their local bylaws, staffing, policies and practices.”
The Assemblies of God could make anti-abuse policies mandatory at its 13,000 U.S. churches. The General Council debated doing exactly that in recent years — then backed away after lawyers warned it could expose the national office to costly lawsuits.
The decision left survivors reeling. In interviews with NBC News, they described being molested in a church van. Stalked in a church nursery. Raped with a statue of Jesus plucked from a mantle. Told to repent.
How many more, they wondered, would have to suffer before the Assemblies of God decided that protecting children mattered more than protecting itself?
Time and again throughout its history, the Assemblies of God was warned about the danger of sexual abuse. And time and again, survivors say, it extended grace to abusers rather than pursue justice for victims.
The pattern began in the 1970s, when the denomination confronted a challenge: what to do with ministers who fell into scandal.
Leaders created rules to discipline and restore pastors for offenses ranging from false teaching to financial misconduct to sexual sin. The framework emphasized mercy, citing Galatians: “Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently.”
The policy reflected foundational beliefs. Born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1914 amid a nationwide Pentecostal revival, the Assemblies of God spread quickly. At its core was a conviction that the Holy Spirit moves through believers in supernatural ways — speaking in tongues, prophecy, divine healing and other miracles.
[PHOTO: The Assemblies of God’s founders hoped to unite the rapidly growing Pentecostal movement under a shared doctrine.via Assemblies of God]
Pastors who demonstrated such gifts of the spirit were treated as God’s anointed, their charisma viewed as proof of divine favor. The most gifted preachers transformed that aura into spiritual empires, drawing thousands to megachurches, filling television airwaves and sometimes amassing personal fortunes.
This theology has helped make the Assemblies of God one of the most dynamic forces in global Christianity, with 3 million members in the U.S. and nearly 90 million worldwide. But it also meant that when spiritual leaders strayed, churches large and small often prioritized redemption over accountability.
One early case: Illinois minister Allen Lehmann.
In 1979, Lehmann was accused of molesting two girls in his family, according to internal Assemblies of God documents filed in a lawsuit. Rather than call police, the denomination’s state district council suspended his ministerial credentials and placed him in a two-year restoration program, which included meetings with a psychologist.
Although the girls Lehmann allegedly abused were elementary school-age, records show, his ministerial file described his misconduct as “indiscretions with a young woman.”
The denomination’s national office received regular updates. In July 1980, a district official noted Lehmann’s restoration was “progressing slow.” One year later — four months ahead of schedule — the same official reported Lehmann had been “fully rehabilitated.”
[photo: After his restoration following child sex abuse allegations, Allen Lehmann moved to an Assemblies of God church in Kentucky.Sam Upshaw Jr. / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn file]
With that stamp of approval, he transferred to another Assemblies of God church in Louisville, Kentucky. Soon, more allegations followed.
From 1993 to 2000, Lehmann sexually abused three other young relatives who visited his home on church mission trips, according to criminal records. Each girl said the abuse began when she was 6; one said it continued into her teens. She told police Lehmann raped her with a baseball bat, beat her with a leather strap and choked her, telling her “love has to hurt.”
Years later, Lehmann’s adult son — also an Assemblies of God pastor — reported him to police. He told investigators he discovered that the denomination had “covered up” his father’s earlier offenses, records show.
Lehmann pleaded guilty to child rape in 2018. He was given a 15-year suspended prison sentence and set free on probation. Survivors sued the Assemblies of God national office and its Illinois and Kentucky district councils, settling in 2022.
Reached by phone, Lehmann said, “Not interested,” and hung up.
The danger of restoring offenders has played out in less formal ways. The Assemblies of God enforces a national credentialing system for ministers, giving the General Council power to discipline, restore or expel those who fail to meet its theological and moral standards. But it only requires a church’s lead pastor to be credentialed. That gap gives congregations wide latitude to hire and restore youth pastors, worship leaders and other associate ministers — including those with histories of misconduct.
At Landmark Christian Center in Downey, California, the senior pastor chose his son, Timothy Scarr, to lead music. He was forced to find a replacement in 1985 after Scarr pleaded guilty to molesting two boys from the church — but his departure was temporary.
Five days after Scarr’s release from prison in 1988, his father threw him a party to welcome him back as worship leader.
[PHOTO: Months after Timothy Scarr’s release from prison, Landmark Christian Center promoted him in a 1988 newspaper advertisement.Obtained by NBC News]
The Bible says when sins are confessed, they are cast into the sea and remembered no more. It also warns that wolves often come draped in sheep’s clothing.
Over the next decade, Scarr sexually abused two more boys, according to criminal records. One teen said Scarr routinely pressured him for oral sex, including in the sanctuary, and threatened to kill himself if the boy refused. The other said Scarr took him to nearby Disneyland and invited him to sleep at his home, where late at night Scarr undressed and climbed on top of him.
After the teens went to police and filed lawsuits, Scarr’s father, who has since died, defended restoring him. He said he believed God had miraculously cured his son’s attraction to children, according to court records, so he saw it as his duty to reinstate him. “So powerful is the command to forgive under those circumstances,” the father’s lawyer wrote in a filing, “that failure to do so is itself a mortal sin which can bar one’s eternal soul from Heaven.”
Scarr was convicted of child sex abuse in 1998 and given 30 years in prison. At sentencing, one of his victims rebuked him: “You used the church as a hunting ground,” he said. “You hurt those who were innocent and called evil goodness.”
Released several years ago, Scarr didn’t respond to messages.
Landmark Christian Center, which has since closed, settled the teens’ lawsuits for $3.5 million, but not before a judge dismissed the Assemblies of God from the case.
Scarr’s victims argued the denomination was negligent because it lacked policies to bar a sex offender from ministry. The judge disagreed, saying courts could not force the Assemblies of God to police its churches.
Doing so, the judge wrote, would violate religious freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment.
By the late 1990s, the scourge of sexual abuse in churches had grown too public to ignore, and the Assemblies of God faced pressure to do more than simply encourage safeguards. Reports from Catholic and evangelical congregations were beginning to make national headlines, raising questions about how religious institutions protected children.
Those questions came to the fore at the Assemblies of God’s 1997 biennial General Council meeting in Indianapolis, where thousands of ministers considered a resolution barring anyone convicted of child sex abuse from holding ministerial credentials. Proponents invoked a Bible verse declaring anyone who harms a child is better off having a millstone hung around their neck and “drowned in the depth of the sea.”
But some ministers pushed back. What about pastors who abused children before becoming Christians? Others debated whether the ban should extend to pastors who molested 16- and 17-year-olds without having intercourse.
In the end, delegates voted to shelve the measure for two years so lawyers could study it.
When ministers reconvened in 1999, the Executive Presbytery — 21 senior ministers who act as a board of directors — urged against adoption. Requiring background checks of every minister, they said, would be expensive, wouldn’t reduce legal liability and could unjustly punish those convicted of “relatively minor” offenses before finding Jesus.
“Should such a person be forever barred from qualifying for ministerial credentials?” the presbyters asked.
Delegates let the proposal die.
Three years later, after The Boston Globe’s bombshell investigation exposed sexual abuse and cover-ups in the Catholic Church, the Assemblies of God released a statement saying it had long maintained a “zero tolerance” policy barring ministers found guilty of sexually abusing children from being credentialed. “This is not a new position but one the church has always held,” the statement said — seemingly at odds with the factious debate just a few years earlier.
The General Council didn’t provide NBC News with a copy of the policy or say when it was adopted. Even so, such a prohibition would have applied only to credentialed ministers, leaving local churches free to appoint anyone they chose for other roles.
Some continued allowing convicted sex offenders around children. The results were disastrous.
A Florida church let a man lead a Royal Rangers troop two decades after his conviction for child molestation, according to police and news reports. In Indiana, a church hired a janitor convicted of molesting a 7-year-old girl. A Pennsylvania congregation employed a counselor despite his conviction for sexually abusing two brothers. Each man went on to abuse again, criminal records show.
In New Jersey, the Eternal Life Christian Center hired Shawn Butler, despite a conviction for sexually assaulting girls, according to a lawsuit. The Assemblies of God-affiliated church gave him unfettered access to children for decades, allowing him to molest at least three more children, lawsuits say.
[PHOTO: Shawn Butler at his sentencing in 2019 at Middlesex County Superior Court in New Jersey.Suzanne Russell / Courier News and Home News Tribune via Imagn file]
As youth minister, Butler groomed teens to believe God spoke through him, then exploited his divine authority to sexually abuse them, victims said.
“He made himself seem like he almost had these special powers,” said one survivor, whom NBC News isn’t naming at her request. “God sent him to do these things — and if you didn’t do those things, it’s almost like you were going to be in trouble spiritually.”
Butler was convicted again in 2018, and his victims sued the church. An insurance company that provided liability coverage to Eternal Life Christian Center also sued, arguing that because the church had “knowingly endangered” children by employing Butler, the insurer shouldn’t be forced to pay civil damages resulting from his crimes. The lawsuits were later settled. Eternal Life Christian Center didn’t respond to messages.
The woman who said Butler had manipulated her faith to abuse her as a teen blamed the Assemblies of God’s lack of safeguards for enabling him.
“They’re irresponsible,” she said. “I don’t know if they actually care about young people.”
The Assemblies of God’s program for rehabilitating pastors accused of sexual misconduct has long operated in secrecy. Restoration records are stored at the General Council’s office in Missouri, where they are kept confidential.
The process, carried out by regional district councils and overseen by the national office, requires disgraced pastors to step away from ministry for at least a year and undergo Christian counseling, according to a 135-page restoration handbook obtained by NBC News. The guidelines paint a picture of a kind of spiritual rehab, where ministers move from confession to renewal on the path back to God’s glory.
[PHOTO: The Assemblies of God’s restoration manual emphasizes the Bible’s instruction to restore the fallen “gently.”Obtained by NBC News]
Practices have varied over the decades — and from region to region. Court records show that as recently as July 2018, Assemblies of God district officials sought to restore a New Jersey pastor accused of molesting five children. They never got the chance; that same month, the minister, Orlando Martinez-Chavez, was charged with sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl from church and was later sentenced to eight years in prison. In response to a lawsuit from the girl, the district council denied it was negligent.
The restoration handbook, updated in 2021, bars reinstating pastors who sexually abuse children. Homosexuality is also disqualifying. Still, the guidelines leave room for restoring ministers who admit to “flirtatious, inappropriately affectionate” conduct with minors, as well as misconduct with adults that falls short of sexual assault.
Some fallen pastors were sent to Emerge Ministries, a counseling center in Akron, Ohio, founded in 1973 by Assemblies of God minister Richard Dobbins, a pioneer of Christian psychology.
Dobbins, who died in 2014, helped craft the denomination’s restoration program and counseled hundreds of pastors, some for depression or marital struggles, others after sexual misconduct. At Emerge, pastors read scripture and reflected on the roots of their “moral failure.”
[PHOTO: Richard Dobbins, an Assemblies of God minister and pioneer of Christian psychology, was lauded in news articles for his work counseling pastors at Emerge Ministries in Akron, Ohio.Courtesy Sharon Alberson; Obtained by NBC News]
The denomination has never publicly acknowledged sending child sex abusers to Emerge, but records obtained by NBC News reveal at least two cases. In a 1988 letter to his adult daughter, Dobbins described counseling a pastor who admitted fondling his 14-year-old daughter’s breasts and genitals, claiming it was for “medical reasons.” Dobbins noted he wouldn’t call the police.
“In cases like this I would really like to see the culprit exposed,” Dobbins wrote, “but since this happened 15 years ago the statute of limitations has expired and professional ethics requires me to guard his confidence.”
His daughter, Sharon Alberson — herself a survivor of sexual abuse outside the church — said she was heartbroken by her father’s role in a system that, in her view, prioritized healing abusers over protecting victims.
“I love my father, and I love God with my whole heart and soul, and it splits me down the middle when I see that kind of power unchecked,” said Alberson, an ordained minister in another denomination.
Dobbins retired as Emerge’s CEO in 2003, but the program continued treating disgraced pastors. The following year, court records show, Assemblies of God leaders sent Mark Holliday to Emerge.
As a counselor at Assemblies of God-connected church camps in California in the 1980s, Holliday told boys to strip naked before swimming and groped their butts and penises as they slept, his alleged victims say. When they resisted, they say, he weaponized their faith: Real Christian men, he’d say, weren’t afraid to cry — or to touch each other. He later became a youth pastor.
Tim Martin said Holliday groomed and abused him for three years in the 1980s, beginning when he was 11. It started with back rubs and hand-holding, then escalated. In 1989, at age 17, Martin confided in an Assemblies of God pastor. That minister — later charged with sexually assaulting children himself — notified Martin’s parents but took no other action, he said.
[PHOTO: Mark Holliday helped lead youth camps organized by an Assemblies of God minister in the 1980s.Wendi Montez]
Martin enrolled at an Assemblies of God seminary, became a pastor and tried to bury the past. But around 2004, he learned Holliday was still working with children, and he made another discovery that rocked him: His older brother, David Martin, who had hinted at his own run-ins with Holliday as a child, confided that he’d been molested, too.
Together, they decided to act.
That summer, Tim Martin and another alleged victim met with Holliday and officials from the Assemblies of God’s Northern California-Nevada district council. Holliday confessed to “inappropriate” behavior, according to internal church records filed in a lawsuit, and district leaders reported his admission to George Wood, the Assemblies of God’s national secretary.
Wood, who died in 2022, proposed two options, according to meeting minutes filed in a lawsuit: Holliday could resign his credentials, or he could be “tested and cleared through Emerge” to continue in ministry. Such clearance, the document said, would “put to rest the concerns.”
The next month, Holliday traveled to Akron and completed six sessions over two days at Emerge, according to a letter from Emerge counselors filed in a lawsuit. Counselors described him as “friendly” and found no psychiatric disorders. Holliday confessed and told counselors he had not felt similar temptations since the 1980s.
Afterward, the Emerge team wrote to church leaders recommending that Holliday avoid being alone with children. (An Emerge official said the center couldn’t comment on cases from decades ago and that counseling records are confidential by law.)
He soon went back to working with children. The Northern California-Nevada district allowed Holliday’s credentials to expire and wished him well as he took a job as a pastor at another Pentecostal church outside the denomination, according to a 2005 letter from the district superintendent.
[PHOTO: After district council leaders wrote to Holliday notifying him that his ministerial credential would not be renewed, he returned to working with children at California youth camps run by an Assemblies of God pastor, as shown here in 2007. Wendi Montez; NBC News]
For years, Holliday continued ministering to teens at California churches and at camps led by an Assemblies of God pastor. When the Martin brothers made that discovery in 2015, they and four other men who say Holliday abused them in the 1980s went to police. Holliday was forced to step down, but the case was closed because the statute of limitations had run out. Holliday, no longer a minister, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The following year, David Martin met with Assemblies of God leaders in Northern California. He said those leaders apologized for failures that kept Holliday in ministry and promised to push for reforms.
It felt like the beginning of long-overdue change.
“They promised me, to my face, in front of all the people that were in charge, they were going to do something about it,” Martin said.
By the mid-2010s, years of hidden abuse were beginning to catch up with the Assemblies of God. Survivors like the Martin brothers were demanding change. Families devastated by abuse were filing lawsuits. And insiders who had grown up in the denomination’s pews were challenging what they saw as a system that protected predators.
[PHOTO: “Nobody listened to me,” said Stephanie Davis, recalling her Arkansas church’s reaction when she reported misconduct by her children’s pastor around 2004.Houston Cofield for NBC News]
One of them was Stephanie Davis. In 2004, as a sixth grader, she had joined a homeschool program run by Tony Waller, a children’s pastor at First Assembly of God in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Each day before gym class, she said, Waller told children to strip naked one by one in a church bathroom and stretch. Davis complied, she said — until she and a friend discovered a hidden camera pointed through a hole in the door.
Davis said she, her sister and her mother went to the senior pastor, Mike Glover, and he assured them he would handle the matter. The church board imposed a two-week suspension, according to Davis and her sister. Within days, Waller was back.
“They did nothing about it,” Davis said. “Absolutely nothing.”
[PHOTO: Top: Courtney Blackburn, 11, poses for a series of photos taken by her children’s pastor, Tony Waller. Right: Waller and Blackburn with other children in 2006. Left: Stephanie Davis as a child, wearing the sash from the Assemblies of God’s Missionettes girls program. Courtesy Courtney Blackburn and Stephanie Davis]
Around two years later, another girl said she caught Waller secretly filming her undress in her bedroom. Courtney Blackburn, 12 at the time, said her mother, Rhonda Kelly, reported it to Glover and he brought the matter to the church board. They prayed over it, Kelly recalled, then returned with an answer: “God told them it was just a misunderstanding.”
Blackburn, they concluded, was overly sensitive, Kelly said. Again, Waller remained in place.
Glover, who left the church in 2007 and retired last year after a half century in the Assemblies of God, denied these accounts. He acknowledged suspending Waller for a month around 2004 but said it was because he had left Davis and other children unattended — not for sexual misconduct.
“That didn’t happen on my watch,” Glover said. “He would have been long gone. That was never reported to me.”
[PHOTO: “It’s sickening,” Blackburn said after learning that the Assemblies of God has not made child safety policies mandatory at every affiliated church. Houston Cofield for NBC News]
A decade after Davis said she raised alarms, Waller’s wife found images of naked children on his computer and turned him in, police records show. Investigators discovered dozens of hidden-camera videos on the device, including images recorded inside the church bathroom.
The investigation revealed the catastrophic consequences of leaving Waller in ministry: Two sisters came forward to tell police he molested them for years beginning around 2006 or 2007, when they were 10 or 11. They described being taken to the woods or lured into his church office, where he stripped them and raped them with his finger.
When Blackburn learned of the charges, she said she ran outside, collapsed to her knees and sobbed. “I felt validated — finally, they had to believe what I said.”
She and Davis told the detectives about Waller’s hidden cameras and their reports to Glover.
[PHOTO: Waller was sentenced to life in prison.KAIT]
Waller pleaded guilty to rape in 2016 and was sentenced to life in prison. His former congregation changed its name to Refuge Church. Senior pastor Matt Smith, who previously served under Glover, said he wasn’t aware of Davis’ and Blackburn’s reports. He told NBC News he has implemented child safety policies including background checks, mandatory reporting and security cameras.
Davis remains angry that none of the church’s former leaders were held accountable.
“I had the courage to come up and say, ‘Hey, this happened to me,’” she said. “And unfortunately, nobody else had the courage to put their foot down.”
After generations of warnings and pleas for reform, the crisis of child sexual abuse landed once again before the Assemblies of God’s top leaders.
A few years after California church officials assured David Martin they would press for changes, one of them carried that promise to the denomination’s highest stage. In 2019, as thousands of ministers gathered in Orlando, Florida, for the General Council’s biennial meeting, Jay Herndon, secretary-treasurer of the Northern California-Nevada district, introduced a resolution to protect children.
His plan was straightforward: empower the national office to expel churches or discipline ministers who “grossly neglect” to enforce safeguards like background checks and mandatory reporting.
Much like the leaders who tried to ban sex offenders from ministry two decades earlier, Herndon invoked the Bible’s warning about millstones and drownings for those who harm children, reminding delegates that Jesus offered no exceptions. He told the story of his wife, who as a child had fended off a predator at her Assemblies of God church, only to see him welcomed back after he molested several girls and went to prison.
[PHOTO: “We need to ensure that children are protected,” Jay Herndon said at the General Council’s biennial meeting in Orlando in 2019.via Assemblies of God]
“‘Grace,’ they said. ‘Forgiveness,’ they said,’” Herndon told the packed convention hall. “But as you might expect, he offended again, and more lives were damaged.”
Despite such horrors, he said, many Assemblies of God churches had been slow to adopt child safety policies. “Some perhaps don’t have the capacity,” he said. “Some don’t think it’s important. Some are just stubborn.”
That’s why it was essential to make it mandatory, Herndon said: “It’s time for us to say you must protect the children.”
It seemed the denomination was finally ready to act. But then George Wood — who years earlier had recommended sending youth pastor Mark Holliday to Emerge Ministries — rose to object.
A lawyer by training, Wood warned of “grave legal concerns.” If the General Council created rules, he said, it could be held liable for failing to enforce them. He urged a two-year delay so attorneys could study the proposal.
Without debate, delegates agreed.
When the denomination reconvened in 2021, General Secretary Donna Barrett recommended rejecting the plan. Lawyers, she said, had concluded it would play “right into the hands of plaintiffs’ attorneys.” Richard Hammar, the Assemblies of God’s longtime general counsel, agreed: The legal risks, he said from the stage, “outweighed the benefit.”
The measure was defeated.
For David Martin, the outcome was upsetting but clarifying. The Assemblies of God’s refusal to mandate protections, he said, boiled down to one thing: money.
“There’s no other reason that they wouldn’t put policies in place,” he said.
In the years since, the Assemblies of God has been battered by scandal. Dozens of pending lawsuits accuse churches of shielding predators, silencing victims and allowing abuse to fester unchecked.
Survivors say the denomination’s pattern of secrecy and leniency deepened their trauma.
“What I’ve internalized my entire life was the sense that I wasn’t worthy of being protected,” said Jen Doyle, who says the pastor at her Pennsylvania church ignored warnings about a worship leader in the late 1990s and failed to stop the middle-aged man from abusing her when she was 13. “It’s not just carrying the abuse. How the church handled it has caused that much more damage.”
[PHOTO: Jen Doyle was 13 when she said a music leader groomed and sexually abused her at church. Now she’s channeling her trauma to push for change. Courtesy Jen Doyle]
After years of shame and addiction, Doyle says her fight for accountability is now inseparable from her own healing.
In response to NBC News’ findings, she has joined a chorus of survivors demanding action. They want the Assemblies of God to repent for past failures and commission an independent review of its handling of abuse. They also want the General Council to create a system to warn churches when a minister or volunteer has been credibly accused and to mandate basic protections in every congregation.
Doyle offered a simple first step: “Stop giving the lawyers a vote.”
After telling his story repeatedly with little to show for it, Tim Martin initially hesitated to speak again. But then, he said, he felt a quiet pull from God.
“The Bible says light and darkness can’t occupy the same space,” he said. By coming forward, the former pastor hopes to expose what has been concealed for too long.
“Predators, they hide in the dark,” Martin said. “And the church is helping hide them.”
Methodology: NBC News reviewed court filings, criminal records, sex offender registries and news archives to identify Assemblies of God pastors, church employees and volunteer leaders accused of sexual abuse since 1975. In most cases, the accused met at least one alleged victim through the church; in other cases, they met elsewhere or the connection was unclear. Reporters relied on church and minister directories to confirm Assemblies of God affiliation and excluded cases in which no clear connection could be established. The count includes individuals accused of sexual assault, sexual coercion, statutory rape or creating child sexual abuse material; it excludes those accused only of possessing such material. It includes civil cases that were settled, dismissed, went to trial or had unclear outcomes, as well as criminal cases that ended in conviction, dismissal (often due to the statute of limitations) or uncertain outcomes. A small number of cases involved no lawsuit or criminal charge but included public accusations or church statements acknowledging an allegation. The number of alleged victims reflects figures cited in lawsuits and law enforcement records, as well as individuals who came forward publicly or spoke to reporters.
Mike Hixenbaugh is a senior investigative reporter for NBC News, based in Maryland, and author of “They Came for the Schools.”
Elizabeth Chuck is a reporter for NBC News who focuses on health and mental health, particularly issues that affect women and children.