JONESBORO (AR)
KARK.com [Little Rock, AR]
May 20, 2026
By Alex Kienlen
A lawsuit filed in Craighead County on Wednesday alleges that a children’s minister at a local church had been molesting and secretly filming young girls for approximately 15 years.
The suit alleges Anthony “Tony” Waller of the Refuge Church in Jonesboro was the molester. The suit asserts that Waller did this while a credentialed child’s minister at the Assemblies of God church.
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The suit was brought by six adult women who allege they suffered later-in-life trauma after being repeatedly molested by Waller across two generations. The trauma was made worse by the Assemblies of God policy that discouraged secular counseling, they assert.
“In this present matter, it was the abundance of tenderness and forgiveness extended to pedophile children’s pastor Tony Waller by the Assemblies of God that resulted in these Plaintiffs’ abuse and resulting harms,” the suit states
Defendants are the church, the Assemblies of God, Arkansas, the Assemblies’ national council and the church’s insurance companies.
The suit continues that the church “covered up” Waller’s acts despite being presented with evidence about them as early as April of 2000 and receiving direct evidence in 2004 after a hidden camera was found in a girl’s bathroom. It was later discovered that Waller created child pornography in the church and kept “hours of recorded footage of nude little girls in the church,” according to the suit.
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The Assemblies of God policy was to “restore with a gentle hand” someone acting as Waller had, the suit continues, so the church let him remain as children’s pastor, as directed by the national council.
In 2016, according to the lawsuit, Waller pleaded guilty to child rape and was sentenced to life in prison after being turned in by his wife in 2015, leading to an investigation by Jonesboro police and his arrest.
Police found more than 400,000 videos and images of child sexual abuse material during the department’s investigation, the suit states. They also found peepholes and hidden cameras in the girls’ bathroom, where Waller would take children and insist they undress for exercise and stretching.
Waller was fired from the church after his arrest, the suit states. In 2021, after Waller’s sentencing, the Assemblies of God General Council changed its policy and no longer allows pastors who engaged in pedophilia and child sexual abuse to be eligible for restoration to ministry.
The change included a grandfather clause that did not apply to ministers who had been previously restored, the 72-page filing states.
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The suit asks for punitive and compensatory damages and a jury trial.