A Missouri pastor has resigned from his church and a local school board, after five women accused him of sexual abuse and harassment, including when some were minors, and then threatening to sue them.
No charges have been filed against Bobby Hawk, who resigned last week as pastor of EPIC Church and president of the Blue Springs School District Board of Education in the Kansas City, Missouri, suburbs. But the Blue Springs Police Department confirmed it is investigating potential crimes.
Hawk resigned both positions after a June 18 social media post by an adult woman, accusing Hawk of inappropriate touching her when she was a preteen.
A Blue Springs School District statement released by the school said, “It is with a profound sense of responsibility and commitment to transparency that we acknowledge the recent allegations concerning Board President Dr. Bobby Hawk. Out of respect for the important work of the Blue Springs School District, Dr. Hawk voluntarily submitted his resignation from the Board of Education. The Board has unanimously accepted his resignation.”
A telephone message left at the last known phone number for Hawk was not returned.
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EPIC Church, an Asambleas de Dios church, has campuses in Independence, Missouri, and Pontiac, Michigan, and owns but operates independently a sports complex called EPIC Center KC.
A telephone message to EPIC Center KC was referred to the business’s general manager.
Hawk was honored as Outstanding Young Alumnus for 2014 at Central Bible College, an Assemblies of God school now known as Evangel University.
On Monday, the church’s website was not working.
Three of the women were 15, 13 and 12 at the time of the alleged abuse and have gone public with their names. The other two women worked for Hawk when he was EPIC pastor.
Destiny Bounds, Danielle Bounds Hahn, Kari Jo Crandall, Ali Terwilliger, and Isabella Davis used a social networking site to call out Hawk. All three dijo they were “groomed,” “touched,” or “manipulated” when they were in his youth group or under his leadership.
Después Davis’s post, the hashtag #istandwithizzy has gained a following and other adult woman are telling their stories involving Hawk.
Davis was 12-years-old when Hawk allegedly first touched her.
“Twenty minutes into the movie, Bobby grabs my hand, interlocks our fingers, and places our hands underneath his thigh,” Davis al corriente on June 18.
After the prepubescent excused herself to go to the bathroom, she returned to the living room where the group was watching a movie.
“Without hesitation, as I sat down, he grabbed my hand and put it right back under his thigh. My heart dropped. I couldn’t use the bathroom excuse again, so I was stuck,” Davis’s post continues.
“When it finally ended, I got up immediately. He pulled me to the side, told me that ‘we weren’t doing anything wrong’ but the reason he was hiding it was because people would ‘think things.’”
Two other women – sisters Destiny and Danielle – are now adults. As children and teenagers, they attended an Assemblies of God in church in the Kansas City area. This is where Hawk worked with children and on many occasions would preach on Sunday.
“He abused his position of authority,” Destiny Bounds told El Informe Roys (TRR).
Bounds said their family and two other teenage girls went to the Assemblies of God leaders, but their cries for justice fell on deaf ears.
Bounds, now an attorney, said she has felt guilty for years for giving up when she was ignored and not continuing to speak out against Hawk.
Hawk, who was the children’s minster, set apart a group of girls that would lead the group.
“He called the girls the ‘Crusaders,’” Bounds said. “My sister and I and a couple of other girls were part of this group.”
Hawk was “grooming” this group of girls, she said.
Citing privacy issues, Bounds declined to identify the two other children – now adults.
Bounds said her experience with Hawk is similar to Davis, but the alleged abuse suffered by her older sister at the hands of Hawk was “chronic and horrible.”
Bounds declined to provide specific details of her sister’s abuse other than to say, “It’s her story to tell.”
“I got mean and mad and he left me alone,” Bounds said of her alleged abuse.
When the girls’ family and two other teenage girls approached church leaders the family was “pressured to be quiet,” Bounds said.
Hawk threatened to sue the family for defamation of character if they continued to pressure the church, she said.
“He made us feel like stupid little girls,” Bounds said.
“This post is NOT to be the victim; it is to give a voice to those ladies who need it. To give it to those scared and shamed like we were. Those who went through worse than even me from this man,” Destiny Bounds al corriente on June 20.
Two former EPIC employees also voiced their concerns.
“While I was on staff at Epic, Bobby was incredibly inappropriate with me. He was obsessed with the idea of being swingers with me and was constantly using manipulation to try to get me alone,” al corriente Ali Terwilliger on June 19.
Terwilliger said she came forward Twitter messages corroborating her account and met with Assemblies of God leaders.
“I was never contacted by the board, and he was let off without any punishment,” Terwilliger says on her post. “I was simply told I could have my last tithe check back. The church overseers were only trying to cover for him, and I was told not to speak out because there is no glory in the details. My heart hurts knowing the abuse of power didn’t end there.
Similarly, Kari Jo Crandall, al corriente on June 20: “I couldn’t leave the church before this. I had childcare, my phone was in the church’s name and I was scared to speak out. I was afraid to cut the ties because I was scared. He would corner me on Sunday mornings and tell me to say or not say certain things and I was told to NEVER talk to Vanessa about any of this. I was scared,” posted.
Hawk told the young woman stories about his sex life and show her videos of domestic violence taking place in his house, Crandall writes.
“I was to be a listening ear and to never tell anyone,” the post states. “I should have quit then, actually I tried. I asked him to quit and he called me and BEGGED me to come back to work.
“I told him that he repeatedly crossed my boundaries and that I didn’t want to work for him anymore. Bobby Hawk is one hell of a motivational speaker. One hell of a smooth talker. . . . He promised to respect me and apologized profusely. I believed him. I went back to work.”
Crandall said Hawk “still wanted hugs, asking me for them out of range of the cameras. I noticed it. I was uncomfortable but I was afraid of losing my job and I was afraid of what he would say about me. How HE would control the narrative. My family went there. My sister in law was the children’s pastor. My family was plugged in. My children had a place that they loved to go.
“He started hugging me and his hand would get lower and lower. Now his hands were always on the small of my back. I would move. I would get mad. I would call him out privately to which he would apologize and then the next day I would have little gifts on my desk. Gift cards or cash mostly. ‘Blessings.’ Take the blessing and shut up. That’s what was expected of me. Over and over again.”
Sheila Stogsdill is a freelance print journalist and digital reporter, primarily covering crime issues for KSN/KODE.
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9 Respuestas
I’d like to suggest that the headline be changed to say that five women accused him of “child sex abuse” or something similar. It’s very significant that three of them were between ages 12 and 15 when he abused them.
How horrific! The pain and suffering he has inflicted is unconscionable.
There is literally at least one new account *every day* of a pastor or Christian school employee molesting a child.
Imagine how upset evangelicals would get if drag queens were molesting these kids in church.
You’re so right, Greg. I bet there wouldn’t be ANY comments about how “we shouldn’t gossip”
During Covid, I became aware of the phenomenon called mass formation psychosis, which showed that many people would swear they experienced the same thing, even if it was overblown or imagined. I’m starting to wonder if this explains the whole Me Too movement.
Only pastors like Billy Graham, who made it his policy to never be alone with a woman, were above reproach. Most pastors interact privately with tons of people, including many women and girls. Who’s to say some of them women weren’t caught up in a mass formation psychosis? The Salem Witch Trials come to mind.
There is no such thing as “mass formation psychosis”. It’s just a term made up by Dr Robert Malone a anti-vaxxer who is known for spreading misinformation. The term has no evidential backing to support its use.
False accusations of child sexual abuse are extremely rare and having 5 victims (3 child victims) come forward only strengthens the case.
The Billy Graham rule only protects a man from false accusations. It does nothing to protect the women and children. It also creates the idea that women are seductresses and men have uncontrollable urges that need constant supervision.
“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light” Ephesians 5:11-14
So you think women are lying about their experiences? For what? Have you ever looked at any sort of statistics around sexual assault or abuse? 90% of all violent crime is committed by men. 30% of women age 15 and over have been the victims of violent sexual assault. That’s not even including sexual harassment. No. We are NOT making any of this up. You believe it’s a good policy to automatically condemn women as causing some sort of problem for men just by existing in the same space as them. You have been indoctrinated by a patriarchal structure that places men in all positions of authority and has resulted in rampant physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual abuse and you want to continue on with believing the men are the ones who are victims? Get. Out. Of. Here. Wake up!!
The thought that some pastors, leadership, and staff can be part of the problem rather than part of the solution disgusts me. “According to a recent study, 86 percent of women who have spent time in jail report that they had been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives.” I worked in the female area of a county jail for more than a year. Every day I saw women whose lives were shattered. Many times their crimes were committed to survive. My mother was a victim of sex assault. Believe them. https://www.prearesourcecenter.org/resource/86-percent-women-jail-are-sexual-violence-survivors
It also always the most disgusting to see women say such foul things about other women. You’re caught up in the mass psychosis of “man always right, woman always wrong.” And you don’t even know it. How sad.