Note: This article contains depictions of child sexual abuse.

A 44-year-old Mennonite man from Ohio has been indicted on charges of illicit sexual conduct in a foreign country.

Jeriah Mast, a missionary with the Anabaptist Christian Aid Ministries (CAM) for 17 years, allegedly abused 31 boys in Haiti between 2003 to 2019. According to a U.S. Justice Department official, he “traveled abroad to commit heinous, unspeakable crimes.” He now faces a possible sentence of 120 years in federal prison.

Mast, who just served six years in a state prison for similar crimes state-side, pled not guilty in a 15-minute hearing in a Youngstown, Ohio, courthouse on Thursday. His defense attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

The Ohio man first went to Haiti to work with children in 2002, according to the indictment. He travelled back and forth about 30 times but returned home suddenly in the late spring of 2019. According to his home church in Millersburg, Ohio, he had barely stepped off the plane when he confessed “hidden sins,” including lying, hypocrisy, and “immoral sexual relationships” with boys.

“Jeriah spent hours on his face weeping and wailing,” leaders of Shining Light Christian Fellowship said in a statement in June 2019. “Following his repentance, Jeriah requested discipleship and accountability from the church to help build him up spiritually and to free him from this addiction.”

Church leaders took him to the Holmes County sheriff’s office. There, Mast told a detective that he’d abused children in Haiti starting in 2003 and continuing until he was confronted by a local pastor and fled the country. He wrote a list of the names of his victims, according to investigators.

“Mast stated that he would touch the penises of his victims to arouse them and would often place his penis between his victims’ legs and masturbate,” wrote FBI agent Jason M. Guyton, who viewed a recording of the confession. “Mast also stated that he sometimes gave money or other items to the children after sexually abusing them.”

An investigation by Haitian authorities found the boys in Mast’s care slept with their pants tied with shoe strings to try to keep Mast from pulling them off in the night.

One recalled that he tied the string so tight it cut into his waist. He said that in the dark he heard one of his friends cry out, “Don’t do that to me, Jeriah.”

Some of the boys were as young as 8.

“I was small,” another man, now grown, told authorities, according to Haitian court documents. “I was afraid of him. I could not resist him.”

‘Extreme Coverup’

When Mast confessed to Ohio authorities in 2019, CAM said in a statement that it had been made aware of the allegations just weeks earlier. But the Haitian director of LIFE Literature, Harold Herr, told Christian News Network at that time that he had informed CAM about the allegations seven years earlier—in 2012.

It is unclear how the mission organization handled the report.

But Will Rodenhouse, who served as CAM director of Haiti outreach from 2015 to 2017, said he was told Mast had been sent home for a short time in 2012 due to a “moral failure,” not pedophilia. He said he was told the matter “was dealt with” and “we don’t need to talk about it.”

Fluent in Haitian and widely viewed as a talented minister, Mast was involved in every aspect of the ministry in Haiti and had the complete trust of the mission organization, Rodenhouse said.

“The country was his at the taking,” Rodenhouse told Christian News Network. “. . . And he was totally unaccountable.”

CAM General Director Weston Showalter did not return a phone call from The Roys Report seeking comment.

In May 2019, Mast was confronted by another Haitian pastor who accused him of continuing to abuse children. Mast reportedly denied it but fled the country via the Dominican Republic before he could be arrested.

The following month, Mast’s Ohio church heard his confession and started working on a restoration plan, including counseling for Mast, and an appointment with local law enforcement.

Meanwhile, blogger and victims’ advocate Trudy Metzger flew to Haiti to interview Mast’s accusers after hearing reports an unnamed missionary had abused so many young boys, there were “too many to count.” She attended a court hearing regarding Mast and wrote about it on June 6, 2019, when she became convinced that Anabaptist leaders were attempting to keep everything quiet.

Metzger said she believed CAM was attempting an “extreme coverup” of the missionary’s crimes in a misguided effort to show him mercy.

“Mr. Mast has repented numerous times for ‘moral failure,’ offering a vague statement leading those nearest him under the impression that he struggles with pornography, or some personal sexual struggle,” she wrote. “Nearly all are shocked to discover that he has, in fact, sexually assaulted so many children over the course of almost 20 years, that no one is quite sure how many there are. That shock intensifies at the discovery that leaders knew and did not send him home or warn the public.”

A Mennonite missionary in Haiti also accused CAM of looking the other way.

“I am ashamed,” Andy Faller wrote in a 2019 open letter. “Ashamed that a fellow Mennonite Missionary was here preying on little boys and victimizing them when he was supposed to be helping them. I am ashamed that the largest Anabaptist Mission here in Haiti is in all appearance ignoring the law.”

Mast brought to justice

CAM did not cooperate with Haitian authorities who asked that Mast be sent back to face charges.

After Mast’s Ohio church arranged for him to confess to the local sheriff’s office, he told an investigator that he’d abused four boys at a church where his father pastored. The first crime he confessed to occurred in 1999, when Mast was 18 years old.

Court records show that Homeland Security went to Haiti after Mast confessed to harming dozens of boys there, but only found two people who would go on the record accusing Mast of abuse.

Mast agreed to plead guilty to two felony charges in Ohio and accept a nine-year sentence.

His pastor, Dwayne Stoltzfus, spoke on his behalf at the sentencing.

“Your honor, I have never seen such a complete and thorough confession,” Stoltzfus said. “He continues to have great remorse and regret for the pain he has caused others.”

One of Mast’s American victims also spoke at the sentencing. He said he was abused when he was 11 or 12, after his family joined Mast’s father’s church. Everyone at the church looked up to Mast, he said, and trusted him.

“Mr. Mast fully understood the culture,” the man said. “He not only manipulated the children that he victimized, but also the church system. … I respectfully ask that this predator be removed from society for as long as legally possible.”

Mast was given early release this past October, after serving about six years. An Ohio judge said Mast “demonstrated remorse for the crimes he committed, and the emotional and psychological pain and suffering he inflicted upon the child victims and their families.”

Mast reported to a probation officer and went to live in his parents’ basement in Millersburg, Ohio.

He was arrested again the following week. He was charged with four violations of the 2003 “Protect Act,” based on the testimony of the two Haitian men who spoke to Homeland Security.

“We remain steadfast in our commitment to pursuing justice for victims,” said Matthew Stentz, head of Homeland Security’s Detroit office, “and ensuring that predators face the full weight of the law.”

Daniel Silliman is senior reporter/editor at The Roys Report. He began his two decades in journalism covering crime in Atlanta and has since led major investigations into abuse and misconduct in Christian contexts. Daniel and his wife live in Johnson City, Tennessee.