The Assemblies of God denomination’s ongoing failure to listen to victims and implement safeguards has led to hundreds of people being sexually abused by pastors and other church leaders, according to an NBC News investigation.

The Oct. 30 report by journalists Mike Hixenbaugh and Elizabeth Chuck outlines decades of sexual abuse allegations against nearly 200 church leaders dating back to the 1970s. A video and accompanying transcript maps out the Pentecostal denomination’s apparent prioritization of forgiveness and money over protecting potential victims. 

In some cases, church leaders who admitted to sexual misconduct returned to pastoral roles or other church leadership positions and abused again. Many of the victims were children.

Survivors said the denomination’s handling of abuse allegations “deepened their trauma,” according to the report.

“What I’ve internalized my entire life was the sense that I wasn’t worthy of being protected,” said Jen Doyle, who said she was abused by a Pennsylvania worship leader in the 1990s when she was 13. “It’s not just carrying the abuse. How the church handled it has caused that much more damage.”

The Roys Report (TRR) contacted the Assemblies of God (AOG) for comment on the NBC report but did not receive a response.

The denomination declined NBC’s interview requests. However, it posted a five-minute video Oct. 30 from General Superintendent Doug Clay and General Secretary Donna Barrett addressing the article, which Clay described as “peppered with misleading information.”

“The Assemblies of God grieves with anyone who has been hurt by the actions of an abuser,” Clay said. “One instance of abuse is too many, and the General Council of the Assemblies of God is committed to child safety and has an established track record of leadership in this area.”  

Last week’s NBC report was the third in the network’s “Pastors and Prey” series on sex abuse allegations in the AOG. The first, aired May 12, was on children’s pastor Joseph Lyle Campbell who has  been accused of sexual assault by five women when they were children in the 1970s and 1980s. TRR covered the story here.

Campbell, 67, has been the main pastor at disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker’s Morningside Church in the tourist destination of Branson, Missouri.

NBC’s second report, aired Aug. 4, was about former Chi Alpha campus minister Daniel Savala, who left a trail of sexually abused college students in his wake. On Aug. 12, TRR reported that the AOG apologized to Savala’s victims, but denied the denomination was culpable for Savala’s abuse, despite receiving a whistleblower report about Savala in 2018.

Report uncovers decades of abuse

The NBC report chronicled several instances of the AOG restoring abusers to ministry, who then victimized people within their care again.

In 1979, the denomination suspended Illinois minister Allen Lehmann after he was accused of molesting two elementary school-aged girls. After completing a two-year restoration program, he pastored at a church in Kentucky and was accused of sexually abusing three more girls between 1993 and 2000.

Lehmann’s adult son, who also worked as an Assemblies pastor, reported his father to police after he realized the church had “covered up” the scandal. In 2018, Lehmann pleaded guilty to child rape.

At a California church, worship leader Timothy Scarr pleaded guilty in 1985 to molesting two boys. He returned to his job after being released from prison in 1988 and sexually abused two more boys, according to the report.

“One teen said Scarr routinely pressured him for oral sex, including in the sanctuary, and threatened to kill himself if the boy refused,” the report states. “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.”

In a legal filing, a lawyer for Scarr’s father (who pastored the church) wrote, “So powerful is the command to forgive under those circumstances, that failure to do so is itself a mortal sin which can bar one’s eternal soul from Heaven.”

In 1998, Scarr received a 30-year prison sentence, after being convicted of child sexual abuse.

Victims also reported abuse at camps and in school settings. Stephanie Davis told NBC News that when she was a sixth grader in 2004 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, First Assembly of God children’s pastor Tony Waller told her homeschool group to do nude stretches in the bathroom before gym class. Then she found a hidden camera pointing straight at them.

Waller, who was accused of secretly recording another girl in her bedroom two years later, was suspended but was soon back at work. Senior Pastor Mike Glover told NBC that Waller was suspended for leaving children unattended.

However, years after Davis reported Waller’s actions, his wife discovered images of naked children on his computer and reported him to law enforcement, the report states. During an investigation, police found recordings on his computer from a hidden camera, including in the church bathroom.

Investigators also spoke with two sisters who told police Waller had lured them into the woods or his church office and raped them with his finger, the reports states. They said they were 10 or 11 years old when the abuse began around 2006. Waller pleaded guilty to rape in 2016 and was sentenced to life in prison.

In the AOG video responding to the NBC article, Clay said the District Council and General Council reported Waller to state authorities in 2015 as soon as they became aware of his actions. They also dismissed him from ministry.  

In 2018, AOG leaders planned to restore New Jersey pastor Orlando Martinez-Chavez to ministry after he was accused of molesting five children, according to NBC. But before that could happen, he was charged with sexually abusing a girl from his churchand received an eight-year prison sentence.

General Council repeatedly refuses to implement change

Founded in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1914, Assemblies of God is the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination. It includes nearly 13,000 U.S. churches and more than 450,000 globally.

The Springfield, Missouri-based General Council of the Assemblies of God serves as the governing body for the denomination. The council told NBC news that the denomination is structured as a “voluntary cooperative fellowship,” meaning local churches operate autonomously.

“Affiliated churches share doctrinal beliefs, but are independent in virtually every other way, including their local bylaws, staffing, policies and practices,” the General Council stated in the report.

However, during a 1997 biennial General Council meeting, AOG ministers gathered in Indianapolis considered a measure to ban anyone convicted of child sex abuse from “holding ministerial credentials,” according to NBC News.

By that time, news reports had chronicled decades of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and other religious settings, and many denominations were debating how to handle allegations within their own congregations.

After two years of legal review, the 21 ministers comprising the denomination’s Executive Presbytery discouraged adoption of the measure, which eventually died.

“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 they had converted to Christianity, the report states.

Twenty years later, the General Council once again addressed the issue during its biennial meeting in Orlando, Florida. This time, the topic was raised because of sexual abuse reported within the denomination.

Brothers Tim and David Martin were among victims asking the Assemblies to address the matter. Starting when he was 11 years old, Tim Martin had been groomed and sexually abused by Mark Holliday for three years in the 1980s, he said.

Holliday worked as a camp counselor in the 1980s at programs with ties to the AOG. According to NBC, victims accused Holliday of groping their butts and penises as they slept and encouraged them to swim naked.

“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,” the report states. “He later became a youth pastor.”

Tim Martin, who also became a pastor, decided to confront Holliday in 2004 after learning his brother also reported being abused by him. After admitting to inappropriate behavior, Holliday completed six sessions at Emerge Ministries, an Ohio counseling center founded by an Assemblies minister. There, he reportedly confessed his actions and said he hadn’t struggled with similar temptations since the 1980s.

Emerge still recommended that Holliday not be alone with children, but Holliday returned to work at youth camps in California run by an AOG pastor. When Tim and David Martin learned in 2015 that Holliday was still working with children, they and other victims reported him to the police.

Holliday stepped down from his role at the camp but did not face prosecution because the statute of limitations had expired. The brothers asked the AOG to take serious steps to address the problem.

In 2019, it appeared the denomination would do that. At the General Council meeting, a representative from the Northern California-Nevada District proposed a resolution that would allow denomination officials to “expel churches or discipline ministers who ‘grossly neglect’ to enforce safeguards like background checks and mandatory reporting.”.

Once again, leaders decided to take a two-year pause to further study the issue. At the 2021 meeting, the proposal failed to advance.

“General Secretary Donna Barrett recommended rejecting the plan,” NBC News reported. “Lawyers, she said, had concluded it would play ‘right into the hands of plaintiffs’ attorneys.”

In the Assemblies of God Oct. 30 video Barrett said that the denomination had a “zero tolerance” policy in place for decades barring pastors who had sexually abused children from returning to ministry.

“It is absurd to think that anyone at 2021 General Council was opposed to child safety,” Barrett said. “The issue was that the bylaw was not the place for such a policy. Our policy is structured in such a way that makes it impossible for the General Council to give oversight to the local assembly.”

But that structure  has been troubling for many of the victims, including David Martin, who told NBC the only reason for the rejected proposal was the unwillingness to spend money.

But four years later, with more lawsuits piling up against the denomination, survivors are are “demanding action,” the network said. They would like to see the denomination repent for actions that caused harm, commission an independent review of its handling of abuse and develop a system for alerting churches about credible abuse accusations.

Said Jen Doyle: “Stop giving the lawyers a vote.”

Ann Marie Shambaugh has reported as a print journalist in multiple states, including currently in Carmel, Indiana.