A former teacher at a K-12 school affiliated with Liberty University has been charged with sexual misconduct with a minor—which was finally disclosed to students’ families last week, three months after the fact. But multiple parents say the school is minimizing the potential harm, and some details from administrators are in conflict.
Braxton Wyatt Carter, 29, faces charges in Campbell County, Virginia, of two counts of consensual sex with a child age 15 years or older. The charges stem from an alleged incident in 2019, case information shows. Records indicate Carter was jailed April 7 and bonded out the same day.
Carter taught at Liberty Christian Academy (LCA) in Lynchburg from 2017-2019. The school is partnered with Liberty University (LU), one of the nation’s largest Christian colleges, and reportedly has about 2,000 students.
On July 28, LCA Head of School Dr. Mark Hine wrote in an email to LCA parents and staff that “a former Liberty Christian Academy Elementary Instructional Aide has been charged by law enforcement authorities with two misdemeanor charges” involving a minor with no apparent link to the school.
The statement does not refer to Carter by name, but states the allegations stem from before Carter resigned from LCA.
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Carter worked around hundreds of schoolchildren during his years teaching at LCA’s elementary school and summer camps, according to multiple sources. Carter also volunteered as a youth leader at LU-affiliated Thomas Road Baptist Church, and frequently drove middle schoolers to worship services and extracurricular activities such as water parks. He also cared for some families’ children outside school hours, according to a former LCA parent who spoke on background.
Sarah Gosnell, mother of an LCA student, told The Roys Report (TRR) in an interview that “the school needs to fully disclose what is known, so parents can ask their kids if they’re OK and if anything happened to them.”
Hine wrote in the statement that the school had “absolutely no indication that this former aide engaged in any inappropriate behavior with any LCA community member.”
However, Gosnell said LCA’s acting school principal, Jeff Capps, previously told her otherwise.
Capps is the school’s primary liaison with superintendent Hine, who is filling a dual role, overseeing the K-12 school while also in leadership at Liberty University as senior vice president for student affairs.
Gosnell and her husband asked to meet with Capps after they learned of Carter’s arrest. The allegations reinforced the couple’s existing concerns about LCA’s child safety policies. The couple hoped to urge LCA to disclose the situation to parents.
Capps rebuffed their requests for a month, Gosnell said, but finally met with them in late May.
Capps told the couple in that meeting that two LCA students had come forward to LCA administrators alleging grooming or abuse involving Carter, Gosnell said.
“Jeff Capps implied that the police were aware, and the students were getting help or counseling,” she added.
TRR reached out to Hine and Capps about the discrepancy but did not hear back.
The LCA statement to parents emphasized Carter’s support role. “Elementary instructional aides help with small groups, assist in supervising in the cafeteria during lunches, (and) supervise at recess,” Hine wrote in part. “Aides do not work individually with students in isolated locations for the protection of the student and the staff member.”
But one mother of an LCA student told TRR that her child had been taken out of class multiple times for “one-on-one time with Mr. Carter, in the teacher’s lounge or cafeteria.” The mother, who reported this pattern to school administrators when she learned of it, asked to remain anonymous out of concerns that her child may have been victimized.
LCA school officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Carter resigns, begins teaching in public school
Court records indicate Carter’s alleged misconduct occurred July 1, 2019. That was “just a few weeks prior to the former aide’s resignation from LCA,” Hine wrote to parents. “He made no mention of this incident to LCA.”
Carter is charged with two counts of a Class 1 misdemeanor, punishable with up to one year in jail and a $2,500.00 fine under Virginia law. His next hearing is slated for September 25 in Campbell County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court in Rustburg.
In fall 2019, Sandusky Middle School (SMS) in Lynchburg hired Carter as a science teacher. Even with his new job, multiple parents affiliated with LCA told TRR that Carter occasionally volunteered in the private Christian school’s cafeteria and continued to interact with his former elementary students.
Carter apparently worked at SMS for two years. Carter was listed as a science teacher on the SMS website as of June 21, 2021. Three months later, that same website no longer listed Carter on the staff page.
TRR reached out to a spokesman for Lynchburg City Schools, but he declined to comment.
Culture of ‘denial and covering things up’
In recent years, Liberty University has dealt with multiple claims of mishandling and cover-up of sexual abuse allegations. Last year, the U.S. Department of Education began an investigation of Liberty into possible mishandling of sexual assaults in violation of the Clery Act, which regulates how sex offense reports are disclosed.
“The way things have been handled at Liberty with the Title IX policies and related matters, there seems to be an M.O. of denial, suppression, and covering things up,” Gosnell said. “It seems like the situation at LCA is a bleed-over from the culture at Liberty.”
In the May meeting with LCA acting principal Capps, Gosnell said she and her husband shared information from child-safety advocacy group Darkness to Light.
That group’s research review of child sex abuse disclosure underlines the importance of parents and guardians asking direct questions to the children in their care. “Directly asking a child if he/she has been sexually abused can increase disclosure,” a 2016 white paper states, citing peer-reviewed research.
Gosnell said she and her husband told Capps that statistically speaking, Carter likely had other child victims.
While Hine has refused to meet with the Gosnells, his statement last week repeatedly minimized LCA’s connection to the alleged crimes.
“The alleged victim had no apparent affiliation with LCA,” Hine wrote in the statement. “The charges were filed in a surrounding county, not Lynchburg City, and the incident did not involve LCA.”
Attorney Boz Tchividjian, whose law firm specializes in representing abuse survivors harmed in churches and faith-based environments, is serving as an adviser to the Gosnells.
“The whole statement is to me minimizing a serious situation and trying to make LCA families feel like this was not a big deal,” Tchividjian told TRR. “It sounds like this had nothing to do with LCA—but he was an educator there for two years.”
Tchividjian also said that he’s troubled about the timing, since the arrest occurred in April and nothing was communicated to the school community for months. Hine sent the email 30 hours after TRR reached out for this story.
Tchividjian noted the Gosnells have a 20-year affiliation with Liberty as alumni and only want what’s best for LCA.
“Sarah and Tim Gosnell have a desire to see LCA succeed and grow and learn and become a safer space,” Tchividjian said. “They’ve been trying to work on that with the school for years, but they have run into resistance with those efforts. And I find that troubling.”
For her part, Sarah Gosnell said their concern is that “kids are suffering” and LCA’s lack of full disclosure may further hurt families.
“Without transparency, there’s no accountability for the leaders who are entrusted to take care of these children for what they did or didn’t do,” she said.
Update 8/7/23: LCA provided a statement to local news outlet WSET on Aug. 4 which confirmed reporting by TRR. The statement attributed to Dr. Hine said in part:
“We also learned that this person had communicated with two older high school students years after the former aide’s separation from LCA. While we do not know the content of these texts, LCA cooperated with law enforcement and facilitated their interviews with the students.”
This article has been corrected to accurately state details about the roles of Tchividjian and Gosnell.
Freelance journalist Josh Shepherd writes on faith, culture, and public policy for several media outlets. He and his family live in the Washington, D.C. area.
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9 Responses
LU currently covering up title 1X violation without even interviewing witnesses regarding Dr Tracy Turner who is interm dean of nursing. Topic is forced oral sex depiction.
Circling the wagons around the school leaving the kids and parents on the outside. After all, what does the safety of the children matter if you can’t protect the reputation of the school?
/s (just in case)
“Sandusky Middle School” — a very unfortunately appropriate school name given the circumstances.
Well written article. I was able to step through the detail and sequence of what was concerning in how reported events transpired. So forensic empirical reporting, as opposed to reporting that leads with ideological prejudice.
It is important, where a minor has been interfered with sexually by an adult, to reach the minor with sensitive support. So reaching and supporting is far from straightforward. Failure in disclosure and failure of wise management of disclosure and support, can see minors left on their own to work through what has taken place, where outcomes to that are unpredictable. We then know from research and anecdotal evidence, that some such outcomes are extremely adverse.
Prioritising the reputational needs of an institution, is then the antithesis of what is required to secure what is needed for the offended against minor. Such that we need to point up the ethical and spiritual conflict involved in what this article reports on.
The Gosnells have no direct knowledge of the facts and their student never even met this man. The bigger question is why did this man target each of these schools. Schools can only run so many background checks. If you pass them- what can you do?
Background checks are only effective if a person has been arrested, churches often choose to just move people along rather than tarnish their record with an arrest. Also, background checks are typically done within one state, so if people offended (and were arrested) in another state, you would need to run a background check in that state as well.
“The Gosnells have no direct knowledge of the facts and their student never even met this man.”
What does any of this have to do with this story, Jan? Your shoulder shrug comment mirrors the school’s response to an alleged child rapist. What can you do?
You can seek to learn signs of grooming and strengthen safety protocols. You can communicate in a timely manner if a staff member is found to be an abuser, you can contact each parent whose children shared spaces with the abuser. You can name the abuser so that parents know if their child shared spaces with him. You can be honest and transparent about the abuser being alone with children (he was. A lot). You can offer resources to children and parents on how to talk to their child in a way that encourages safe disclosure. And you can offer resources to children who have come fwd as being groomed/abused (which Hine admitted in a follow-up article.
To name a few.
There’s actually a lot that can be done if you prioritize the safety of your students.
What can they do? Notifying parents when their students have been under the care of a known predator at their institution would be a great start. Which until administration was contacted about this article they refused to do.
What was the final disposition of these cases?