Truett McConnell University (TMU) trustees, shaken by a sex abuse scandal The Roys Report (TRR) revealed in May, will receive a third-party investigation’s results on an alleged coverup by September’s end.

Until then, “the investigation is still ongoing,” Brandi Wood, TMU’s director of marketing and communications, told Baptist Press on August 6.

The investigation centers on allegations that TMU’s president, Emir Caner, may have suppressed complaints from students and others that Bradley Reynolds, a longtime TMU vice president, had sexually abused former student Hayle Swinson.

Reynolds 15-year tenure at TMU abruptly ended in 2024. That’s when the White County, Georgia, sheriff’s office opened an investigation into Swinson’s allegations that Reynolds had “groomed” and abused her, Swinson told TRR’s Julie Roys in a podcast.

According to Swinson, Reynolds — married and with children at home — told the student his wife would die, allowing the two to marry. Swinson received approximately 300 email messages, some of which had detailed descriptions of Reynolds’s “wet dreams” about her.

Swinson attended TMU on an athletic scholarship and was later hired as a soccer coach there. She told TRRshe suffered emotional trauma from the sexual abuse and became suicidal.

A former TMU staff member claimed he told President Caner about accusations surrounding Reynolds as early as 2016, but the pastor and administrator remained on staff until last year. Caner and TMU administrators also allegedly did not act on a 2019 petition signed by 50 female students, complaining about Reynolds’s behavior in and out of the classroom.

After TRR first reported Swinson’s allegations, and local media in the Cleveland, Georgia, area picked up the story, TMU trustees met June 6. They placed Caner on administrative leave, and named John Yarbrough, the school’s director of public policy, as interim president.

Yarbrough, a 1969 TMU graduate, is also a former president of the Georgia Baptist Convention, with which the 79-year-old TMU is affiliated via the Georgia Baptist Mission Board.

If the promised report arrives the end of September, that would be nearly four months since the probe was announced, and roughly six weeks after the start of fall classes on August 19.

TRR contacted Wood for confirmation on the date, but she said she was traveling and could not immediately comment.

Richard Hyde, an Atlanta-based investigator, and Phoenix Research LLC were said by the school to be handling the coverup probe. Hyde, a former police officer and Emmy-winning journalist, is chief investigator for Balch and Bingham LLP, a law firm.

Founded in 1946 as a two-year liberal arts college, TMU was approved by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to offer four-year degrees in December 2002. According to a Wikipedia article about TMU, the school has “over 2,100 students.” However, most reportedly attend online.

Mark A. Kellner is a reporter based in Mesquite, Nevada. He most recently covered statewide elections for the New York Post and was for three years the Faith & Family Reporter for The Washington Times. Mark is a graduate of the University of the Cumberlands and also attended Boston University’s College of Communication.