Two sisters are suing a former Southern Baptist church in Virginia for $300 million, claiming church leaders knew their former youth leader had sexually abused them and at least one other youngster.
Named as defendants in lawsuits brought by sisters identified as “R.T.” and “S.T.” is Bethany Place Church in North Chesterfield, Virginia, and the church’s former youth leader, Gerald R. Thomas. Also named is Coastal Church, an independent church, which “began a partnership” with the Bethany congregation in 2023. Bethany Place is now known as Coastal Church—and Bethany and is no longer associated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
The sisters are each seeking $150 million in their separate filings for alleged abuse that took place between 2006 and 2009. Both suits were filed April 7 in the Circuit Court in Richmond, Virginia. The women are now 25 and 29 years old respectively.
They allege that during those years, Thomas fondled each of the girls and digitally penetrated the older child, “often in plain view” of Bethany Place employees and church leaders.
Asked why the sisters were filing the action now, nearly two decades after the abuse began, attorney Kevin Biniazan said his clients are now fully aware of the impact Thomas’s abuse had.
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“It’s often not until a child grows into an adolescent and grows into an adult, when they begin to appreciate or understand and reckon with the experiences that they were subjected to as a child,” Biniazan told The Roys Report (TRR) in a telephone interview.
Once realized, he said, the victims “then begin to appreciate and see in real time how their lives have been affected in every aspect as a result of being forced to perform sexual acts or having sexual acts performed upon them against their will and without their consent.”
Thomas pled guilty to charges of aggravated sexual battery against the sisters in March 2010. He is “on indefinite supervised probation and has been Court ordered to participate in sex offender treatment,” court documents state.
Media reports indicate Thomas was charged and convicted in 2021 in another case of sexual abuse at the church during the same time period.
“The lawsuit concerns a tragic incident that occurred at Bethany Place 16 years ago involving the abuse of children,” Coastal Church Senior Pastor Shaun Brown said in a statement the church sent to TRR. Thomas “was identified, convicted, and incarcerated,” the statement said.
“Our legal team is actively handling the situation,” Brown added.
Biniazan said the filings came about after attorneys representing Bethany Place “made empty promises about how they wanted to do the right things for our clients . . . and gave them the false sense of security in the same way that they did it when they were children.”
He said he and his clients “requested to resolve this without having to put the church, their congregation, or anyone else through what truly is a disgrace to have this publicly known. And we were given promises, and those promises haven’t been kept, and so they had their chance.”
Biniazan said Gerald R. Thomas has not responded to the lawsuit as of April 15.
The lawsuit alleges Bethany Place should have been aware of the behavior patterns of sexual predators and of resolutions passed by the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual business sessions to make congregations aware of potential risks and how to address these.
Instead, the lawsuit alleges Bethany Place “provided ease of accessibility to numerous vulnerable children,” including the plaintiffs and a third child identified as “Jane Doe,” but who is not part of the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also claims Bethany Place did not fulfill a promise to keep Thomas away from children and did not report the sexual abuse complaint “to the authorities nor police.”
Law enforcement action against Thomas only occurred when “R.T.” reported the abuse to a school counselor, the lawsuit states.
Attorney Biniazan said he will seek to have the sisters’ lawsuits consolidated in Richmond Circuit Court “so that witnesses and information doesn’t need to be needlessly duplicated, and we don’t have to take same deposition twice.”
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.
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7 Responses
Your are incorrect about the church’s affiliation with SBC. Incorrect information undermines the entirety of a report. Facts should all be straight before you take to the internet, writing about matters of such a serious nature.
As this archived webpage shows, Bethany previously stated on its website that it affiliates with the “Southern Baptist Convention” and “Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20230118102226/https://www.bethanyplace.com/what-we-believe/
It appears the facts in our article are correct.
The problem with this case is that not only was the offender arrested, tried, and convicted, no one else affiliated with the church leadership at the time of the offense 16 years ago is still associated with the church. The current pastor is also new, hoping that the church would get a brand new start by affiliating with Coastal Church. Of course, this is tragic, but why a lawsuit against a church leadership that was not even connected in any way to the church that then existed 16 years ago?
because their lives are forever impacted by it? they will ALWAYS be in counseling because of what this institution allowed to happen- this institution should make that right. If it closes it down, so be it. if they become uninsurable, let that be a lesson to all churches in what happens when they don’t handle abusers swiftly, or care for abuse victims well.
there are likely a dozen other churches in that town- one closing because it harbored abusers is not a terrible outcome if justice is done for the victims.
The downside is that it incentivizes churches not to take responsibility out of fear of litigation. My understanding is that insurance companies already have their hand in what a pastor/ leader can and cannot say in these situations.
I don’t know what kind of resources/ insurance this church has, but $300M seems rather divorced from reality. I’m sure it’s part of the game of reaching a lesser settlement, but justice for the victims can’t be a blank check. It inevitably will lead to unintended consequences that aren’t good for anyone who isn’t a lawyer. It could easily make things worse, not better, for future victims if unreasonable demands are normalized.
There continues to be false out in this article. Are you going to fix your wrong reporting about the affiliation of this church or not?
It’s also gross that you have made it seem as if the church member sat there and watched these people be molested. Maybe check out Rachel Denhollander’s testimony again before you lay that on people. This is shameful reporting. I know you won’t post this, but I know you’ll read it. It’s yellow journalism. There’s no place for it. Get your facts straight before you start throwing churches under the bus about things that happened over a decade ago under different leadership. I do not go to this church. But I do know her pastor. Once again, this is shameful reporting.
As we stated elsewhere in this thread, an archived webpage clearly states Bethany was an SBC church.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230118102226/https://www.bethanyplace.com/what-we-believe/