Bethel Church has selected third-party investigators to look into allegations of clergy sexual misconduct against its chief prophet, according to a press release issued by the embattled California church.
Along with Bethel admitting that they badly mishandled and ignored allegations of spiritual and sexual abuse perpetrated Shawn Bolz, someone they had platformed and promoted, they’re also dealing with the fallout after one of their former students alleged that Ben Armstrong, a Bethel pastor and Overseer of Prophetic Ministry, preyed on her, manipulated her, and then sexually assaulted her.
Bethel shared in a press release:
“As a broader leadership team, we want to understand and address how we can do better in the future by bringing in a third-party expert to review our governance, leadership structure, and culture. We want to ensure we have established clear accountability structures, prioritized the safety of all those engaging with Bethel, and upheld the standards that Scripture calls our leadership and culture to reflect.
We believe this kind of accountability isn’t just right, but necessary, and we will share concrete next steps for what that looks like in the coming weeks. As we have said before, we do not take the pain that those who have spoken up are experiencing lightly, and we are not moving past it quickly—this process matters deeply to us, but more importantly, to the heart of God.”
As a result, they hired Sintra Group Professional Investigations, an organization with “over 20 years of experience in investigative work, including trauma-informed investigative protocol,” to look into the matter.
It remains unclear to what degree Sintra Group has experience handling clergy sexual abuse cases within a church or religious context however. Their website does not mention this type of work; instead, it focuses on their contracts with government agencies and major corporations.
While Sintra states shares that their investigators are former law enforcement officers, each with more than twenty-five years of law enforcement service in investigations, supervision, and management, it appears the organization primarily conducst routine background checks for public agencies, with the occasional independent administrative investigation, including those involving harassment, hostile work environments, or embezzlement thrown in.
Many questions are left unanswered, however. Anti-abuse advocate Alyssa DeGraff asks on X:
We’ve reached out to both Sintra Group and Bethel church for comment on the latter’s experience handling clergy sexual abuse and will update this article accordingly.
