Tag: sexual abuse

Categories
News

Megachurch Says it has ‘Substantiated’ Sexual Misconduct Against Bruxy Cavey Involving a Minor

One of the largest churches in Canada has released a statement revealing that they have substantiated several abuse allegations against their former head pastor Bruxy Cavey, and that one involves a minor.

For brief background, Bruxy Cavey is one of the country’s most recognizable religious leaders. Far from being orthodox, he is also a false teacher, who denies penal substitutionary atonement, biblical inerrancy, the eternality of hell, has an unbiblical view of the sin of homosexuality, and displays an affinity for open-theism. For more information on Cavey’s many false beliefs, click here.

Cavey was released from his position at The Meeting House, a 5000-member multi-campus megachurch in Oakville, ON, that serves as one of Canada’s largest, after being arrested and charged with sexual assault. Further investigations would reveal that the church has an endemic problem, with a third-party investigation revealing that there have been nearly 40 different reports of sexual abuse against multiple pastors within the church.

In a statement by the church, they reveal that they have some more “hard news to share:”

We have now received the results of the second and third investigations into allegations of sexual abuse and sexual misconduct brought against former Senior Pastors Bruxy Cavey and Tim Day, respectively.

These investigations were conducted by Natasha Persaud, an independent, third-party investigator to ensure that there was protection for the confidentiality of complainants and that the entire process was approached in an objective, trauma-informed, and timely manner.

Here are the results for the second investigation into Bruxy Cavey:

In this second investigation, two sets of claims of sexual abuse by a church leader (as defined above) have been substantiated. In the third, his actions have been found to be substantiated as sexual misconduct. In one case, the victim was underaged when the abuse took place.

The investigation into Tim Day (Their other former senior pastor) was conducted separately. He chose not to participate in the investigation, and was provided with multiple opportunities to do so. The victim’s allegations against Tim Day were substantiated as sexual abuse by a church leader.

Previously the church revealed some of the allegations and results of abuse suffered by the hands of their pastors.

To date, our victim advocate Melodie has received 38 inquiries. She’s documenting each story and is committed to advocating on their behalf. The inquiries are not all unique or separate, but they do represent allegations, disclosures and concerns relating primarily to clergy sexual misconduct, harassment and abuse by Kieran Naidoo (youth pastor charged with possessing child pornography in 2012, and later charged with sexual exploitation in 2021 as a result of an incident from 2002-2004) Dave Churchill ( a youth pastor church charged with sexual assault and sexual exploitation in 2014) Bruxy Cavey (multiple allegations of sexual abuse and relationships, some which he has admitted) and Tim Day (served as senior pastor of the Meeting House for 14 years, unspecified allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse)

Categories
News

New Report Commissioned by Archdiocese: Pope Benedict XVI Allowed Predatory Priests to Continue Sexual Abuse

(AP) A long-awaited report on sexual abuse in Germany’s Munich diocese on Thursday faulted retired Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of four cases when he was archbishop in the 1970s and ’80s. The law firm that drew up the report said Benedict strongly denies any wrongdoing.

The findings were sure to reignite criticism of Benedict’s record more than a decade after the first — and until Thursday only — known case involving him was made public.

The archdiocese commissioned the report from law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl nearly two years ago, with a mandate to look into abuse between 1945 and 2019, and whether church officials handled allegations correctly. The law firm examined church files and spoke to witnesses.

Church officials weren’t informed of the results ahead of publication. The current archbishop — Cardinal Reinhard Marx, a prominent reformist ally of Pope Francis — was faulted in two cases. 

Marx’s predecessors include the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who served in Munich from 1977 to 1982 before becoming the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and later being elected as pope, which is when he took the name Benedict.

Benedict gave extensive written testimony for the report.

“In a total of four cases, we have come to the conclusion that the then-archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger, can be accused of misconduct,” said Pusch.

Two of those cases, he said, involved perpetrators who offended while he was in office and were punished by the judicial system but were kept in pastoral work without express limits on what they were allowed to do. No action was ordered under canon law.

In a third case, a cleric who had been convicted by a court outside Germany was put into service in the Munich archdiocese…To continue reading, click here

Editor’s Note. This article was written by Geir Moulson and posted at the Associated Press. Title changed by Protestia

Categories
News

Perry Stone Called ‘Nasty Perv’ During Church Service

During his Tuesday service, prophet Perry Stone was greeted with one unhappy congregant who, while he lamenting the fact that so many people had left their faith in recent years, shouted out from the back where the whole church could hear, according to the CFP:

“Probably because you keep touching them, you nasty perv! Why don’t you tell them the real reason why they left? Because you kept touching them.”

She’s not wrong. In July of 2020 took a sabbatical after 11 letters were sent to the Voice of Evangelism board of directors, as well as to the Chatanooga Free Press , all from women who worked for him They alleged that Stone would frequently engage in sexual harassment, including groping, making comments about their breasts, kissing them on the lips and on their necks, asking for massages, and texting them asking for pictures.

Stone would soon admit that he had “acted inappropriately with (women), and with words and sometimes actions” telling a small group of people in leaked audio:

“I confess at times I’ve been inappropriate in all this weariness of just non-stop ministry. I let my guard down and I’ve asked, of course, God to forgive me for that. I sat down with my family, with my beautiful, precious wife Pam, the love of my life. I asked her to forgive me. And I very humbly and very sincerely ask those who have been hurt or offended by my actions to, please, also forgive me for those things.”

ChattTimesFreePress · Perry Stone audio message about behavior with female employees

To the rest of his church, he and his board told a different story, saying that he took time off to be with family and work on a project of sorts, as well as for health concerns, not mentioning the allegations or his private confession.

The deception comes naturally to Stone, a radical charismatic ‘prophet’ who regularly claims to be receiving fresh words from God and apocalyptic prophesies on the daily. He oversees the Voice of Evangelism (VOE) Empire that brings in tens of millions of dollars a year, but is perhaps best known within discernment circles for checking his phone while speaking in tongues.

In response to the woman’s comments he sicced his security guards on her, shouting at her, as reported by the CFP.

“Ma’am, I’ll have you arrested, and I’ll bring a lawsuit against you for making statements like that! You’ve talked to people who told 16 lies on my wife and I! That’s who you’ve been talking to.

He then told the crowd:

“I am not a perfect man. People have taken me hugging and kissing them on the cheek wrong. I quit that. I’m Italian. My whole family holds hands, rubs backs. I didn’t know you can look at somebody and say, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ and they can take it wrong.”

Categories
Breaking Charismatic Nonsense Featured Scandal

Breaking! Hillsong Boston Pastor Alleges She Was Sexually Assaulted by Carl Lentz

One of the lead ‘pastors’ at Hillsong Boston, Leona Kimes, has come forward and claimed that she was sexually assaulted by disgraced NYC Hillsong pastor Carl Lentz back when she was his nanny in New York City, a claim which Lentz denies.

Kimes, who served as Lentz’s personal nanny for 7 years before moving to Boston and becoming a ‘pastor’ there [Editors note: That is a weird transition], explains in a Medium post that:

Before we moved to Boston, I worked in the lead pastors’ home for seven years. I was responsible for cleaning their house, running their errands and ensuring that everything within the walls of their house was as perfect as possible. It was also my responsibility to take care of the pastors’ children, which, in order to protect their privacy, I won’t talk about.

While there were joyful moments during that time, no one knew that I also experienced a great deal of pain. During the years I spent serving them, I was subjected to manipulation, control, bullying, abuse of power, and sexual abuse. Having told almost no one before this, I am just now able to share what I experienced in their home as the result of intense therapy.

Describing the first few years of working for the Lentz family and being part of their home as “exhilarating but also exhausting,” she quickly became attached and felt like she had to care for their entire family, being part of it almost. But then things began taking a dark turn.

The abuse of power started small. Hours would increase beyond belief. Often I would work from 7 am to 11 pm. Schedules were switched last minute without even attempting to confirm my availability. Tasks kept getting added and added to my load. They made fun of me constantly, even calling me Cinderella, which they said was their way of loving me. My husband was frequently criticized as a group sport. Gossip was constant. If I didn’t join in or if I disagreed, I was the odd one out. Classic bullying.

The sexual abuse started small, too. My pastor would look at me and say, “Gurl, you’re looking good. You’ve been in the gym?” There was a lot of flirty teasing like this. I had been around long enough to know that’s just how he was with women. But after a while, the comments started to escalate. I remember being told, “after you have kids, we’ll buy you a boob job.” Looking back, I know I felt embarrassed, but I didn’t know it was wrong then. It hadn’t occurred to me that I had a right to not be spoken to like that, by my pastor or anyone else.

Kimes describes how Lentz would frequently comment on her body and would make flirtatious comments towards her. At one point, “he took my photo while I was laying out in the sun once. He then cropped out his wife, edited it with a black and white filter, and texted it to me, saying “sheesh girl looking good.”

After a while, the asks began to get more intimate. As part of her duties as their nanny, he began asking her for massages, to rub his feet or shoulders and sore muscles after he came in from basketball.

While he never had intercourse with me and never kissed me, I was physically violated by his unwanted and repeated sexual touching of my intimate areas. I froze. Every time, I froze.

He offered to accompany me to the doctor with his sick son once and he touched me while I was driving, both hands on the wheel. Again, I froze.

He suggested accompanying me to a movie with the kids and sat next to me and touched me in the dark, even though we were surrounded by people. Again, I froze.

After a while, Kimes could not take it anymore. Nearly 5 years in she finally confronted both Carl and wife Laura regarding the inappropriate touching and suggestive text messages. The first time was in the summer of 2016. Instead of apologizing profusely, they choose to “blame and silence her,” but enabled her to keep her job. When things didn’t get any better, she confronted them a year later.

[Carl] sat me down and said he took full responsibility for taking advantage of me and putting me in a situation that was so heavy for me. He told me that I should feel “free” from him and the shame I’d been carrying around. He said he’d thought about confessing to leadership, but after talking it through with his wife, they decided they didn’t have to because it wasn’t necessary, and we could just move on. I was told that if his reputation was ruined, my reputation would be, too. He said his wife would come and talk to me about the boundaries we would have moving forward.

When his wife sat me down, she told me that I should repent and dismissed me from all of my duties in the house. I’d been fired from their family, but not from their staff. I felt like it was my fault, leaving me full of shame. I wasn’t given another role, and thought we could resolve it, though I wasn’t sure how. I just knew we were all going to keep quiet.

Soon after she left New York and she and her husband Josh became ‘pastors’ of Hillsong Boston, where they’ve been leading the congregation there since. After Lentz’s affair was revealed and he was fired from the church and she felt “safe,” she told her husband and Hillsong head honcho Brian and Bobbie Houston about it. She says she was “met with compassion” by the both of them and has now chosen to go public after a time in therapy and self-reflection.

The knowledge of this alleged victimization is likely the cause of Houston blasting Lentz by saying in leaked audio months ago that “It was more than one affair, they were significant. And at least some bad moral behavior had gone back historically.”

In an exclusive statement to RNS, A legal representative for Carl and Laura Lentz has responded to her allegations and told RNS that they “vehemently deny the allegations, and in addition to that, have irrefutable proof the events did not happen as they are being described.”