This is the 44th installment in this series and a follow up to my first article on this lawsuit, which is found here. This concerns a lawsuit filed on December 3, 2020 by United Pentecostal Church pastor Stephen Barker against Emily Calderon. She is a former church member, who since 2020 has been very outspoken about multiple cases of alleged sexual abuse involving Raul Rodriguez, a long-time member of Mount Zion Apostolic Church in Visalia (Goshen), California. There are at least four different allegations of such behavior against him. The defamation lawsuit is also against twenty unnamed individuals and seeks payment of a half million dollars. This is case VCU285173. A settlement conference is scheduled for December 20, 2021, with a jury trial scheduled for January 31, 2022.
Before going further, I want to make clear once again that this lawsuit is a public record, I believe the pastor would be considered a public figure, and as such people are free to discuss this case and the issues involved with it, sharing their thoughts and opinions. In addition, the issue of sexual abuse is unquestionably a very public issue.
There are several things which have happened since my August 29th article.
On July 15, 2021, Mount Zion Apostolic Church filed a civil petition for harassment against Emily Calderon and a temporary restraining order was denied on August 2. The court case was scheduled for September 15, 2021 where it was dismissed, no ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution). I was aware of this civil action when I wrote the first article.
Raul Rodriguez passed away on September 5, 2021, after a battle with COVID. He was just shy of turning 40. He was not one of the people who filed the lawsuit and more information on his church involvement is found in the first article. Raul was never arrested or charged before he passed away.
Due to the overwhelming legal costs involved in such a lawsuit, in mid October Emily had to let her attorney go. At that point she claimed to have gone into debt for $40,000-$50,000. While she has counter sued and is asking that they be made to pay for all her attorney fees, that won’t be decided upon for awhile yet. She has had some people contribute toward the cost. I don’t often share fundraisers, but am doing so now as it is my opinion that the lawsuit filed against her is ridiculous and frivolous, meant to shut her up, as well as bankrupt her (more on this below). For anyone interested in helping, she can accept funds through Zelle using Acts238steven@icloud.com and through Cash app or Venmo using @EmmieLuWho. She also recently set up a PayPal fundraiser that is time limited. As she now has over 10,000 followers on TikTok, if everyone gave just $5, she would have her debt paid. For those who will, please pray for her.
Unfortunately, Emily has received much harassment due to being vocal, sometimes coming from people setting up fake profiles on Facebook. She has shared some of these. While it hasn’t yet been proven who has been responsible for those, anyone doing such should understand that Facebook, or any other social media, knows how you are accessing their platform and they record your IP address. They can also identify that with a real profile and people can risk losing access to their platform. None of these places permit harassment or threats to others.
In the first article there were several things shared that had gone missing online, something I have seen time and again through the years when an issue is exposed. Since then, Mt. Zion Apostolic Church also removed their Sunday School Facebook page. (This link will not work.) At least one screen shot from there was shared in my article.
On November 1, Ron Craig Barker, the father of Stephen Barker and Kristen Rodriguez, passed away. In a recording made where he was speaking with Emily’s husband, he can be heard saying that he was going to “sue you guys until you ain’t got nothing left.” It appears he was the main person pushing the lawsuit. You can hear his words for yourself here. It has been felt that it was Ron’s money that financed the lawsuit. It is yet to be seen whether his passing will bring an end to it.
There seems to have been a problem in the Western District with the letter Emily’s lawyer sent to the Board in the summer. It appears that this letter, along with a copy of the lawsuit, was not passed on to all the members of the District Board. USPS tracking showed that it was picked up the morning of June 28, 2021. Gaylen Cantrell is the District Superintendent. As shared in the first article, Mount Zion Apostolic Church previously had as its pastor Harvey C. Cantrell, who is Gaylen’s father. Harvey was the pastor 17 years ago when Meghan Estrada (now Robles), a preacher’s kid, was allegedly groomed and molested for over a year by Raul Rodriguez, starting when she was 13 years old and he was 23.
The non-distribution of the letter was discovered after Emily Calderon released a TikTok on October 7, 2021 about a sermon made by Western District board presbyter Steven McDaniel on July 7, 2021 at Revival Worship Center, the church where he is pastor. By late evening the following day, the video of this sermon disappeared from the church Facebook Page after having been available since July 7. On October 7 I also posted about the video but only addressed him pondering if one could be a Christian without going to church. Emily had questioned the timing of the sermon due to the fact it was preached after the post office delivered the letter to the District. In the message McDaniel talked about fornication and sexual impurity, about if a preacher falls and people being unforgiving. He spoke against social media, and stated there are bitter people, “hoping and wanting and looking for some sort of moral failure.” Despite the video having been removed, some of us recorded parts of it.
On October 9, Emily shared that one board member had responded saying that members had not received the letter or the copy of the lawsuit. To me, this would mean that whoever picked the letter up at the post office did not pass it along to the other board members. Whether this would be the secretary, the superintendent or someone else, we do not know.
What I can say is that I believe some actions of the United Pentecostal Western District have been extremely disappointing and wrong. Another of their presbyters, Jesse Pinheiro, recently spoke at Centro Vida Church, where the board previously found John Shivers guilty of several charges and had told him to step down as pastor. Despite this, Shivers is still considered the pastor, the church website touts him as being in charge, even though he no longer holds license with the UPC. According to their rules, he shouldn’t be speaking in any UPC church, nor should UPC ministers be speaking at his church. More on this will follow in an upcoming article.
Added November 14: Sign Emily’s petition here.
You will find a complete list of articles in this series by clicking here.
