Author: Lois

Part three of a series of articles.

In the United States, 25 percent of girls and 8 percent of boys are sexually abused before they turn 18. It’s incredible then that with a staggering number of victims, it often takes a critical mass—and time—before we’re willing to acknowledge that people we admire or trust are capable of sexually abusing children. People who abuse children often appear to be regular, normal folks, and we often don’t recognize that child sexual abuse is occurring because it is committed by people we know. – Elizabeth Letourneau, Ph.D.

(The statements in this article are what has been alleged by the survivors. There have been no convictions as the cases mentioned here were not reported to the police at the time and to my knowledge, the alleged perpetrators have not admitted guilt.)

Debbie attended the church from 1978-1986. She was an eleven year old child and Steve was 29 or 30 when the sexual abuse started. It continued for about two years. He was married to his second wife and popular in the church. Debbie blamed herself, thinking she must have done something wrong to cause his actions.

When she found the courage to tell the pastor, he recorded their conversation and stated he would get back to her. The pastor, who was also the Wisconsin District Superintendent for many years, never did. Instead, the perpetrator may have left the state for a short time and Debbie received no counseling. Some church members avoided her or gave her evil looks.

Steve’s wife, Debra, filed for divorce in 1985. Steve had been caught in bed with her 15 year old sister, Alice, whom Steve later married. He remains married to her to this day.

Years later, while in her late 40s, Debbie found her voice and the courage to speak up. Little did she know what would transpire as she started writing about her childhood. While feeling alone in what happened to her, others who left Calvary Gospel United Pentecostal Church in Madison, Wisconsin started contacting her. They also were sexually assaulted.

I know what the research says. I know that my grooming for sexual abuse was so effective that, many years later I still feel responsible for my own abuse. I understand the dynamics that produced this effect in me. And, yet, after all my knowledge, all my therapy, and all the years of praying, it still feels like my fault, like I was complicit in my own abuse. And, it still feels like I owe my abusers compassion, love, secrecy, and the denigration of myself for their aggrandizement.

This is how effective and destructive abusive grooming is. And this barely touches on the reality of all the feelings, trauma, PTSD symptoms, and other long-term effects caused by sex offenders. – Maureen Farrell Garcia

As Debbie has continued to blog, more women have come forward, sharing their past with her. In early February 2018, some who left Calvary Gospel started leaving negative reviews on the church Facebook page and commented on posts. Comments were deleted by the church and the review section was soon removed. [There is an unofficial Facebook Page for the church where there are some reviews available. 2024 note: The review section is no longer available.] Before that happened, current members were hurriedly leaving positive five star reviews in an effort to counter the negative ones.

I didn’t catch these when they first started, but I did save around twenty screenshots. What I witnessed was similar to that I have seen in the past, where people rally around the pastor, don’t allow themselves to consider what is being shared, and dismiss anything negative without looking to see if there is any validity to the claims. The person who brings up a problem becomes the problem. The person is labeled things like being bitter in an effort to dismiss and discount whatever they share. These are well-known signs of an unhealthy church.

It reminded me of a time in my former United Pentecostal Church in New Jersey. The pastor had discovered that two former members had done a radio broadcast about spiritual abuse. They mentioned no names. The pastor took an entire Thursday evening service to play the cassette tape of the broadcast to show what was being said.

This created a stir among the members, an us vs. them mindset, and they rallied around the church and pastor. How dare those former members say those untrue things! I was away when this happened, so I asked to borrow the tape from the pastor. When I returned it, I gave it to another woman. I can still picture her standing in the church hallway, holding the cassette by her fingertips and away from herself as if it were something disgusting.

Child sex abuse cases are a lot harder to try than a murder case. I would rather try a murder case than a child sexual abuse case because they’re so difficult. Juries do not want to believe that this happened. They do not want to believe that that guy sitting over there did something to a child. – Mary A. Jennings, Prosecutor, Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office

Debbie posted her one star review of Calvary Gospel and wrote, “This church is not a safe place for young girls/women. They do not report sexual abuse to the authorities.” Scott, a church member, soon replied, “Another lie…ridiculous!” It should be noted that Scott was not even in Wisconsin at the time of Debbie’s alleged assault.

Rachel posted a scripture and mentioned the name of Debbie’s blog. Scott replied, “I just read this ‘blog’. It is full of misconceptions and outright lies. This church does NOT at all teach what she claims…in fact, I am part of an organization within this church drawing attention to the fact that men are the source of many issues dating back to Adam in the book of Genesis. He was absent when Eve needed him and men today need to be aware of their responsibility to support and love their wives…not pull them down. That claim is ridiculous!”

Laura, a former member who didn’t know about the depth of abuse that happened with the other girls until last week, remembers the meeting with John Grant (the pastor at the time, now the Bishop, as his son took his place) concerning an adult man and a minor girl. The pastor allegedly said, “I’m required by law to report this. I’m not going to jail for any fornicator.”

Laura and her husband later discovered that it had never been reported. They were instructed by John Grant to see to Lisa’s emotional and spiritual healing and leave the rest of it to him to deal with. Laura later wrote that she knows “of several situations where adult men were inappropriate with minor girls and the church looked the other way. …These men MIGHT have received a pat on the hand for what they did, but the girls were labeled as though they were the ones at fault.”

She continued in another post that further explained the same meeting, “…there were two elders present. One of them said, concerning the victim and the family, ‘Well, if the parents would live right…!’ The other one said, ‘You better be glad we aren’t in the Old Testament days when they stoned people for this.’ How comforting and supportive was this to a family whose world was turned upside down by a predator? After the situation, the young lady was shamed and labeled by many/most of the people in the church. It was heartbreaking. Now, look at the songs and the message at CGC this morning. They sang about the enemy, they talked about the enemy. They are subtly maneuvering people’s minds to believe that they are the innocent victims of an unwarranted attack by bad people. They are refusing to address this situation openly and honestly. They are hijacking the label of victim and placing it upon themselves. If you know anything about psychology or spiritual abuse, you will understand exactly what is going on there. If you have a blind loyalty to the royalty, you will not look into the mountains of facts and evidence.” (four typos have been corrected)

A woman I will call M shared this was her home church and she is loyal to it. Yet her and her son were sexually assaulted (she first used the term harassed). She wrote, “I’ve never reported it and I never will. I’m a warrior but I’m not stupid; I’d be shunned.” This is very sad.

Kim, another church member, posted a screen shot of something from Wisconsin’s laws about clergy members reporting abuse. While she didn’t want to “make light of the events that transpired,” she felt that those posting should follow Matthew 18 “rather than openly criticize a church organization.” She went on to share that “There are reasons why pastors and church leadership handle things the way that they do. They answer to a higher authority.”

Yes, all too often pastors make the decision to handle crimes ‘in house’ and not report them to police. Doing so in situations such as are being covering in this series of articles, enables pedophiles and other predators to continue harming others. In Debbie’s situation, the man went on to be a pastor, something that would never have happened had he been reported to the police, prosecuted and convicted.

If these allegations are true, something has been very wrong with this church. Will David Bernard, the current General Superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church, fully investigate events that transpired at Calvary Gospel Church? If these allegations prove to be true, will John Grant’s license be revoked as well as the license of anyone else who may have played a role in failing to report sexual assault to police?

[2024 Note: As a result of a complaint filed against Grant under the UPCI’s judicial procedure, in 2023 John Wesley Grant was placed on probation for a year, where he was not permitted to preach or teach. Grant was removed from the United Pentecostal Church’s Order of the Faith where he had been inducted in 2014. He was also removed as a Wisconsin District Honorary Presbyter as well as an Honorary General Presbyter, which had been granted him for being a District Superintendent for many years.]

I want to end with a quote from Laura that was made in the review section after comments from church members started going missing. I believe she sums it up well.

Concerning the posts that were removed telling people to move on: Moving on is what all these victims have had to do because they never received the help they deserved from the church. Instead they were labeled and pushed away from the community. There comes a time, though, when recovery has taken place and the hurt have regained their strength, that they come back and hope to see justice done. If not justice through the legal system, at least those who covered up crimes exposed, hopefully enough to prevent future victims. The problem is that there is a mentality there that says the victims are liars and their beloved leaders could do no wrong. Those who have poured salt on the wounds are those who called these survivors liars and refuse to believe what happened. There are MANY victims who are coming out and finally speaking up. They are courageous to take this stand and finally be heard. It’s a shame that those who are reading these are circling the wagons and declaring that it’s a spiritual attack. It’s not. It’s consequences for crimes that have been swept under the rug for decades. We were there. We saw what happened in many of these situations. And if there are…say 10 who are speaking up right now, you can be sure there are at least 10 who are not yet talking about it.

UPCI WI District 2016 Christmas for Christ from CenterStage Media, LP on YouTube.

March 3, 2024 Note: Screenshots have been added to this post, links have been checked, and some changes and additions were made.

You will find a complete list of articles in this series by clicking here.

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Part two of a series of articles.

The call from West Virginia came one evening after 11:00 PM back in late 1993, not long before I made my exodus out of the United Pentecostal Church. He was a minister, having held license for at least a couple decades in the UPC, and ordination since at least the mid 70s. He was 27 years older than me and about eight years younger than my father.

Earlier that year after resigning my position in the church operated daycare center at the end of their summer program, I made a trip to visit him, his wife and his mother. By then we had known one another several years. He and his wife had become kind of like my second set of parents as we met not long after my mother passed away in the mid 1980s. They had come in search of work as he was a carpenter by trade and employment in WV was poor, while in New Jersey it was booming. All of us spent many hours together through the years, along with some other church members.

I’d been looking for a way to leave my church without it seeming obvious that I no longer wanted to be there and was considering the possibility of returning to West Virginia to help at his church in Mineral Wells. They were meeting in a trailer on the property at the time since the church was being built. In 1990 I had helped for several months at another small church in Vienna, so it wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone if I returned to WV for a season. We discussed this possibility while I visited for a few weeks that fall, but no decision was made at the time.

Little did I know what was going to be disclosed when I answered that phone call. He shared with me that his wife wasn’t home and that she was not to know of our conversation. He proceeded to tell me that I had been a sexual fantasy of his and that it had been going on for awhile. He shared some things that he had fought in his mind. Needless to say, that conversation slammed the door shut to my returning to WV as we both decided that would not be a good idea.

The call ended and I never made another trip there. The beginning of the following year is when some things started to be said about the Lemons, that there was some type of problem. Sexual charges were filed against him, he was convicted and imprisoned and another minister, who was a trustee, took over Revival Tabernacle. In early May 1994, the Lemons deeded the property to the three church trustees, one being his mother.

I was in shock. He had never been inappropriate toward me. How do you process it when someone you saw as a father figure, tells you something like that? It is a creepy and disconcerting feeling. I didn’t share it with anyone at first. Because of that phone call, when the word came out he was in prison, I tended to believe he must have done something. If he had been fighting thoughts about me for awhile, he very well may have had them about others.

For years I never knew the exact charges and to this day still don’t know much. From the little that was discovered online, in May 1994 Clifford Lee Lemon was convicted of 12 counts of sexual abuse by a parent, guardian, custodian or other person in position of trust to a child. I later saw a mention that in 1998 he appealed the denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus in his underlying conviction. To my knowledge he died on November 7, 2011, before ever being released.

I had contact with his wife afterward, but not much, and that stopped. It was very awkward because I didn’t know if he had disclosed to her what he told me and it certainly wasn’t something I wanted to discuss with her. She switched to a non-UPC Oneness Pentecostal church at some point after leaving and passed away on January 25, 2016.

Prior to all of this happening, one of his sons was convicted in April of 1992 on three counts of 1st degree sexual assault where his victims were two minor female family members. Bernie (Bernard Eugene Lemon) spent more than ten years in prison. He would at times get to preach in different churches, but to my knowledge never held license. It was said by his parents that he did not commit the crime. I wrote Bernie for a little while after he was imprisoned but stopped when I became uncomfortable with something he wrote. I never saw him again after he was convicted.

I well remember that the father could be hard with people when it came to following the UPC standards. He shared that women shouldn’t wear shirts with writing or pictures on them as it drew attention to their chest area. Once when I was visiting in West Virginia, one of his adult sons came over and had some facial stubble. He harped on it until the son went into the bathroom and shaved. One that I have never forgotten is how he viewed a child who was born out of wedlock. While he was by no means like some I have heard, I have come to realize through the years that some people who are hard nosed on standards often have something in their own life that they are hiding.

I wrote in the first article that I personally knew four men from the United Pentecostal Church who were convicted of sexual related charges. In an upcoming article, I will cover the other two.

You will find a complete list of articles in this series by clicking here.

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This is the first of a series.

It appears that one of the greatest temptations facing the ministry is sex. How does sexual purity relate to God’s requirements? Sexual immorality is clearly excluded by the requirements of ‘blameless, good report, good behaviour, just, holy, and husband of one wife.’ Again, a sexual sin is an obvious disqualification in light of all the Scriptures. ‘But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul. A wound and dishonour shall he get; and his reproach shall not be wiped away’ (Proverbs 6:32-33). Even our sinful society acknowledges the truth in this verse to some degree, as exemplified by the public reaction to the Gary Hart and Jim Bakker scandals. Even people guilty of sexual sins often expect their leaders to uphold moral standards publicly, particularly religious leaders who claim to be morally pure. – David Bernard, January-March 1988 Forward (an exclusive publication for UPCI licensed ministers)

I am saddened once again as I continue to discover instances of wrongful sexual actions, committed against children and adults, by people in the United Pentecostal Church and elsewhere. My heart is grieved upon learning how some pastors failed to report cases to the police. In their attempts to handle these ‘in house’ and muzzle the victims, it has allowed people to continue molesting, causing untold damage and anguish to others. (One case in California, involving two UPC ministers who are still licensed, George Nobbs and Art Hodges, with the latter now serving as a General Executive Presbyter, prompted legislative changes.)

Through the years I have also heard stories of children of preachers never facing the consequences of sexual sins as their parent(s) covered it up and some were even later awarded ministerial license in the United Pentecostal Church. There have been ministers who have had affairs, leaving their spouse and children in their wake, trying to pick up the pieces of their once normal lives. There have been men and women who have suffered agonizing horror and shame as it is discovered that a spouse is a pedophile. Church members have had their faith shaken when light is shone upon a pastor’s sexual crimes, while others refuse to believe what they did. There have been victims of sexual violence who have been shamed, avoided, blamed and even kicked out of their church by fellow UPC members. They are told to forgive and to keep their mouths shut. Should they muster the courage to speak out, they are sometimes disbelieved and their character assassinated. It is all so very heartbreaking.

According to I Corinthians 6:15-18, sexual sins are against one’s own body. God has ordained that husband and wife become one flesh. Marriage is a holy institution and a type of Christ and the church. Sexual infidelity is a violation of the most basic, sacred, and intimate covenant that two people can make. Far from being a temporary lapse or indiscretion, it signals a fundamental breakdown of spirituality, character, and integrity- in relation to God, one’s closest loved ones, and oneself. The offender has broken faith and trust in the most important stewardship he has. This is doubly true when this sin has been committed repeatedly, as it often is. – David Bernard, January-March 1988 Forward

Before someone shouts that the United Pentecostal Church isn’t the only religious group where sexual abuse occurs or is covered up, I would have to have my head in the sand to be unaware of this. I also realize that their offenses are less in number than the Catholic church. I know that there are some ministers and churches that properly handle instances of sexual abuse. These facts, however, should never preclude the matter from being exposed and addressed. These facts can never diminish the devastation and life-long effects that the victims endure.

There is a focus on this particular organization as it is the one in which I used to belong. I personally know four men from the United Pentecostal Church, two of whom were licensed ministers, who were convicted of sexual related charges. In addition, there hasn’t been as much written about this group, or other Oneness Pentecostals, as has been with some other groups when it comes to sexual abuse. When some cases do hit the news, it isn’t always shown or openly known that someone in the UPCI is involved, even though their Manual stipulates any of their churches are to be clearly marked as such. (Article XVIII, Section 4:1 Identification “Each church that is either affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church International or is pastored by a minister who holds license or credentials with the United Pentecostal Church International shall identify by sign or otherwise on the outside of its church building that it is associated with the United Pentecostal Church International.” 2018 UPCI Manual)

A preacher may fall into sin, be forgiven by God, be restored to the church, and even be restored to many areas of service, but this does not automatically entitle him to his former position of leadership. He must once again meet the qualifications of being blameless, having a good report, and so on. This takes much time, and in some cases total restoration may never be possible. As an analogy, God will forgive a church treasurer who embezzles, but it may never be wise for him to fill that office again, for his sake and for others’ sake. The same is true of a Boy Scout leader who falls into homosexuality or a youth teacher who divorces his wife and marries one of his students. Moreover, some sins-such as child molestation, incest, and rape-may indicate deep personality problems that would permanently disqualify someone from many leadership positions. – David Bernard, January-March 1988 Forward

You may be surprised to realize that there is a very good chance that there are people in your church who have been molested at some point in their lives. Your closest friend, a co-worker, even your spouse or child may have never shared and could be suffering in silence. Some have been told by pastors to never speak about it and they feel they must be obedient. One must protect the church’s reputation. Some remain silent as they have seen how mistreated another was when they disclosed what happened. Due to how they were raised and/or what they were taught in church, they may at least partially blame themselves. They may have relationship, marital or sexual issues. And all this time they fight, struggle and suffer alone, right beside others, while most are oblivious to their pain. Sometimes they push through and openly share what happened. To me, that takes strength and courage, especially since there will always be those who dismiss or attempt to discredit the accounts, make excuses for the perpetrators, or make ignorant statements, such as questioning why they took so long to speak up.

Just as the church has authority to examine and approve ministerial candidates, so it has authority to remove someone from a ministerial position if he no longer meets God’s requirements. Actually the person disqualifies himself by his actions, and the church simply recognizes this fact. Solomon permanently removed Abiathar from the high priesthood, a hereditary role explicitly ordained by God, because of his rebellion (I Kings 2:26-27). – David Bernard, January-March 1988 Forward

There are questions in all of this that cry out to be addressed. If what David Bernard wrote is the official position of the United Pentecostal Church (and it should be as he has since become their General Superintendent), then why have certain things happened in some of their churches and ministers have obtained or retained their licenses?

How has anyone convicted of sexual crimes been allowed to participate in certain church activities and leadership has not informed the church members?

Why would any church that operates a school or daycare not tell the parents when one of their workers, past or present, has been arrested on charges of having thousands of images and videos of child pornography?

Why have pastors made the decision to handle any of these ‘in house,’ failed to report them to police, told church members not to go to the police, or covered them up?

Why have some pastors and District Superintendents not taken proper action when informed of such things? Shouldn’t a minister who fails to report sexual abuse lose their license as their actions allow a perpetrator to continue- are they not complicit in future assaults?

When a church has an atmosphere where some of the men had inappropriate interest in much younger female children, such as at Calvary Gospel Church in Madison, Wisconsin, how could this have continued for years and why have these children who were sexually assaulted received no justice?

Some may argue argue that Bernard didn’t say anything about taking church matters to the police or the courts. There is a mindset with many of these churches/ministers that believes these matters should be handled ‘in house’ – we don’t want to make the church look bad and we need to protect ‘the truth.’ The mission of the United Pentecostal Church in part is to carry “the whole gospel to the whole world.” They truly believe they have ‘the truth’ and that the vast majority of Christians do not have it and are not saved.

So I pose this thought: Shouldn’t an organization that believes they have the ‘whole gospel’ and ‘the truth’ conduct themselves better than other church groups? Shouldn’t they hold themselves to a higher standard than others? Shouldn’t they do whatever they can to protect and bring justice to those who have been sexually assaulted?

You will find a complete list of articles in this series by clicking here.

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