C. J. Mahaney co-founded the Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, MD with Larry Tomczak in 1982 Tomczak left in 1997 leaving Mahaney at the top. It was a successful megachurch that grew into a religious conglomerate known as Sovereign Grace Ministries. SGM formed churches all over the US, as well as in Mexico and the Philippines. That had 28,000 members around the world.
A three-year-old girl was rapped by a 15-year-old boy who was babysitting her during a church activity. When her family went to the police, the pastors intervened pressuring the family to forgive the rapist and let it go. After two years of pressure, the girl’s family quit the church. That was the first known occasion of the church organizing a cover-up. The mother wrote it up in a blog post for SGM Survivors, where until then people talked more about how controlling the community was. Her post opened the floodgates.
There are several cases of someone coming forward with an abuse allegation and being told to reconcile with the abuser. Children who reported sexual abuse by a parent were not helped but rather hurt because the church told the parent who only abused them more. There is a case of a man raping his adopted daughter. When his wife learns of this she wants a divorce and the church told her not to do it. She got out, and reported it to the police. He went to jail, but SGM lobbied for his early release and has him doing work in contact with children.
- CBS Baltimore: More alleging evangelical church hid sexual abuse
- Suire accuses Sovereign Grace Ministries of covering up child sexual abuse
- The Washingtonian: The sex abuse scandal that devastated a suburban megachurch
16 Feb 2019