Exposing the Corruption of the "Family Values" Party
Dean Alan Smith was the pastor at Morning Star Baptist Church on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana. In December 2022, he was arrested for the sexual abuse of four girls, three of them under age twelve between 2017 and 2019. He pleaded not guilty to one count of aggravated sexual abuse, one count of abusive sexual contact and three counts of abusive sexual contact by force and of a child.
William C. Robinson was a pastor working for Chi Alpha Campus Ministries in Corpus Christi. A young girl reported that he had continuously sexually abused her for five years, beginning when she was nine. The police said he wanted to confess to inappropriate touching. He is out on bond and has a hearing in June, 2023.
Robert Shiflet was a youth pastor in Denton, Texas, and in Little Rock, Arkansas. He took groups of kids on camping trips, crossing state lines. While camping, he isolated one of the children and sexually assaulted here. Another was assaulted on the field trip bus.
Conner ‘Jesse’ Penny was the youth pastor at Inspiration Church in Mesquite, Texas. Before that he worked as an aide in after-school program run by the Mesquite school district and as an aide at an elementary school. He has been accused by four children of continuous sexual abuse. They range in age from six to seventeen, though the abuse was when she was younger.
Gary Don Welch was a Baptist youth pastor at Northside Baptist Church in Corsicana, Texas. In 2012, he was arrested when a sixteen-year-old girl reported that he sexually assaulted her. She had confided in her aunt that Welch had been assaulting her since she was thirteen. He stepfather said he had been suspicious because Welch texted her all the time and even went to school to eat lunch with her. He told the pastor of his suspicions but was assured that it was only that Welch was kind and loving. He pulled the family out of the church/
Benjamin Nelson was the pastor of a small Baptist Church in Peoria, in Hill County, Texas. He was also a student at Baylor University, a private Baptist university. He used social media to draw a thirteen-year-old girl to meet him in a parking lot where he sexually abused her. Her mother found them and pulled the girl out of the car when Nelson reversed either accidentally or purposefully trying to hit them. For that he was charged with deadly conduct.
William Frank Brown was the pastor at the Bellmead First Baptist Church in Waco, Texas. Before that he was the pastor of Panther Creek New Beginnings Baptist Church in Chandlerville, Illinois. He molested children at both churches.
Brian Pounds was a minister at First Assembly of God in Vernon, Texas. He was arrested in 2021 after the mother of a fifteen-year-old girl took her to the police where she reported that Pounds had been providing her with meth and sexually abusing her, including choking her one time.
Aaron Duane Shipman was the pastor of Bible Baptist Church in Odessa, Texas. In January, 2022, he was arrested for sexual assault of a minor. On January 17th, 2022, an eighteen-year-old woman went to police to report that she had been raped the night before by her pastor, who had been sexually assaulting her repeatedly since she was sixteen. They did a rape exam and found evidence of sexual trauma. He was arrested on the 20th.
Conrad Estrada Valdez was the pastor of Restoration Outreach Church in Houston, Texas. Around 2005, a fifteen-year-old girl sought him out for counseling after she was sexually assaulted. He began touching her and eventually sexually abusing her. He threatened to expose her to her family which kept her quiet for fifteen years until she saw a documentary about sexual assault survivors.