Exposing the Corruption of the "Family Values" Party
Harry Thomas was a conservative New Jersey pastor. He founded the Creation Festival, a Christian musical festival and Come Alive, a missionary organization. He was convicted of raping four children (one less than ten years old) and inappropriate contact with a fifth. He was sentenced to twenty years without parole, a sentence reached in a plea deal.
John Martin was the head pastor of Lighthouse Baptist Church, a conservative anti-gay church. He confessed an “affair” to his wife, which is an odd way of describing child molestation. He then admitted it to the church and church leaders went to the police. “The Lighthouse Baptist Church in Florence is an extremely socially conservative…
Stephen Bratton was a Southern Baptist pastor in Texas. He supported a bill that would charge women who had an abortion with murder. In 2019, he was arrested for repeatedly raping a minor child from 2013 to 2015, starting when she was just 13. He admitted guilt to his wife and three pastors at his…
Douglas Perlitz founded a school in Haiti with support and funding of Fairfield University, the Order of Malta, the Society of Jesus in New England, and Haiti Fund, Inc. During the years he ran that school, he groomed and abused the children. The organizations greed to a joint settlement of $60 million for the potential 170 survivors of Perlitz’ many years of abuse.
Thomas Tobin was auxiliary bishop in Pittsburgh when he learned of sexual abuse happening within his diocese. He did nothing because, he said, his work was administrative, and so it was not his responsibility.
Morton Klein is the head of the Zionists of America, a far-right group closely allied with Republican politicians and heavily funded by Republican donors. There are allegations of sexual harassment against him.
C. John McCloskey is a Catholic priest of Opus Dei, the controversial Catholic organization, who was a sort of celebrity converter. He was known for converting several prominent conservative politicians to Catholicism including Newt Gingrich, Sam Brownback, Bob Novak, Larry Kudlow, and Bernard Nathanson, a co-founder of NARAL who became an anti-choice activist. In 2005, Opus Dei paid a $977,000 settlement to a woman who claimed he groped her several times in 2002 when she sought help for marital issues and depression.
Larry Cotton was Associate Pastor at Parkway Baptist Church when the seventeen-year-old Jules Woodson came to him and told him that the youth pastor had forced her to give him oral sex the night before. Instead of being concerned about the teenager who has just been sexually assaulted, he attacked her, saying “so you participated.” He told her not to tell anyone and heaped the blame on her, protecting the youth pastor Andy Savage [See GOP Sexual Predators 324: Andy Savage.] Savage was suspended for a time but the church later asked her parents if they would mind if he came back. They minded.
The police were not informed.
Chris Conlee was the pastor at Highpoint Church in Memphis, Tennessee. He supervised Andy Savage [See GOP Predators 324: Andy Savage.] and when the news broke about Jules Woodson, he protected Savage by promoting the false framing that it was a consensual adult sexual encounter even though he knew otherwise. He knew of Savage’s past abuse when he hired him. He knowingly protected Savage and misrepresented him to his church. When Highpoint finished their investigation, they allowed Conlee to resign.
Andy Savage sexually assaulted a seventeen-year-old girl when he was a youth pastor in 1998. At the time, she reported it to his supervisor the next day who decided since she complied with Savage’s coercion, she was a willing participant. She told her parents and enough of a fuss was raised that he was allowed…