Proposed by-laws at Immanuel Baptist Church in Arkansas would prohibit members from harming the church's reputation in the press

Oct 21, 2024

A Southern Baptist church that’s been accused of covering up allegations of child sexual abuse committed by its staff has finally proposed a solution to make sure it never happens again: Members and staffers will have to sign paperwork pledging never to speak to the media if it makes the church look bad.

The problems have been building up at Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas for years now.

According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Patrick Stephen Miller, the church’s Assistant Director of Children’s Ministry from 2014 to 2016, was accused of sexual abuse by three separate women. (He had apparently “fondled and sexually abused multiple elementary-age girls after grooming them through games of ‘hide and seek’ where they would be locked in darkened rooms at the church.&rdquo In 2019, he was charged with second-degree sexual assault by one of them and later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment. This past June, in another case, he pleaded not guilty of charges of sexual assault and kidnapping. And in September, the third victim came forward with her allegations, though no charges have yet been filed in that case.

Another former church volunteer, Reagan Danielle Gray, was also accused of sexually assaulting a high school boy, but she has pleaded not guilty.

If you were the leader of the church, there’s pretty much a standard playbook for how to handle these situations. You publicly apologize, you explain how you’re going to do better with background checks, you give church members a safe way to come forward with any other stories they might have about the accused staffers (preferably with the help of an independent third party), etc.

That’s not what church leaders did at Immanuel.

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