Maryville Apostolic Church did not tell police about girls' sex abuse allegations, women say

MARYVILLE, Tenn. – Two women who say they were sexually abused as girls told Knox News they told the senior pastor of First Apostolic Church in Maryville and his wife about the assaults, and neither of the church leaders contacted police about the allegations as required by Tennessee's mandatory reporting laws.

The women also say the alleged perpetrators, both whom were active in the church, were not publicly disciplined.

The survivors, now adults, said in each of their assaults – which happened years apart – they met in the Rev. Kenneth Carpenter’s office to discuss what happened. After they described the abuse, Carpenter offered to pray for them. Nothing else was done, to the survivors' knowledge.

At the time of the abuse one of the girls was 11. The other was 12.

The church is under scrutiny after a man who is a former worship leader and middle school teacher at the church’s Apostolic Christian Academy was arrested in January and charged with sexual assault by an authority figure. Prosecutors in two counties say Joseph "Kade" Abbott, 26, abused a 14-year-old girl he taught at the academy's School of Music.

Renee Franchi, an attorney from Andreozzi and Foote, a law firm that specializes in sexual abuse cases, is representing the girl’s family in a lawsuit against the church and Abbott, alleging the church should have known about the abuse.

“Although our clients cannot comment on the case at this time, the lawsuit involves the childhood sexual abuse recently suffered by our client within this church, school and at the hands of Mr. Abbott,” Franchi said in an emailed statement to Knox News.

The church, through attorney Edward Trent, declined to answer a list of detailed questions about the allegations, saying "First Apostolic Church will not comment on anonymous allegations." Instead, the church distanced itself from the women and put responsibility for reporting the allegations on their families despite the church's legal obligation to report the abuse to authorities.

"Your questions contain allegations from three anonymous women of events alleged to have occurred in (a list of years has been redacted Knox News to protect the identities of the alleged victims), two of which involve serious allegations known to the women’s parents against 18-year-old boys who were not acting on behalf of First Apostolic Church," Trent said. "Yet there are clear insinuations that the church had some legal duty regarding those matters. Any such suggestion is false.”

Since 1965, Tennessee law says everyone is a mandated reporter, meaning anyone with reasonable cause to believe a child is being abused must immediately report it to local law enforcement or the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services.

Women say church leaders took no action

Like many girls in the church, Claire was encouraged from an early age to have a boyfriend, so when an 18-year-old senior started showing her attention, it didn’t seen odd to her even though she was only 12.

(Claire is not her real name. Knox News is protecting her identity because she says she was a victim of a sexual assault.)

“He started liking me and in that culture there it doesn't matter your age,” she said. “Like, you know, you like each other and that's how it is.”

He would come to her house, and the two would hang out. They would go out to eat with groups from the church. After a few months, Claire’s parents started trusting him and allowed her to ride with him alone.

Knox News spoke with a woman who was friends with Claire at the time, and she confirmed she knew about the relationship when it was happening. Knox News also saw school yearbook photos of Claire and the senior together at what appears to be a school formal.

One afternoon, Claire told Knox News, the two were out driving and the 18-year-old suggested stopping by his apartment to pick up something. His mom was home, he said.

But his mom wasn’t home. Claire’s heart sank. The two ended up in a bedroom.

“I remember you know, he was, you know, very, very touchy or whatever. And I couldn't … I couldn’t get out of the room,” she said, crying.

“And so, he forced himself on me. And I remember I was thinking this has gone way too far. You know, like what are what are we doing? I just remember I couldn’t get out. And so, he had me pinned on the bed. So, he raped me.

“I was just thinking like, get me out."

Teen says pastor did not report statutory rape allegation

Soon afterward, the 18-year-old man threatened to tell church members the two consensually slept together if she revealed what happened. She told Knox News she never told a soul until she read about Abbott's arrest earlier this year.

“When you have sex before marriage in that (Apostolic) world it was almost like you were damaged goods,” she said. “And so, I didn't talk about it. I didn't tell my mom. I didn’t tell anybody.”

Later that fall, he persuaded Claire to sneak out of the house late one night. He picked her up and, she said, they were pulled over by an officer who made them call their parents, who came and picked her up.

The next morning, both Claire and the 18-year-old had separate private meetings with the Carpenters at the church. The 18-year-old met with the Carpenters first and told the pastor he and Claire had had sex, she said.

When it was her turn, Claire said the Carpenters sat her down in Kenneth’s office at his large brown desk.

Kenneth Carpenter prayed. Then he flipped his Bible to Acts 5 and recited the story of Ananias and Sapphira, two early Christians who were struck dead by God after lying in church.

Then he began questioning her, she said.

“Have you two had an intimate relationship? Have you had sex?” Claire recalled Kenneth Carpenter asking. “I said, ‘Yes.’”

Kenneth Carpenter left the room, she said, and Penny asked her if her boyfriend had ejaculated inside her. Humiliated, Claire didn’t know what the word meant. Penny had to explain it to her, she said.

When Kenneth Carpenter walked back in, she told Knox News, he told her nobody had to know what happened.

“He was like, ‘You never have to talk about this again. I would advise you not to,’” she said. “And he said through prayer you can become a born-again virgin, and you never have to tell anybody, not even your husband.”

Kenneth Carpenter later advised her parents not to press charges against the man, Claire said. Under Tennessee law, a 12-year-old cannot consent to sex.

It wasn’t until Abbott was arrested in January that Claire’s mind flooded with memories. She told her husband.

Molestation treated with prayer, and the abuse continued

Like Claire, Rachel grew up in the church, attending multiple services a week. Her family was intertwined in the congregation.

(Rachel is not her real name. Knox News is protecting her identity because she says she was a victim of a sexual assault.)

Soon after she hit puberty, Rachel told Knox News, her brother, who is five years older, began molesting her when she was sleeping. Their rooms were connected by a bathroom. At night he would sneak into her room, lay next to her and put his hands down her shirt and her pants.

The abuse happened multiple times a week for at least a year before she told her parents, she said. They went to the Carpenters for guidance.

They met in Kenneth Carpenter’s office. He was less than helpful, she said.

“He said, ‘How do we correct this behavior?’" she recalled. “Not should we call the police, should we do anything like that, should we get her checked out? Should we go to a psychiatrist? Just how do we correct it?”

She said Kenneth Carpenter prayed for the family and suggested her brother should go to the altar the following Sunday. That was it. Her parents were not much more helpful, she said. “They prayed. They did what their pastor told them.”

The abuse continued, Rachel said. It stopped several years later only because her brother moved out.

Knox News confirmed with other former members that Rachel attended the church throughout her youth.

Tennessee law requires abuse to be reported

Tennessee's mandatory reporting requirement includes sexual and physical abuse. “Failure to report abuse is a violation of the law and a Class A misdemeanor, carrying a sentence of up to three months imprisonment, a fine or both.” There is no religious exemption in Tennessee as there is in some other states.

Kenneth Bender, executive director of Childhelp Tennessee, knows the mandatory reporting law is there to make sure children are safe. His group, a child advocacy group, encourages everyone to “Say something if you see something.”

"The data is clear that 90% of children know their abusers, so it’s extremely important for parents, caregivers, pastors, teachers, everyone to pay attention to children and report any suspected child abuse and/or neglect to the authorities,” he said.

Because the apparent violations happened years ago, the Carpenters are unlikely to face criminal consequences if they failed to report the allegations, according to law enforcement officials who spoke to Knox News about the law generally, not the specific allegations against the Carpenters.

"While many of the child abuse crimes have specific tolling statutes that extend the statute of limitations for those particular crimes, I do not believe there is any such special tolling statute for failing to report child abuse," Blount County District Attorney Ryan Desmond told Knox News in an email. "Since it’s an A misdemeanor, the statute of limitations would be 11 months and 29 days."

In 2018, the Apostolic Christian Academy and a connected day care announced they had achieved Partner in Prevention status, a designation given by the nonprofit Darkness to Light to organizations that take extra steps to protect the children they serve by training staff to understand child sexual abuse, identify unsafe situations and react responsibly in the best interest of children.

The United Pentecostal Church International, a similar denomination to the Assemblies of the Lord Jesus Christ, which the First Apostolic Church belongs to, created SafeChurch UPCI in 2021, a program geared for educating leaders and laypeople about how to spot and report abuse. A page on the denomination’s website includes instructions for how to report the abuse, including when to go to law enforcement.

Tyler Whetstone is an investigative reporter focused on accountability journalism. Email tyler.whetstone@knoxnews.com. Twitter @tyler_whetstone. Support strong local journalism by subscribing at knoxnews.com/subscribe.   

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Maryville church did not tell police about girls' sex abuse allegations