Maryville Apostolic church member went to pastor about abuse, but left with her tithes questioned
MARYVILLE, Tenn. − By the time she graduated from William Blount High School, Denise Duran was largely on her own, a product of a complicated relationship with parents she recently described as abusive.
It was around that time that Duran met an older man who seemed to have everything figured out. The man, Charles Christopher White, had a job, was successful and was very involved at First Apostolic Church of Maryville. She quickly fell in love.
She didn’t know at the time that White, six years her senior, had killed a man and had a history of sexual violence. She still wonders whether the church's leader, the Rev. Kenneth Carpenter, knew about White’s past and just didn’t tell her.
Eventually, White began to abuse her, Duran told Knox News. When she confided in Carpenter about it, he questioned how much money she was giving to the church and encouraged her to pray more because God was testing her, she said.
Duran’s story of an abusive marriage is corroborated by years of criminal filings, court documents, restraining orders and arrest reports she kept for years in a shoebox she recently provided to Knox News.
Carpenter and his wife, Penny Carpenter, through an attorney, declined to answer a list of questions from Knox News, saying instead leaders would not discuss what current or former members told the church in confidence.
"This does not acknowledge and should not be construed as confirming any information in your questions," attorney Ed Trent said in an email. "As has been stated previously, the church in no way condones abuse under any circumstance."
Sexual assault and homicide charges
In March 1991, some five years before the two met, White – who was 19 at the time – pled guilty to sexual battery and aggravated assault in Blount County after he grabbed the inner thigh of a 17-year-old girl and then punched her in the face, breaking her nose. He was sentenced to four years in prison and three years of probation but was instead allowed to serve his sentence as part of the “Community Corrections alternative sentencing program,” a kind of supervised probation, according to sentencing documents.
The sentence was to sunset in September 1997. By that time, he and Duran had been married for six months. She knew nothing of it.
Two years after the assault, on his 21st birthday in March 1993, White killed a man in a gas station parking lot after a scuffle over a woman carried over from a nearby bar, according to Knox News archives. According to a police account of the confrontation, Timothy Dwayne Tipton, 25, had been drinking and had a 9 mm pistol with him when he began beating White while White sat in his car.
White stabbed Tipton once in the chest with a steak knife he later told police he kept in his car to strip wires for his stereo system. Tipton died. White was arrested and charged with murder but a Knoxville judge later ruled the slaying self-defense.
Again, Duran had no idea about White's past.
The two meet and no one’s the wiser
Duran met White in 1996 at a Christian rodeo in Townsend, an event she described as “cowboys get together, they say a prayer and ride some bulls.” She was 18. He was 24. He invited her to First Apostolic Church and the two began dating.
Knox News could not confirm – and church leaders would not say – when White began attending the church or whether church leaders were aware of his violent history when the two began dating. But Duran provided Knox News with White’s baptismal certificate, given to the newly baptized White by the church in June 1994, nearly a month to the day after the judge signed off on his alternative sentencing program for the 1991 assault.
White’s arrest on the murder charge was covered in local newspapers at the time in 1993. Knox News could not confirm whether White was attending the church at the time, though he was baptized 15 months later. A former member who attended the church at the time told Knox News that if White were attending, the congregation was small enough that Carpenter would have known about it. The former member didn't know White was in the news because they were a teenager and didn't follow the news closely.
Knox News obtained court records of White’s 1991 conviction of assault and sexual battery, but did not find any local news accounts of it.
If church leaders knew, Duran said, she was never warned. The two were married in March 1997. Carpenter performed their wedding ceremony in the church sanctuary. She had just turned 19.
“The church sucked me right in, me being like a homeless teen," Duran said. "You know, I married him right away. He had a job, he was established … I thought I could trust this guy. It was the worst mistake of my life.”
In the following years the couple volunteered together at the church's vacation bible school, and they worked with the church’s youth group. White was an usher and helped run the video equipment during Sunday services.
White even volunteered with a jail ministry.
Early signs ignored, tithing questioned
Duran said the marriage started out well enough, but White's abuse began after a few months. The abuse started with his short fuse. He threw things. Once, she said, when they were moving into a new place on Kittrell Avenue in Maryville, he tackled her in the yard as she was running away from him. The abuse, she said, escalated from there.
Several times over the next several years Duran said, she shared her concerns with the Carpenters, who dismissed her worries and instead encouraged her to pray about the abuse.
“I would be told things such as ‘You missed a few services,’ or ‘You are not paid up on your tithing and God is testing you,’” she said. "'Prayer will bring you closer to God and grow you closer together.'
“They should’ve given me some sort of support, some domestic violence help. That never happened. It was just swept under the rug … (I was) alone and isolated. I thought if the church won’t do anything for me, why would anyone else believe me?”
Duran's description of her conversation with the Carpenters and how they dismissed her abuse mirrors several survivors' stories already published by Knox News, including the accounts of two preteen girls who say they told the Carpenters about different instances, years apart, of sexual abuse at the hands of two church members, both 18-year-old men. The Carpenters, they said, told them to pray about it and took no action to their knowledge.
In late April 2004, Duran filed a police report alleging White assaulted her when the two had a fight over money in front of their 2-year-old daughter. He was charged with domestic assault, and she filed an order of protection. A week later she called police again when he violated the order and approached her at church.
She had had enough. Two weeks later she filed for divorce even as the Carpenters forbade it, telling her she had “no biblical right” to divorce White because he hadn’t committed adultery, an acceptable reason for divorce given by Jesus in Matthew 9.
White arrested again in 2004
In December 2004, just after the divorce was finalized, White was arrested for exposing himself in front of Maryville Middle School.
Duran took the charging documents to Kenneth Carpenter. He kept a copy and never spoke to Duran about it again, she said.
She used the arrest to get a court order suspending White’s parental rights. She soon stopped going to church. White remained a member.
White arrested again in 2005
In Pigeon Forge in July 2005, White cornered and molested a 9-year-old girl and tried to force her into his vehicle in the parking lot of the Mountain Trace Inn, according to Knox News archives.
She escaped and called police. Over a month later, investigators matched DNA found on the girl with White’s and he was arrested. In the meantime, Duran said, White continued to attend the Apostolic church.
White was sentenced to 11 years and six months in prison in 2006. He is no longer in prison, but remains on the Tennessee sex registry, listed as “violent against children.”
It wasn’t until after the 2005 arrest – which Duran thought was only his second – that her father suggested they try to find out if he had a criminal history. Only then did she learn of the prior arrests.
Moving on
Today, Duran is happily married and a mother of three. Her home is busy, full of kids and pets − her dogs and cats.
It took time, she said, but she has healed. Even so, her experience with White still resurfaces.
“Every now and again I’ll have a nightmare,” she said. “I’ll have one where I’m still married to him and I’m trying to get away from him.”
Tyler Whetstone is an investigative reporter focused on accountability journalism. Connect with Tyler by emailing him at tyler.whetstone@knoxnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @tyler_whetstone.
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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Maryville church member went to pastor about abuse, left with tithes questioned
