More survivors come forward to share stories of rape and sex abuse at Apostolic churches
Editor’s note: This story contains detailed descriptions of sexual abuse, including sexual abuse of minors. Tennessee law requires every adult to report suspected abuse of children. If you have reason to believe a child has been abused, you are required to call police or the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services at 877-237-0004.
MARYVILLE, Tenn. – In the months since Knox News began reporting on the First Apostolic Church of Maryville, we have told the stories of six women who were previously part of the church or the Apostolic Christian Academy housed within the church.
The women have detailed how Apostolic leaders failed to act when they talked to them about abuse allegations as minors, how the church leaders were lax in reporting criminal allegations that a teacher allegedly sexually assaulted a 14-year-old student, and how they encouraged a teenage girl to date a man nearly twice her age.
Since then, more people have come forward to tell Knox News similar stories about abuse perpetrated by members of the church. Some of the relationships, they say, were known to church leaders and fit a pattern.
Some have never been spoken about before now. And two of the stories are from former members of First Apostolic Church in Knoxville, a sister church to the Maryville one.
One is the story of Denise Duran, who detailed an abusive marriage and the unwillingness of Maryville's senior pastor to help.
The stories, 10 in all, tell of church leadership facing a host of serious problems, including the arrest of a teacher accused of assaulting a teen student. Many of the problems center on a culture that encourages men in their 20s and 30s to date teenage girls and to never question the pastor’s authority.
Knox News has sent questions about the allegations to attorneys representing the church through each step of the reporting process. Each time the church has criticized the motives of the reporter, been critical of victims’ families or declined to comment altogether.
The names used in these stories are not the individual’s real names (with the exception of Duran). Knox News has agreed to protect our sources' identities because they say they were victims of a sexual assault, fear retribution from the church and its leaders, or both.
1. Don’t go to police
Kelly was 21 when she and her boyfriend starting dating in the early 2000s. They had known each other for years from attending the church’s Apostolic Christian Academy, a school for students from kindergarten to 12th grade. The relationship moved quickly and within a few months the two were engaged.
Around this time, Kelly said, her fiance’s personality became clear. He began trying to control her friendships, which was the first sign trouble could be ahead.
He was quick to anger and began being rough with her, she said, grabbing her arms at times to get her attention. He was verbally abusive and reminded her he had a gun in his car at all times.
Still, the relationship progressed. The two had consensual sex more than once, but on at least five occasions, she said, he raped her.
“The kissing would just get out of hand and then the next thing I know I’m like pinned down to the floor or the bed or the sofa. … He would pin me down and I would say, ‘I don’t want to do this, no!’ And it just fell on deaf ears,” she said.
When he proposed marriage, she felt like she was trapped. He used the Apostolic church’s rules prohibiting sex outside of marriage against her, saying in God’s eyes they were already married: She was his.
“He would tell me that nobody else would want to marry me, that I was his property,” she said. “You know that nobody would believe me over him, he was (studying to become) a preacher. That led into it. I mean it was just typical gaslighting.”
After roughly seven months of dating, they had an explosive breakup. In the following months he would stalk her, she said, requiring her to change jobs.
Feeling like there was no escape
Kelly said she was scared to tell her father about the abuse, afraid he might take things into his own hands. She told her mother, who didn’t believe her.
Like other women who have told their stories to Knox News, Kelly said she met with the church's senior pastor, the Rev. Kenneth Carpenter, and his wife, Penny, to tell them about the abuse. She said she only alluded to the rapes and instead focused on the emotional and physical abuse and the stalking. She wanted to get a restraining order.
Instead, Kenneth Carpenter encouraged Kelly not to press charges or file for a restraining order because it would ruin her ex-boyfriend's life, she said. Instead, Carpenter suggested he would persuade the man to join the military, forcing him to leave town.
Kelly listened. She didn’t press charges. Soon after, the man left for basic training.
“I didn’t care if I ruined the man’s life or not, I really didn’t,” she said. “Between my mom not believing me and being worried about how my dad would react and the Carpenters just dismissing it, I knew I had no evidence and at that point it was like nobody would believe me. So, I just felt like it would be an uphill battle and that it would probably ruin me more than it would him.”
The Carpenters, 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."
The school run by the church, Apostolic Christian Academy, recently lost its certification for sexual abuse prevention training. Nonprofit Darkness to Light's revoked the school’s Partners in Prevention program after former teacher Joseph “Kade” Abbott was arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual assault by an authority figure.
Knox News corroborated Kelly's story with two sources close to the victim, including one who was a childhood friend and told Knox News about the relationship, how it abruptly ended and how the man immediately joined the military. Four years ago, the friend told Knox News, Kelly confided in her about the rape and how she went to the Carpenters, who told her not to press charges.
2. Abused at kid’s camp
Mark was like many of the children who grew up attending First Apostolic Church in Maryville. If the doors were open, his family was there.
Naturally, this extended to activities like church camp. When he was growing up, Mark said, the older kids went out of town to a North Carolina campus for their week of camp. The younger, elementary-aged students stayed in Maryville and participated in activities at the school (when Mark was growing up this was at a different location than the current campus).
It was during one of these camps ,when he was 7 or 8, that Mark says was sexually abused.
Alone in the shower
There were worship services in the morning in the school gym for students, activities during the day and an evening worship service in the sanctuary, typically attended by the whole church. The kids stayed overnight, tucked in sleeping bags inside classrooms in the school.
On the far end of the gym were the boys and girls locker rooms, separated by what Mark said was some sort of equipment room. Inside the boys locker room, he said, was a line of two or three single showers. There were no shower curtains.
One afternoon the boys all filed into the locker room to shower before the evening service. Inherently shy, Mark stayed back because he didn't want the others to see him naked.
Eventually Mark was the last one left and a counselor, a man in his 20s who attended the church, was the only one left in the room.
“I remember him very sternly telling me to ‘strip,’ Mark recalled. “When I wouldn’t because I was very uncomfortable, he began to forcibly take my clothes off. I was scared. I protested and cried. He told me to be quiet. He made me enter the shower and began to clean me himself.
“I remember him grabbing my penis with one hand and reaching into his other hand,” he said. “He told me something along the lines of, ‘This is something you’ll like when you’re older.’ He took his penis out and began to rub it in front of me. He grabbed my own hand and forced me to touch it until he ejaculated.”
There are dark periods after the assault and Mark’s memory of the following years is fuzzy. He had terrible nightmares for years and still experiences bouts of insomnia and stomach problems. He didn’t tell anyone at the time about the night at church camp.
“It was hard for me emotionality to connect with anybody. … Looking back, in hindsight, you would’ve seen the signs there,” he said. “I kept it as a secret because at first I didn’t know what to think about it because I didn’t know what any of that was.”
Two or three years later, Mark said he came to realize he was gay, which is forbidden in the Apostolic church. He thought he could “pray it away,” but it didn’t work.
“I just felt like it was my fault and felt so incredibly guilty for so long,” he said. “The event. Realizing that (I was gay). I thought it was all really my fault. I felt very tainted and disgusted with myself. I thought it was my sin, that I had done that.
“It’s only now that I’m realizing how badly it impacted my life, you know."
Mark never told his family about what happened. He never confided in a counselor. Mark’s ex-boyfriend, who spoke with Knox News, said Mark described the assault when they were dating the same way Mark described it to Knox News. “What made him bring it forward to me was other people talking about their own experiences,” the ex-boyfriend said.
3. Sharing the wrong kinds of experiences
Brittany and Katie were best friends growing up in Knoxville. Weekday afternoons were spent at each other’s homes and or at First Apostolic Church of Knoxville and the Apostolic Christian School housed within.
The two recently spoke separately with Knox News, telling about their shared happy childhood experiences as well as another, darker one. While they were both underage (they are a year apart), a man in his early 20s who was family friends with Katie’s parents tried to initiate sex with them. He attended the Maryville church.
It wasn’t until Knox News began reporting about the church’s culture, in which men in their mid-to-late 20s frequently date girls in their teens, that the two felt it was time to share their stories.
Movie day gone wrong
It wasn’t unusual for Katie’s family, including her brothers, to spend time with the man’s family at their home one county over. They often found themselves in the entertainment room watching TV. He was like another brother to her, she said.
In 2010, when she was 13, Katie and her family were visiting. She was in the entertainment room and “Spider-Man,” the 2002 film starring Tobey Maguire, was on TV. She was sitting next to the man, who was 21 or 22 at the time, she said. The vibe changed quickly and unexpectedly.
“He put his arm around me and started feeling my shoulder, then back, lower back and I was sitting and he started rubbing over the top of my bottom … he reached around and tried to touch my boob,” she said.
She moved across the room and sat next to her brothers, who were unaware of the man’s actions. She said nothing.
Later that day, she said, they were sitting next to each other, this time alone. He peppered her with leading questions.
“’Do you know what sex is? Have you had your first kiss? Well, I can be your first kiss. I can just close my eyes and you can kiss me,’” she recounted. “I was like, ‘No, I don’t think I should do that.’”
He suggested they go to his room where they could have more privacy. She declined and he didn't press further.
Brittany corroborated Katie’s story to Knox News, saying that in 2010 Katie told her about an unsettling experience with the man, though she provided scant details about how the man tried to touch her inappropriately. It wasn’t until Brittany called Katie to talk about Knox News' reporting that Katie explained in greater detail what had happened.
Katie also told another friend, who attended the Knoxville church, about the man’s actions a few years later while the two were in high school. That friend, who Knox News is not naming, confirmed Katie told her about it years ago and said she wasn’t surprised at the time because older men chasing young girls in the Knoxville church wasn’t unusual.
More explicit approach
Brittany was introduced to the man while hanging out with Katie. In 2011, when Brittany was 15, the man began messaging her on Facebook and texting her. They would see each other when groups of friends went out to eat and he would sometimes be with his family while visiting Katie’s family when Brittany visited. He would text her some more.
Soon, the man began making sexual advances to Brittany. He asked her to send nude photos of herself. She declined. He continued to press her about her sexual experience.
“He would ask if I’d done anything orally sexually,” she said. “I was like, ‘What in God’s name? No, I haven’t.’ I was very sheltered. I really didn’t realize that people did that in relationships. I honestly didn’t. I didn’t know what a condom was until I was 18 years old.
“I thought maybe he was interested in me, and this is what people did,” she continued, “even though it’s preached we don’t do that.”
Brittany told Katie at the time that the man has "said sexual things to her," Katie told Knox News.
An assault at church
Around this time the Knoxville church hosted a camp meeting, three days and three nights of services for Apostolic members in the region.
Near the sanctuary in the church is a locker room, Britanny said, and before a service one night, she agreed to meet him there where they could talk alone.
He didn’t want to talk.
“He grabbed me and started pressing my bottom into him,” Britanny told Knox News. “I’m kind of like, wait a minute … church is literally happening right next door …
“I hadn’t kissed a boy, held hands with a boy, and all of a sudden, he’s touching my bottom,” she continued. “He’s hugging me, but his hands were on my bottom. I was trying to pull away from him, but he just wouldn’t let me go.”
Panicked, she told him she was part of the service and people would come looking for her if she didn’t show up. He let her go and she left.
Brittany told Knox News at one point she had entertained the idea of being in a relationship with the man, but he was less interested in a relationship and more interested in having sex with her. She stopped responding to his messages and he eventually moved on.
The interactions took a toll that’s bothered her to this day.
“I’m afraid of men since then,” Brittany said. “I never really wanted to date after that, and I felt like I had to do (sexual acts) in order to date. It scared me.”
Brittany and Katie talked together about their experiences again this year after reading Knox News reporting about the church's culture, and decided to share their stories in separate interviews.
Where we’ve been
Denise Duran
Denise met a man soon after she graduated from high school who was very involved with First Apostolic Church in Maryville. But she didn’t know at the time he had killed a man and had a history of sexual assault. She still wonders whether pastor Kenneth Carpenter knew about his past and just didn’t tell her.
Eventually Duran married the man, and she says he began to abuse her. She told Knox News when she confided in Carpenter, he questioned her level of tithing and encouraged her to pray more because God was testing her.
Duran’s story of an abusive marriage and her ex-husband's criminal history is corroborated by years of court filings and documents, restraining orders and arrest reports she kept in a shoe box before recently providing them to Knox News.
Former teacher charged with sexual assault of teen
Top leaders at First Apostolic Church in Maryville knew of at least two separate times former teacher Joseph “Kade” Abbott sent inappropriate messages to a 14-year-old girl who attended the church's Apostolic Christian Academy school, but he was allowed to maintain contact with students.
Abbott was suspended both times they were told about the messages, but Apostolic leaders did not notify the parents of the girl about the messages, nor is there any evidence to show they notified law enforcement.
After Apostolic leaders learned about the messages, but before they told the girl's parents about them, Abbott allegedly sexually assaulted her multiple times, including in a stairwell of a Gatlinburg hotel while he was chaperoning students on an overnight trip. He is now facing criminal charges in two East Tennessee counties in connection with the accusations he sexually assaulted the teen.
Rachel and Claire
Knox News shared the stories of two women who said that when they were 11 and 12 years old, respectively, they told Carpenter and his wife, Penny Carpenter, that they had been sexually assaulted, one by an 18-year-old and the other by her older brother. The pastor offered to pray for them, but did nothing to inform law enforcement, to their knowledge.
State law requires anyone who thinks a child under the age of 16 is being abused to immediately report it to local law enforcement or the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services.
Susan
Susan was 15 when she was in a serious relationship with a 22-year-old man who went to the church, part of a culture of the church in which men in their 20s (and sometimes 30s) date girls in their teens. They eventually had what she called consensual sex, though Tennessee law does not allow a person under 16 to consent to sex.
Two years later, she told Knox News both Kenneth and Penny Carpenter encouraged her to date a man in his mid-to-late-30s who had four kids, saying he would be a good provider for her. Carpenter, through his attorney, did not deny the woman's story.
Beth
Beth’s story is emblematic of how former members said the church’s culture is controlling, particularly for women. She was married to her husband for 15 years and was required, per the church’s teaching, to fill his every want and need.
The church teaches that wives are there to please their husbands, a charged echoed by three other women who spent years in the church. The message was driven home with Scripture that says a husband is head of the wife (Ephesians 5). If wives didn’t submit, they weren’t being faithful.
For Beth, this meant sex with her husband anytime, anywhere. She couldn’t say no, even if it meant having sex three or four times a day.
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: More survivors share stories of rape and sex abuse at Apostolic churches
