Recordings reveal church knew about teacher's messages to girl he is accused of assaulting

Top leaders at Maryville’s Apostolic Christian Academy, the school housed within First Apostolic Church of 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 school, but he was allowed to maintain contact with students, Knox News has learned.

Abbott was suspended both times, 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 related to alleged sexual assaults of the teenager.

From recorded conversations with school officials, law enforcement and the Blount County district attorney, Knox News pieced together a picture of church and school leadership's cavalier handling of complaints that teachers engaged in sexually charged interactions, such as messaging on social apps, and ultimately led to alleged sexual abuse.

Abbott, 26, was arrested in January and charged with sexual assault by an authority figure in Blount County. He has since been charged in Sevier County with two more counts of sexual assault by an authority figure against the same girl. He has not entered a plea in either county.

The girl’s family has sued the church and Abbott, alleging officials should have known about the sexual abuse. The lawsuit is paused while the criminal charges are adjudicated.

The new details fit into a pattern of previous reporting about the church and school by Knox News.

In the previous reporting, Knox News shared the stories of two women who said that when they were 11 and 12 years old, respectively, they told the Rev. Kenneth Carpenter and his wife, Penny Carpenter, that they had been sexually assaulted. The pastor offered to pray for them, but did nothing to inform law enforcement, to their knowledge. The 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.

The incidents occurred years apart, and neither knew at the time about the other's experience.

Former Apostolic church attendees also told Knox News it was not uncommon for teenage girls to date men – even those who were well into their 20s – as part of a culture fostered by the church. In one case, the Carpenters encouraged a then-17-year-old girl to date an elder in the church in his mid-to-late 30s who had four kids. He would be a good provider and she could help with the kids, the woman said she was told by the church leaders.

It was the lawsuit and Abbott’s subsequent arrest that encouraged these women to share their stories, they said.

Abbott’s pattern, what the school knew

First incident, September 2021

Early in the 2021-22 school year, Abbott brought his school-issued iPad to a school official because he was having technical problems, according to an audio recording of a conversation with Jacob Sullivan, the school’s academic headmaster, obtained by Knox News. While the school had the iPad, messages were discovered in the school's communication app set up for students and parents to communicate with teachers. The messages between Abbott and students were unrelated to schoolwork.

Apostolic leaders suspended Abbott for a brief period, and no parents, including the parents of the girls he was communicating with, were notified.

Second incident, March 2022

Later that same school year, in March 2022, a parent of a friend of the 14-year-old showed school leaders screenshots of messages between Abbott and the alleged victim. Neither school leaders nor the friend's parent told the 14-year-old's parents about the messages.

Even though school leaders later downplayed the incident to the girl’s family, the school suspended Abbott for multiple weeks after the second incident, and at some point Zach Hammond, son-in-law to the Carpenters and school pastor, began periodically checking Abbott's phone for messages from Abbott to students.

Again, the parents of the 14-year-old were not notified.

Third incident, June 2022

It wasn’t until Abbott and the girl were seen in June 2022 entering an empty classroom after a Wednesday night church service that Penny Carpenter called the 14-year-old girl’s family. Penny Carpenter and Sullivan then explained to the girl's parents the breadth of what they knew about Abbott's interactions with the 14-year-old.

“I feel like we were robbed of the opportunity to make sure our daughter was protected when y’all made the decision to not tell us. Twice,” the mother told administrators during the meeting, according to an audio recording obtained by Knox News.

School’s defense shifted

In that meeting, the administrators defended Abbott and their handling of the situation.

Sullivan said, “But Kade is a kid. … So sometimes I feel like the emotions of it, you almost become like you’re one of them and you lose your professionalism,” he said. “And I feel like that’s what happened a lot with Brother Kade. He lost his professionalism.”

Penny Carpenter told the family that the messages from Abbott were “chitchat” with kids. Hammond, the Carpenter's son-in-law and school pastor, told the family in a follow-up meeting the school “found nothing of misconduct, moral misconduct.”

Both Penny Carpenter and Hammond argued the messages between Abbott and the girl were not troublesome, with Carpenter calling them “innocent” and Hammond saying leadership “tried our best to extend mercy to him” over the “small talk.”

Tellingly, Hammond told the 14-year-old's parents the school wouldn’t contact the families of other students Abbott had been messaging. Knox News was unable to discover the content of the messages Abbott exchanged with other students.

“I would’ve had to contact 24 kids,” Hammond said. “What would’ve been the purpose? I would’ve raised a red flag against a faculty member who then could’ve said the same thing to me that you’re saying, ‘Hey, you just basically poured me out to every one of my students and now my students distrust me.’”

“I’m not going to go in and call every single person at the school and say Joe Blow busted his toe on the playground,” he continued. “This was not a big deal. Again, it became a big deal when he broke the policy the second time.”

The church, through its attorney, declined to answer 13 questions from Knox News about the allegations, or comment on the recordings. Abbott's attorney, Jonathan Cooper, also declined to respond to a list of questions posed by Knox News.

"On behalf of Mr. Abbott I am working with authorities in both Blount and Sevier Counties to fully investigate the allegations and achieve a fair and just outcome for my client," Cooper wrote in an email to Knox News.

Police contacted, abuse uncovered

After her parents talked for the first time with Penny Carpenter about Abbott's conduct, their daughter told them about her relationship with Abbott. The girl's parents contacted the Blount County Sheriff’s Office, which began investigating along with a Department of Children’s Services caseworker.

Through a third-party forensics firm, the family was able to retrieve thousands of text messages between Abbott and their daughter, even though Abbott had instructed the girl to delete them.

The family later learned Abbott had kissed the girl in April and the sexual assaults escalated from there. This happened at the school and the church, where the two kissed and he touched her. This sometimes occurred while Abbott was tutoring the girl one-on-one as her vocal instructor, the family said.

Later, the family learned Abbott allegedly assaulted the girl at a Gatlinburg hotel while he was chaperoning an overnight school trip in May, before the family ever received a call from the school. In a secluded stairwell, Abbott touched the girl’s breasts and placed her hand on his erect penis, they said.

The girl told her parents Abbott would assault her and then text her about it afterwards, they said.

School knew of potential sexual assault, remained quiet

At a July 26, 2022, meeting with the family that included Penny Carpenter and Hammond, the school pastor, Hammond told the girl's family the school was aware of rumors their daughter had been sexually assaulted while at the school, according to audio obtained by Knox News.

Hammond denied having any firsthand knowledge of the rumor or its validity, but passed it along just the same, saying “if true, need(s) to be reported to law enforcement.”

Apostolic leaders declined to say how long the school was aware of these rumors before telling the family, but state law is clear: 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. The school’s student handbook repeats this obligation.

By the time the 14-year-old girl's parents met again with Apostolic officials, on July 26, 2022, the family was aware of Abbott’s alleged sexual assault of their daughter and the police were investigating. Apostolic leaders would not say whether the school knew about the police investigation.

It's possible, if members of the school are found to have violated the mandatory reporting law, they could still be subject to criminal charges, though just barely. The statute of limitations expires after 11 months and 29 days.

In response to questions about why the sheriff's office didn't pursue an investigation into mandatory reporting, spokesperson Marian O'Briant said investigators "did not have enough evidence to charge anyone from the school for failure to report abuse."

One school official expressed remorse for how he handled the allegations. Near the end of Apostolic leaders' first meeting, Sullivan, the academic headmaster who has two daughters of his own, apologized to the family, according to an audio recording of their conversation.

“I’m sorry the way everything has really turned out,” he said. “If I could go back, I would do things differently, OK? I’m sorry … I’m sorry.”

The girl's mother didn't let him off the hook.

“I entrusted my kids with you and … I feel like he was given the benefit of the doubt more than my child’s safety was (considered),” she said. “If I had been made aware of this in March, either Kade wouldn’t have worked here, or my kids would’ve gone somewhere else.”

DA thought church leaders were lying

In an April 2023 meeting with the family, Blount County District Attorney Ryan Desmond said he believed leaders at the school were misleading their attorneys, and by extension, law enforcement, according to an audio recording of the meeting.

He thought the school was hiding disciplinary documentation, proof the school should have taken action sooner against Abbott. There was no record of it in his file, he said.

“I spoke to one of their lawyers two or three days ago,” he said. “They sent me the personnel file and there were things missing there that I know should be in there. I told the lawyer, ‘Listen buddy, I know these things exist. Your clients are not giving you everything, they’re hiding the ball from you. You either need to fix that or I’m going to fix that.’”

Desmond spoke about the school as if it were involved in a cover up.

“One or two people? Sure. Ten – 15 people who were decent people being in on this seems like a difficult thing to swallow, but just in my dealings with their lawyers and how clearly unforthcoming they’ve been with their own counsel leads me think …” he said as his voice trailed off.

If there was a cover up, Desmond said, the church leaders could be liable for more serious charges. “If I find records that we know existed magically don’t exist, that’s destruction of evidence which is a felony. Now, the next question would be who destroyed it? That would be a little more difficult to (find out).”

Desmond declined to respond to multiple questions from Knox News about his own comments to the family, the handling of the investigation and his thoughts about how the church had handled the investigation.

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: Church knew about teacher's texts to girl he's charged with assaulting