Report: LHS band director, counselor violated conduct standards, but 'no evidence' of cult

The Lake County School District has released its report into Leesburg High School's former band director and a former guidance counselor. The investigation started after a former student accused them of running a Christian cult and hiding explicit messages between the counselor and the former student, who was 17 at the time.

David Meyers, Lake County Schools' supervisor of employee relations and compensation, wrote that he found no evidence of a cult, but both the former band director, Gabriel Fielder, and former counselor, Lenny Finelli, had been in violation of "standards of ethical conduct."

The district concluded both should be fired. However, both resigned in lieu of termination. Finelli's resignation was approved by the Lake County School Board on April 25 and Fielder's was approved Monday.

The investigation began last month after the school system got an email from the former student's therapist, who wrote that he was involved with the Elder Council, which had a "shame-based atmosphere that caused anxiety, depression and PTSD, serious enough to require therapy."

"He also described inappropriate sexual conversations and questions involving Lenny Finelli, a counselor at LHS," while he was still a student, the therapist wrote.

Our previous coverage: Former students describe 'toxic' environment, astral projection under Leesburg band director

Band director resigns: School board accepts resignation of Leesburg band director amid accusations he ran cult

What is a cult?  Was the former Leesburg High band director's 'Elder Council' a cult? 

The allegations

The Daily Commercial is not naming the former student who reported Finelli and Fielder, though the school district did not redact his name in the documents it provided to the Daily Commercial.

The former student told investigators that he was involved in "a cult-like group" called the Elder Council, led by Fielder. He joined in 2018, his sophomore year.

Finelli was in the group, too.

In September 2020, the former student reported, he was attending an Elder Council meeting when Finelli told the group he had specific thoughts about the former student.

The former student told investigators: "Mr. Finelli was saying how much he hated it and that he needed prayer," the report said.

Finelli then began texting the former student, which slowly progressed to inappropriate messages. The report says Finelli texted him and asked about his penis size, what kind of pornography he likes, whether or not he and his girlfriend were sexually active. He also asked to meet up, which they did not do.

Finelli told investigators he did not send texts of that nature, and that he recalled "expressing that he was a unique person and I wanted to foster a friendship."

Finelli also said the former student sent him a text, telling him he had a dream about Finelli.

The next day, Fielder deleted the messages between them from both their phones and the iCloud. The schools' investigative report notes Fielder smashed Finelli's phone.

The former student also said the rest of The Elder Council was "sworn to secrecy about what happened and that Mr. Finelli had a sexual preference" toward the student.

"(The former student) stated Mr. Fielder sent a text to the group that Mr. Finelli and (the former student) had an inappropriate conversation," the investigative report says.

Fielder, in his interview, told investigators that he did not know the content of the messages. He did not report it, he said, "because I was not aware of the context of the texts and I saw no evidence of abuse."

However, a screenshot of a text conversation, provided by a former Elder Council member, shows Fielder addressed the situation in a text directly to her.

"Satan almost used Lenny and (former student) to fall and destroy themselves. They've both sinned and now are undergoing correction. Gabe was up late dealing with it all day," Fielder texted, referring to himself in the third person.

After the former student graduated high school and turned 18, he and Finelli began a relationship, the reports note. It lasted just a few months, and the two lived together from October to November 2021.

The former student shed some light on the Elder Council, according to the report. He told investigators that Fielder "started a religious group that was very controlling of students' lives — graduated or not."

Members met at Fielder's property in Ocklawaha every week.

"Gabe had bought a farm and we met every Saturday to do labor, garden, building a shed, mow grass, etc.," the former student said an the interview with a school investigator.

He also said that members' locations were tracked on an app and that they were required to tithe.

Another former member for the Elder Council confirmed that, saying the members, even when they were in high school, were required to give 10% of their earnings to the Elder Council, even tax refunds.

The former member spoke to the Daily Commercial on the condition of anonymity.

The organization was set up as a nonprofit, she told the Commercial, so it could have a bank account and collect money.

But was the Elder Council a cult?

The Elder Council was started in 2018 and incorporated as a nonprofit in 2019 Fielder was the president and Finelli was the vice president. Former students filled the roles of secretary and elders. It was dissolved last year. Its purpose, as stated in a record on file with the Florida Division of Corporations, was "not for profit missions and teaching activities for the greater evangelical Christian church globally."

The former student in his report, as well as a former Elder Council member, both described a toxic, manipulative environment. They said some meetings were mandatory, and attendance was taken very seriously, so much so that members would be berated in front of the group if they couldn't make it.

Fielder, they said, was the leader and appointed himself a vessel of God.

The goal was to live together on a commune — Fielder's property in Ocklawaha — and raise their families.

Documents provided by Lake County schools shows interviews with only Fielder, Finelli and former student

Ultimately the school district investigation found "no evidence of a cult" and noted the Elder Council activities did not happen on campus.

However, the investigative documents provided by the schools to the Commercial only include interviews with Fielder, Finelli and the former student.

And there are discrepancies between Finelli and Fielder's stories and what the former Elder Council member told the Daily Commercial.

For instance, the former Elder Council member told the Daily Commercial that everyone's locations were tracked via the Life 360 app. In their interviews with the schools, Finelli and Fielder both said that not everyone had to be tracked, but that the former student was tracked because they were concerned about his grades.

Finelli said tithing wasn't required, but the former member said they would get prodding messages if they hadn't sent the Elder Council money in a while.

"If we like started to forget or falter, we would always get a text message – 'Hey everything OK? You haven’t been tithing,' " the former member said.

After totaling up CashApp receipts, she estimates she tithed $1,976 between 2019 and 2021, and the former student gave at least $1,600 in that time. (He wasn't able to use CashApp until he was an adult.)

And the former member said she would describe the Elder Council as a cult.

At some point, Fielder began calling himself "the governor," she said.

"We were all under the belief that the rules that we did have to follow were not from Gabriel, that they were from God," she said. "He told us basically that he had such a close relationship with God that it was very, very, very rare and uncommon for him to get things wrong. And that we should just trust him right away with whatever he said. He would call them 'directives.' He would say if I give a directive, I expect you to give it out. And his thing was if I’m wrong then God’s going to correct me, you guys don’t need to correct me.”

Former Elder Council member discusses group's astral projection

She also said the group regularly astral projected together, but it was called something else. Astral projection is a term used to describe an intentional out-of-body experience during which the body separates from the spirit and the spirit can travel throughout the astral plane.

"The way that we saw it in our group, and how it was called to us, was that it was 'spirit travel,' that the word he liked to use," she told the Commercial. "And that it was Biblical and that we could only do it under God’s guidance so we did it frequently when he prayed."

Here's how it went, according to the former member.

"We would sit in a quiet room and we would either start off in tongues, which again another personal thing," she said. "I believe in tongues but I also believe tongues can be a form of manipulation because they’re having you enter into this trance-like state. So we would all enter in tongues and then he would have people start talking like saying what you see and then finding some way to make what everyone was seeing correlate. So there wasn’t any guidance I would say ever.

"He did have input that like ‘Oh I would see this’ but it wasn’t like ‘OK we’re goingto go here now.' It was never anything like that.”

Former Elder Council member says they were 'coached' on how to talk with parents

Members were also "coached" on how to talk about Elder Council with their parents.

"Like, ‘Don’t describe this like that because your parents aren’t open to all of this stuff yet. They’re going to think we’re a cult,’" she said. "So there were certain ways that we were supposed to talk about things and you know some of us came from bad house backgrounds where pretty much anything we could’ve gotten away with. And then other people had parents that didn’t like it and were vocal about that but to us Gabriel would call them a ‘witch’ or a ‘heavy manipulator’ and that we don’t need to listen to her.

"And then the other one was called just a heavy alcoholic. So if parents had problems they were basically discounted for having any real input."

The former Elder Council member said that she initiated the group's dissolution after two former members were shunned for missing a required meeting.

"And that’s the situation that basically opened my eyes to understand what was happening there was not OK," she told the Daily Commercial. "So after that happened I started praying a lot, and I started watching these videos, you know, ‘What does a cult look like?’ ‘What is too much power in the church?’ stuff like that, and starting to really line up everything and see like, ‘Okay this is this.’ And so when I realized that I knew that if it didn’t end at the very least I would have to leave."

Then she talked to the other members, who agreed with her.

"I kind of explained to them, 'This is wrong, we need to stop this,' " she said. "And most of them were on par with that. They were like, ‘Yeah, we agree, we just haven’t had the courage to say anything.’ "

Lake County School District tells former student they would not follow up on texts

Earlier this week, she sent screenshots of text messages to the school system and offered to meet officials if they needed her to. This was after the investigation had closed.

She wrote that she "had these text threads and despite being told that my name and number were provided in the investigation, no one ever reached out to me."

A response from a school employee reads:

"Thank you so much for the information via email. Due to the information we had collected, there was not a need to contact you."

The screenshots she provided were included in the report.

Neither Fielder nor Finelli has responded to calls for comment. The Daily Commercial on Friday went to Fielder's residence. It was unclear if he was home.

A woman who boards her horse on Fielder’s farm said she has not seen him for four days, and that he has changed his phone number and did not give her the new one.

She said she has known Fielder since a year ago February, but not was privy to the Elder Council.

“I would see them from a distance sitting around a fire,” Debbie Crane said.

Finelli and Fielder discuss 'cult' accusations in report

In the interviews, Finelli and Fielder talk about the "cult" accusations.

"The group certainly did not look good the more I thought about it," Finelli told investigators. "I know there was no intention, thoughts or actions to be a cult on Mr. Fielder's part. To allege that Mr. Fielder deliberately acted as a cult leader is nonsense. Definitely a control thing for the purposes of God. Mr. Fielder filled the role of leader over time."

Fielder told investigators that he told Principal Mike Randolph about the group, to "put a mom on his radar."

"There is a lady who thinks this is some type of cult," Fielder said.

The former student invited that woman to the group, and she never came, the report notes, but the woman continued calling it a cult.

"Non-denominational churches are sometimes called cults," Fielder said. "We started hearing the cult thing in 2020. I did not know."

In an email, Randolph declined to comment on the story, and instead directed the Commercial to get an official statement from the schools' spokeswoman, "due to the complexity of the situation regarding our band."

The violations

The school district's report is 84 pages and includes interviews and a written statement from the victim, a statement from the victim's therapist, screenshots of text messages and interviews with Fielder and Finelli.

Ultimately, both were found in violation of Standards of Ethical Conduct, specifically:

"Make a reasonable effort to protect the student from conditional harmful to learning and/or to the student's mental and/or physical health and/or safety," and "Not to exploit a relationship with a student for person fain or advantage."

By attempting to have a sexual and/or romantic relationship with the former student while he was a minor, Finelli "has been guilty of gross immorality or an act involving moral turpitude," the report says.

Fielder, who as an educator is a mandatory reporter of child abuse, "knowingly failed to report actual or suspected child abuse... or report alleged misconduct by instructional personnel or school administrators which affects the health, safety or welfare of a student," the report says.

Both have resigned; however, the findings of the report will be submitted to the Florida Department of Education for review.

As for why they were allowed to resign instead of getting fired, schools spokeswoman Sherri Owens offered the following statement:

"As a public entity we do not terminate an employee accused of wrongdoing without first giving them due process and completing an investigation. If an employee wants to resign prior to the completion of a district investigation, we cannot stop them from doing that.

"However, if we find that they violated the Principles of Professional Conduct we report those violations to the Professional Practice Services of FLDOE, regardless of whether the employee elected to resign prior to the completion of our investigation. FLDOE has the authority to issue sanctions against a teacher's certificate, up to and including permanent revocation of their teaching certificate. The district does not have that authority."

— Correspondent Frank Stanfield contributed to this report. 

This article originally appeared on Daily Commercial: Leesburg High report says no evidence of teacher cult