“I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it.” — Maya Angelou
Steve Grieson pled guilty to the sexual solicitation of a minor, which is a felony.
On May 23, 2023, The Gazette posted El Paso County man, Christian filmmaker pleads guilty to attempted online solicitation with 14-year-old girl.
…Greisen was among 12 men arrested in 2022 through undercover investigative efforts by the Colorado Springs Police Department and El Paso County Sheriff’s Office joint Internet Crimes Against Children Unit and special agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Securit
…Stephen Paul Greisen, 68, pleaded guilty to a criminal attempt to commit online solicitation with a minor, a class 4 felony. Within his agreement, Greisen agreed to register as a sex offender in the state of Colorado, and five years in the state’s Sex Offender Intensive Supervision Program (SOISP).
He knew she was 14 years old.
despite being informed twice that the age of the girl was 14, he agreed to pay $170 for sex.
Why it matters: He has ties to the Christian music and filmmaking industry and even has a ministry called Holy Smokes.
MinistryWatch posted Christian Filmmaker Steve Greisen Pleads Guilty to Felony Sex Charges.
…Greisen, who is 68, runs two Christian film companies from Monument, a small town north of Colorado Springs: Exploration Films Distribution, which says it manages distribution of over 400 films; and Reel Productions, which released “First Love,” the acclaimed film on the early years of the contemporary Christian music movement, as well as biblical the biblical thriller, “The Mystery of The Ark of The Covenant.”
…Greisen had been involved with Christian ministries both in Colorado Springs and around the country. He was also involved in founding and leading Holy Smokes, a national movement of small groups of mostly men who gather for “Faith, Friendship, Fine Tobacco & Drink.” Though not a formal, legal entity, Holy Smokes has more than 5,000 members in a Facebook group with the goal of “deconstructing harmful theology and building beloved community one cigar at a time
Here is a link to the Facebook group. One must join to see beyond this descriptor.
Holy Smokes: Cigars and Spirituality is a ministry of the ecosystem of The Faith Community Virtual (TFC) and affiliated with the Podcast of the same name. If you’re here, we invite you to join us as we deconstructing harmful theology and build beloved community one cigar at a time.
Here is a link to their Spotify podcasts. He has been removed from participating in Holy Smokes.
According to MinistryWatch:
Greisen was a singer for the 1970s Christian band, The Family, which toured with Second Chapter of Acts in 1976 on the 52-city “If My People” tour for a Christian musical written by Jimmy and Carol Owens. He married Nellie Ward in 1978 and worked the next decade as Second Chapter’s tour director and show producer, hitting more than 100 cities in some years. The family moved to Colorado in 1993.
Take away message.
It is not normal for a man in his 60s to want to have sex with a 14-year-old girl. A thoughtful and law-abiding man would seek sex with a consenting adult if he wishes to violate his marital vows. I would wonder if Griesen has a paraphilia. This might mean that he is a danger around young teen females.
Since we know that pedophiles and others who have paraphilia might be at risk of reoffending, TWW hopes that anyone harmed by Griesen would report this to their local police department.
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What awful news. I don’t know anything about her current situation, but I feel so bad for Nelly. I grew up on the beautiful liquid vocals of 2nd Chapter of Acts, saw them in concert a few times.
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I wonder how many others he molested or abused for the past 40 odd years. Somehow I don’t think this was the first. How many underage fans he took advantage of as a Christian Music performer?
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Sounds like TCAP without Chris Hansen and the camera crew.
“I’m Chris Hansen from Dateline NBC and we’re doing a story about…”
What is it with Biblical Manhood and Andrew Tate-sized cigars?
I remember Penetrate/Colonize/Conquer/Plant Wilson and his Kirk in Moscow ID was also into that.
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At least not among those Heathens.
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Sexual solicitation of a child… crimes against children.
Is it possible to be overly upset by this sad state,
this “moral failure”season.
Hard truth- if crimes against children doesn’t upset us, then we are part of the problem.
Any personal self defense discipline that involves kicks and palm strikes and screaming the word NO! and Stop!! a lot, would be beneficial to many young people who may be at risk anywhere, including church.
(insert mad face here)
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He’s 68 years old and this is his first conviction. I fear there may have been undocumented abuse in his his past. I hope others come forward if they were victims. It might be better for this man to be locked up.
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sd,
Yup..
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Very true.
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Absolutely not. What a sicko, music and entertainment stuff be damned.
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Just a reminder that it doesn’t have to be churches. It just has to be a society that turns the other way.
In Japan, the current scandal is over the late (d. 2019) J-pop mogul Johnny Kitagawa. He was apparently a genius at putting together J-pop bands, and he used the opportunity to sexually abuse hundreds of boys. A lot of these kids were pushed forward by their parents and it went on for a long time. It didn’t come out until after his death.
The numbers are astonishing:
https://www.tokyohive.com/article/2024/07/smile-up-receives-over-1000-claims-in-johnny-kitagawas-sexual-abuse-case
Just to be clear: Kitagawa had a stranglehold on creating boy bands in Japan for over 40 years (1970s-2010s). AND the press knew and said NOTHING. It took until last year before this came out.
My point is that it’s not just churches, but in the USA, it seems like churches get a pass. In Japan, successful businessmen get a pass. My conclusion is that pervs go where the power centers are and prey there. It’s up to all of us to keep our eyes open!
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It seems obvious that this behavior would stop many predators, and also obvious that children are heavily trained to do the opposite with adults.
Are there campaigns to teach heuristics to children along the lines of “touch, scream, kick, no!l
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Excellent point.
In the UK, Jimmy Savile. Like the J-pop guy.
With this Greison grinch, there’s a double whammy of the intersections of Entertainment AND Evangelicalism that he uses for Power, Predation, Profit, and Perversion. Predators Got Talent.
Predators know their know-how. It’s a lifestyle, a con, and an art with access in target rich environments.
Greison is caught by a sting at age 68. Imagine the number of victims in his lifetime. This doesn’t begin at 68. He goes after 14-yr-olds in the toxic combo of a life of Evil, Entertainment, and Evangelicalism. God is neither fooled nor entertained.
That Smoke dude deal … what a joke. The smoke joke. We have a friend suffering from COPD right now. He’s wealthy but can’t get to, for example, his Pebble Beach pad. He can’t even walk across a room or go up a step. Never had a cigarette but he smoked a very fine pipe with even finer tobacco nightly in his leather easy chair in front of the fire place. He has lived an extreme leisure life with a deadly creature comfort habit. He now has great regrets about how utterly stupid was his uber cool ultra manly daily constitutional. Not so cool and manly to not be able to breath enough to walk. He would say the Smoke Joke Dudes are absolute fools.
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His sex fantasies are sadistic. An old man with a teen girl is sadistic. It’s torture for the girl to deal with his junk, his demands, his lust, his fantasies, his power. The power gap is enormous. Pedophiles are sadists.
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Muslin, fka Dee Holmes,
Yup…. Disgusting…. Preying on kids is just beyond comprehension to me..
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What children are “trained” in most church paradigms is the opposite of personal safety: submit, obey, trust, do not question the authority, be small, be silent. Recipe for disaster. This is basically grooming kids for abuse, especially when spiritual fat cats of the day are saying publicly, “the rape of a child can bring glory to God” (what message is that sending to predatory abusers?)
…pretty sure that falls in the abomination category.
I train for personal self-defense and try to teach young people any chance I get that they can and should protect themselves from harm. One of my awesome Krav Maga instructors motto is: Refuse to be a Victim!!
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sd,
Or “FEATURE, NOT BUG!”
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Well, that won’t inconvenience the Standing Ovation.
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Does anyone need more proof we’re living in one long episode of South Park?
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Headless Unicorn Guy,
IT seems that way…..
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“Christian Singer and Filmmaker”
In the Christian Industrial Complex, you will find wolves dressed up in assorted attire besides shepherd’s clothing.
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Can you give u some names and links? Like a link to the actual quote?
Because this is so over-the-top people won’t believe it without specific names, faces, and actual articles/quotes the spiritual fat casts can’t wiggle out of.
P.S. Outside of the Christianese and New Age bubbles, “Spiritual” means “insane” or “unreal”.
Wonder how that happened?
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Sounds like a combination of Trolling for Groupies and The Casting Couch.
If you read The Godfather (the original Mario Puzo novel before the movie), the movie mogul who woke up with the horse’s head in his bad was also a serious pedo who used his Casting Couch on wannabe child stars. (And with Stage Mothers being what they are, he didn’t need to search much.)
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I was referring to one particular “John” but there are plenty to choose from: same rotten theology. Pick any sexy Calvinist on their platform of authority, inerrancy and infallibility. Calling out the depravity of the world while covering up their own. ie.- most recent post on here…yet another John.
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A foreshadowing of Trump and Clinton buddy Harvey Weinstein perhaps?
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Speaking of Chris Hansen, I am reminded of the ending of the South Part episode “Le Petit Tourette”.
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Stage mothers and pastor followers. Wannabes and more wannabes, everywhere in churches.
Wannabe pastors and wannabe priests. Wannabe power circle people, who wannabe in the pastor’s or priest’s inner circle.
Then the wannabe priest or pastor turns out to be a pedophile.
Inner circle pastor/priest pleaser people, how does that feel? You are probably big money donors, just as dumb as your dumb big money. How does it feel to support a pedophile?
The unlucky kids just gotta stay silent and take one for Team Church? So adult donors can have their inner circle private club of perverts? That works for ya’ll? Sicko leader with sycophants, that’s all church is, in some regions.
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Reminds me of a villain speech in an online comic many years ago, where the big bad guy said “Sure, the last twenty minutes of my life will be a bummer, but that’s after a 60-year unbroken winning streak!”
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They do though, there is always a prooftext available to use to wiggle around and get away with awful teachings. It works, it worked on me…for years. The particular “John” I was referring to was one of my favorite teachers. Now I cannot even stand his face, his voice. Repulsive. It’s awful. I’m only two years out of calvinist churches and teachings and I’m pretty sure it will take a lifetime to undo the lies.
I lived this for a long time, it took me years to get out. What a strange perverted world so many churches come to be. There was an arrest where I live this week. Guy was a church leader, worked at the school, foster care….Mr. awesome.—-50 counts of “child p-” , a term which needs to be nuked- it is called child sexual abuse!! It makes me sick that people don’t seem to care. That is how it becomes normalized.
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Weinstein’s accomplice was in charge of that festering septic tank from Disney Streaming Star Wars: The Acolyte, which ended up Hawt Twilek Lezbo Action and nothing else.
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Thank God you got out.
It seems like it happens often: we commit to God; we journey as a seeker of God; we are in and out of various church venues that we eventually we discover are off the mark … time to move on as we mature and grow in our faith.
Thank God He is always with us as we grow and move on, learning from experiences with what appeared to be OK but was fake. God is real.
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It will.
I’m 48 years out of the Hal Lindsay/Jack Chick tag-team.
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Looking back on it, this Griesen guy (“Greasy Greisen”?) WAS a cut-rate Harvey Weinstein.
“Just like Harvey Weinstein, Except CHRISTIAN(TM)!”
Look like Nashville’s CCM scene has truly caught up to Hollywood.
“Just like Hollywood Babylon, Except CHRISTIAN(TM)!”
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What kind of monster god would even consider such a thing?
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The reformed god of the ayatollah of Geneva? Or as a very wise 12 yo pointed out once, “so their God is like Zeus” Yikes!! Tough to defend that….
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Yeah. The PIOUS Piper.
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Zeus when Hera makes him sleep on the couch indefinitely (for his runaway womanizing) and he has to take it out on somebody. Anybody.
Speaking of the Greco-Roman pantheon, there are only two gods in that entire pantheon I would want anything to do with:
Athena (Minerwa to the Romans), because she acted the most “grown-up” of any Olympian. Maybe her being Wisdom personified had something to do with it.
Sylwanus, Roman god of domesticated nature — gardens and the like. Only god in the pantheon with no hint of sexual goings-on; even his relation to the nymphs and nature spirits under him was more like a father to his daughters.
And then there’s the Roman folk religion, separate from the official Roman State Religion, centered around veneration of Manes (remembered Ancestors) and Lares (spirits of Home and Hearth). Early in the movie Gladiator, there’s a scene where the main character Maximus Decimus Meridus makes private devotions not to the official Gods of Rome but to the Lares and Manes of his lineage. (When I saw that scene, I immediately went “ROMAN FOLK RELIGION!”)
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What about Hestia?
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It’s the context of our New Testament. It’s what all the authors understood. Paul was a Hebrew hero, but culturally Greek, and Roman ruled. No wonder not a single mortal man (as in mankind) can understand his writings. I imagine Paul himself would be salty about how wrong we keep getting it. “missed the mark” and “we have no excuse” kind of mad. Interesting that we get to watch it currently, bet 1st century Corinth was as bad as Paris 2024, quite a shock. But its shouldn’t be, we have no excuse, I can agree with Rabbi Paul on that…
I appreciate your thoughtful responses, and some days humor is the best RX for the despair. Thank you and the others that come here and make it a safe place. It’s like a virtual HUG! 🙂
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Indeed. Those goddesses were no joke, wish they would show up and take care of all the predators that feast on innocent children today. Yikes!!
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You mean Vesta (pronounced “Westa” in classical Latin)?
I skipped her because of her linkage to the Greek Hestia; I wanted to concentrate on the more uniquely-Roman ones.
That said, Roman Folk Religion (before the importation of Greek mythology) seems to have been actually “homey” — a goddess of the cooking fire, a god of the front door, your late grandfather and great-grandfather…