Joe Campbell’s Oklahoma Victims Have Filed Police Reports and Jody Kirk Comes Forward and Tells His Story of Abuse by Joe and Becky Campbell.

Posted on by December 30, 2024avatar

Woman crying in church. cotonbro@pexels

“An unacknowledged trauma is like a wound that never heals over and may start to bleed again at any time.” – Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware

For those who have not followed the allegations of sexual abuse by Joe Campbell, a former pastor in the Assemblies of God denomination and now the pastor for Morningside Ministries, which is Jim Bakker’s ministry, the following are links to the stories TWW has posted. A lot more is happening in the background, and I hope this story may garner national attention. I will notify TWW as things progress.

If Joe and Becky Campbell have hurt anyone, don’t hesitate to contact me. I guarantee confidentiality.

On December 20, 2024, four women living in Oklahoma met with Wade Burleson, who contacted Tulsa Law Enforcement and then accompanied them to the police station to begin their police reports. The women were grateful for the kindness shown to them during this stressful day. The media was involved, but I can’t say more about it now. I promise it is an interesting story that will be told soon.

During this process on 12/20, one of the victims received a call from her male cousin, Jody Kirk, who was part of the Eastland Assembly of God. He told her that he had his own story of abuse by Joe and Becky Campbell and wanted to tell it. He was able to connect to the media on 12/20. Today, Jody and I talked, and he gave me permission to tell his story. I often say that it is impossible to shock me, but each story I hear causes me to be gravely concerned about the long-term ministry of Joe Campbell. I believe there may be other casualties in Campbell’s ‘ministry,’ and Jody is one example.

Jody attended Eastland AG for around four years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Joe Campbell led a large youth group that was growing rapidly. Joe paid lots of attention to a small group of boys that involved Jody, a cousin, and others. He would get the boys together at his house. Jody loved it and always wanted to sleep over, which was fine with the Campbells. Jody said things began getting weird when he was around eleven. When they were at his house, he started playing sexually oriented ‘R-rated” movies like Porky’s. Jody said the boys nervously laughed at it. Eventually, Joe and Becky showed outright pornography. As he put it, “those untitled VHS tapes.” Some of these pornographic videos also involved violence along with sex.

I asked him if Becky Campbell was involved in putting on these movies. Jody called her “Lady Macbeth.” He said she did something even worse. She had the boys enter their (Campbell’s) bedroom and sit on the bed. She then showed them her sex toys and had them hold these items. She even had Jody put one in his pants. He said he had no idea what they were used for.

Another time, Joe brought up sex in marriage to the boys. He told them Becky liked her sex “rough.” Jody has no idea what he meant by that word.

Joe played a game with the boys and girls when they had a party in the garage. He called it “Sexy Legs.” He hung a paper curtain by taping it to the ceiling and brought it down to what Jody said was “pelvic height.” He had the girls go behind the curtain, uncover their bottoms, and walk behind the curtain, showing off the full extent of their uncovered legs. He said Joe and Becky seemed to enjoy this, often smiling at one another.

Things changed for Jody when Campbell punished him for talking too much on a bus trip with the other kids. He stopped the bus and told Jody to kiss another boy. Jody refused, so Campbell refused to continue the journey until the kiss happened. Jody was humiliated, but the kids on the bus wanted to get going. Eventually, he kissed the boy and “ran to the back of the bus and hid beneath a seat.”

Jody said Pastor Ellsworth, who presided over Campbell’s tenure as a youth pastor, visited with his mother in the hospital after Campbell was “called” to Versailles, Missouri, AG. He allegedly suggested that the folks should “stay quiet” about Campbell’s tenure. Didn’t the Catholic church pass their sexually abusive pastors off to other churches when complaints were made? Didn’t everyone stay quiet about this tactic? I have often said that the evangelical church is no different than the Catholic church when it comes to abuse. I’m sure that irritates those evangelicals who assume we are more “godly” than the Catholics.

At the end of our conversation, Jody made this point. “Joe did recon well.” Joe intentionally kept the group of boys exposed to this stuff small. Jody explained that Joe knew the boys who didn’t have close relationships with their fathers. Joe and Becky used this knowledge to focus on the boys looking for male role models. This is a tactic that I see in many cases of abuse. Church leaders should get wise to this gambit. It appears that Joe and Becky did not intend to be “godly” role models. They had something else on their agenda. I believe the stories of the folks I have been writing about and hope that truth will prevail in the media and the law.

I wonder if something like this was behind it. It’s called desensitization.

“I can’t even remember the first time I saw a porno. I presume I must have been shocked, frightened even, but after watching another and another and another they sort of blend into nothingness.”― Louise O’Neill, Only Ever Yours

Once again, I thank Jody for being willing to discuss difficult matters. I hope that the truth about Joe and Becky Campbell will prevail.

Comments

Joe Campbell’s Oklahoma Victims Have Filed Police Reports and Jody Kirk Comes Forward and Tells His Story of Abuse by Joe and Becky Campbell. — 48 Comments

  1. So, Joe and Becky Campbell are in the Jerry, Jr. and Becky Falwell perverse Evangelical Christian Family Values Predatory Couples Club?

    There are some differences. The Falwells’ poolboy was an adult, not a minor. However. Becky Falwell preyed on her son’s high school pals, minors, when they overnighted at the Falwell compound.

    Perverse Evangelical Christian Family Values Predatory Couples Club. Cult. Sickos. If this is Heaven, maybe one should head to the other place.

    God bless, heal, and strengthen the victims coming forward. Thx for outing the predator poison pairs. May you thrive way beyond survive.

    LE, DOJ, and then 3 squares + cot in the Big House for the perverse predatory couples.

    Thanks, Wade Burleson, for being the guy to go to, on the daunting path of Escape, Expose, Enlighten.

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  11. These posts make me wonder about the church I grew up in. It was far from evangelical and it was common knowledge that the pastor was gay (he was living with an Anglican priest without a parish). They started a boys only boat club, going sailing on the weekends. All of a sudden it was disbanded, the youth group disbanded, the priest disappeared, and several families left. Many years later, I got on the internet and researched the pastor. He died in New York City in the late 80s from AIDS at the height of the epidemic. It doesn’t matter whether he was gay or straight- something bad happened on those boat trips, but you wouldn’t talk about it back in 1972.

    As Jeffrey Chalmers stated, these situations are new, but at least there is some respite for brave victims that come forward. What IS discouraging is that it continues to happen in the institutions that are supposed to to keep our society strong-churches, schools, branches of our government-despite all that has been done to arrest offenders and go through the court and prison system to punish the perpetrators.

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  12. Linn: it continues to happen in the institutions that are supposed to to keep our society strong-churches, schools, branches of our government-despite all that has been done to arrest offenders and go through the court and prison system to punish the perpetrators.

    If it’s an adult male violating minors, it is the SAME GUY. He seeks vulnerable targets in whatever target rich institutions he can blend into, then hunts his prey. For the pedophile, minors available are the key ingredient.

    There are other THAT GUY or THAT WOMAN predator types, across institutional hunting grounds.

    The predator types don’t give a rip about integrity or about the institution.

    Like Hollywood’s predator Bonnie Lee Bakley, (her 10th husband was Robert Blake), the predators use institutions for their hunting grounds.

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  13. Linn: it continues to happen in the institutions that are supposed to to keep our society strong – churches, schools, branches of our government

    Predators can hide more easily in places where they are trusted. Parents need to teach their children to be alert ‘wherever’ they are at and to never trust ‘whoever’ leads them until they know they can be trusted. It’s come to that. Wolves lurk in religious, academic, and political clothing.

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  16. “… pass their sexually abusive pastors off to other churches …”

    Good Lord! Is there a blood pact among the brethren to conceal and protect abusers among them, lest they need such support themselves?! What kind of “Christian” ministry is this?!! Any wonder that the Done ranks are growing … done with organized church with all its hypocrisy and multiple forms of abuse, but not done with Jesus.

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  18. Muff Potter: Too bad it’s true, but ‘churches’ live in La-La-Land.

    So SPIRITUAL they have detached themselves completely from Reality; what Christian Monist called “living on the 100th floor” (where the first floor is Reality).

    Only problem with this is
    “God lives in the Real World.”
    — Rich Buhler, favorite tag line

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  19. Ariel: Maybe Al Mohler would like to weigh in on if the Campbells are “born again”….

    Nah – Constipated Al¹ has better things to do, like p***ing on Jimmy Carter’s grave.
    —
    ¹Maybe he wouldn’t look so bloated if he wasn’t so puffed up with his own importance, and if he didn’t have half a dozen theobros camping out in his duodenum.
    SCNR

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  21. As Jay Nordlinger wrote in “Carterpalooza,” “No one quite realizes just how passionately anti-Israel Carter is. William Safire has reported that Cyrus Vance acknowledged that, if he had had a second term, Carter would have sold Israel down the river. In the 1990s, Carter became quite close to Yasser Arafat. After the Gulf War, Saudi Arabia was mad at Arafat, because the PLO chief had sided with Saddam Hussein. So Arafat asked Carter to fly to Riyadh to smooth things over with the princes and restore Saudi funding to him — which Carter did…In The Unfinished Presidency, [Douglas] Brinkley writes, ‘There was no world leader Jimmy Carter was more eager to know than Yasir Arafat.’”

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  25. Jeffrey Chalmers: I wish to emphasize the dates… late 70s-80s….
    These perversions in the church are not “new”…… this whole business of “going back to the good old days” is BS….

    Absolutely true.

    50’s and 60’s also. Grandmothers are witnesses with stories to tell. Did anyone listen to them, back in the “Good Ole Days?” Apparently not. Back then, Dear Abby advised, “Go talk with your Priest, Rabbi, or Pastor.” A lot of good that did. NOT.

    Where was Granddad in all this? In the myth of “The Good Ole Days” when church was so “safe, pleasant, and wonderful,” – for men. (Not even for some boys, but they were silenced, too.)

    Safe, pleasant, and wonderful for some, but there was an underbelly. Under that Persian rug in the pastor’s study, a lot of filth had been shoved under, by the cowardly sometimes complicit pastor. His mandate to the whistleblower was to, “Keep it quiet.” Don’t wreck marriages, careers, and standing in the community, of that predator. While the victim is left to destruction in their suffering. Support the predator, snuff out the truth and the victim.

    Max: Good Lord! Is there a blood pact among the brethren to conceal and protect abusers among them, lest they need such support themselves?! What kind of “Christian” ministry is this?

    Yes, Max. Been like that a long time. Grandmothers know. A Bible study leader for Grandmothers at our church, BEFORE #MeToo #ChurchToo, recounts (without names) the stories the Grandmothers tell in private about THEIR GRANDFATHERS & MEN PALS. This goes back generations. Decades. Centuries? Millennia? It has to do with Women’s Voices. When were women even given the right to vote? How long did that take?

    Before Jesus, polygamy was standard practice. That got cleaned up, but Women’s Voices were yet silenced while they have been subjugated as 2nd class citizens under Christian Patriarchy. Patriarchy and male privilege brings us right up to today, current with our church leadership.

    Jimmy Carter rallied for women’s rights, even in churches. Women’s rights are Human Rights. That’s why church leadership doesn’t like Carter, probably the most authentic Christian President the US has ever had.

    Politics aside, the Patriarchy promotes itself over everything else, victims be cursed as well as everything else that gets in the way of the brohood Patriarchy. Patriarchy is a powerful drug among the Prove and Promote Your Manhood Above All Else brohood.

    God loves men and women equally. There is no favoritism, even after the Fall. God really cares about children, their safety and innocence. The Evangelical brohood is not on board with any of this. They have weaponized theology to favor themselves and honoring themselves above all.

    Marg Mowczko does fine work in writing about the mutuality and equality of men and women in Christian marriage and ministry. It took 2K years, but through Mowczko, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Beth Allison Barr, and Dee Parsons, women – even subjugated Christian women – are getting somewhere. That somewhere being mutuality and equality in marriage and ministry. Praise God.

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  28. Gus: Constipated Al¹ has better things to do, like p***ing on Jimmy Carter’s grave.
    —
    ¹Maybe he wouldn’t look so bloated if he wasn’t so puffed up with his own importance, and if he didn’t have half a dozen theobros camping out in his duodenum.

    Are you sure he’s not bloated with that “Winco Gravy” Katie Botkin mentioned about that other Pope, the Pope of the Palouse?

    (Or does WInco Gravy Bloat only work in combination with sternum-length beards, single-malt Scotch, and Andrew Tate-sized cigars?)

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  30. Ava Aaronson: There are some differences. The Falwells’ poolboy was an adult, not a minor. However. Becky Falwell preyed on her son’s high school pals, minors, when they overnighted at the Falwell compound.

    Like I’ve said:
    “Today on Lifestyles of the Rich and Godly, we return to The Cuck and The Cougar for More CHRISTIAN Family Values!”

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  33. Headless Unicorn Guy,

    While I understand the humor, and actually slightly smile, it also makes my blood boil… i grew up under fundamentalism, and as HUG likes to say, these types are focused on pelvic issues…. Jr and wife’s behavior would have made my teachers/preacher blow a fuse if we did that.. yet crickets from current “spiritual leaders”.. yet good old Al does nor wait to go after Carter..
    THIS is one of the reasons Evangelicals and fundamentalists are mocked…..

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  34. Muff Potter: For the most part, they could never get away with what they do in secular venues

    Well, secular venues have the struggle, and there, victims, too, even among the rich and famous, are fighting the good fight.

    Blake Lively is fighting another THAT GUY (this time THAT GUY is the type who harasses women in adult company working together) in the film biz.

    NPR has an update: “Blake Lively inspires more actresses to speak out against Hollywood toxicity,” December 31, 2024, by Rachel Treisman. Google to find.

    It’s ugly what happens to women who try to protect themselves. Really ugly, according to this article.

    Actress Abigail Breslin:

    “Instead of being believed and protected, a suit was filed against me for having the audacity to speak up. I was publicly shamed and defamed in the process. A reputation I had cultivated for over 2 decades has now been tainted as I became the crazy, paranoid and to quote directly, ‘hysterical and wild’ woman, who apparently just had it in for men.”

    “To change the narrative, we do not need more women to scream,” Breslin said. “We need more men to shut up and listen.”

    Sound familiar, church people? Everything in this article about the film industry rings true with what is posted and commented on, right here at TWW, about the Evangelical Church industry. And it’s an ugly, filthy underbelly, whether one wants to open one’s eyes (read the article) and admit it or not.

    What women put up with, not to have a place at the table. Never gonna happen, never take place. Nope. It’s what women put up with, just to be allowed in the room. At all. If they speak, they are blacklisted, careers ending, cast out of the room. Period.

    That article spells it out. Even for beautiful, talented, camera-ready women, who listen and take orders from their director. On and off set, they are but meat in a cage, with NO VOICE. How dare they speak up to defend themselves. How dare they, when “the good book” mandates a woman’s silence, while the man gets his way. It’s “biblical” the entitled claim, as they with the voice control the narrative.

    Of course, Marg Mowczko, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Beth Allison Barr, Dee Parsons, and TWW community know better.

    God bless Blake Lively, Abigail Breslin, Kate Beckinsale, and all working women who speak up to protect women, even and especially as they are then smeared and sued. May the integrity of violated women (and men) prevail. May God bring down the predators, as only He can. Jesus died and rose for a reason: for love, for the dignity of both men and women, whom He created in His image. With equal voices, for equal integrity and dignity.

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  36. Muff Potter:
    Ava Aaronson,

    I’ve always said this, and I’ll say it again, women are the stronger of our species.

    Well, disagree. When women are being violated, they should say so without retaliation. When children/minors or anyone is being violated, they should say so.

    One demographic should not control the narrative.

    Birds fly ONLY with two wings. Where 1/2 or even less then 1/2 is the only voice in the room, that’s a bird without two wings, and it is grounded, nothing but a farmyard chicken parading around the farmyard, highly vulnerable to wolves. Cuz that bird don’t fly.

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  39. Ava Aaronson: That article spells it out. Even for beautiful, talented, camera-ready women, who listen and take orders from their director. On and off set, they are but meat in a cage, with NO VOICE.

    Fun Fact:
    Look at that smartphone you stare at every waking minute. How does it find a free “channel” when you dial out? Automatic searching “frequency agility”?

    The concept and how to do it was worked out some time during WW2 by a “piece of meat in a Hollywood cage with NO VOICE”, an expat from Germany named Hedy Lamarr. As this was wartime, she made the patent for it (original application some sort of unjammable radio communications or guidance systems) public domain.

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  40. Gus: There are practically (almost) no evangelicals left, they’re all fundamentalists now.

    Hence the term “Fundagelical”, which I did not coin (someone in a comment thread at Internet Monk did). Origin & structure a lot like “Jein”, a recent German word for “yes-and-no”.

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  41. Pingback: Missouri "Apostle" Accused of Sexual Assault by Multiple Minor Victims - Protestia

  47. Max: I’ve experienced “Chollywood” a few times … strange phenomenon.

    I’ve also been to a few “Contemporvant” churches:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giM04ESUiGw&t=2s

    Funny because it’s true.

    Here’s another video along the same lines:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbtkhB3cFGs
    AKA “Just like ‘On the Cover of the Rolling Stone’, Except CHRISTIAN(TM)!”

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