“As I started to learn more about biblical justice and righteousness, my picture changed from an angry, faraway, law-obsessed king to a loving Creator who would go to any length to restore relationship with His sons and daughters and to make the world right again.” ― Jessica Nicholas, God Loves Justice: A User-Friendly Guide to Biblical Justice and Righteousness.

---

A quick update: I look forward to letting TWW know what is happening behind the scenes. I am excited because I believe some victims will be helped from an investigative angle. Also, we have devised an idea for some victims’ voices to be heard uniquely. Additionally, I am teaming up with Church Diaries Unlocked to do a podcast as we seek to highlight child sex abuse within the church setting. I will be traveling to Oklahoma at the end of the month to put the finishing touches on some things.

---

In January 2024, TWW posted Kevin DeYoung, Harry Reeder, Christ Covenant Church, and Charlotte Christian School: Years of Denial and Obfuscation Cause Long Term Pain for a Sexual Abuse Victim. I received many comments regarding this post written by Stuart Griffin, the victim. The general sentiment was that the story is heart-wrenching, mainly due to Griffin’s excellent writing. I highly recommend reading the entire post.

Stuart Griffin was molested by David Wood, which would change his life.

I met the man who abused me, David Wood, the summer before my eighth-grade year. I attended Charlotte Christian School and Christ Covenant Church in Charlotte and Matthews, NC respectively. David was brought in to work with the senior high youth by the Pastor of Youth Ministries, Rod Huckaby. I’m not sure how Rod “discovered” David, but the story goes that Rod was ministering to David through his sex and pornography addiction, among other things, and thought his testimony would impact the senior high youth in a positive way. I have to question Rod’s judgment—in hindsight, David’s “testimony” feels like a massive RED FLAG. David had no previous youth ministry experience nor did he have any previous experience working in ministry at all.

…Charlotte Christian had a tight relationship with most evangelical churches in the area. From what I have come to understand, this is fairly common in the Christian school scene. Most of the students attended one of the three to four popular evangelical churches on that side of Charlotte and Christ Covenant was one of these.

… I can’t tell you exactly how David inserted himself in my life, but it seems like one day David wasn’t in my life and the next day we were hanging out a lot. David lived in an apartment on the other side of Matthews, so the church was conveniently located between my house and David’s apartment. At some point David built a strong enough relationship with my parents to where David would pick me up and take me to church on Wednesday nights, take me back to his apartment after school and drive me to my soccer games, etc. My parents wouldn’t have ever let a random man enter into this relationship with their son. They did this because of David Wood’s relationship with the church and the youth group. (I stress this because the church has continued to deny David’s role at the church and has downplayed his affiliation and involvement. But when they do this, they make it seem as if my parents were in the habit of letting me hang out with random, older men, which was not the case!)

…On that horrible day, like the others, I had changed into my soccer uniform. David told me that it would be helpful if he gave me a massage before the game. The color of the carpet and how it felt against my face is burned into my memory.

He straddled my small one-hundred-pound body with his hulking two-hundred-pound body. He told me to take my shirt off and he started rubbing my back. Then he started to forcefully pull down my soccer shorts. I remember my fingers pulling the carpet as I clenched my eyes closed. In my mind, I threw him off, ran out of the apartment door that was only a few feet away and didn’t stop running until I got all the way home, where I ran to my dad and told him everything David had done to me.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, David was able to get his clothes off. I managed to keep him from doing what he really wanted to do, but as he pressed my face into the rough, dirty carpet, he masturbated on my back.

This abuse deeply affected his life after he went to college.

… I’ve been sober now for a while. As I write this, I just came back from receiving an anniversary chip from my AA group where I first got sober. I remember many times when my life was uncontrollable due to alcohol, I would try to put it down. If I could get through a night without drinking, it was a huge accomplishment for me. Now I am sitting here with years of sobriety behind me and hopefully many years of sobriety ahead of me. Any alcoholic who has found sobriety comes to understand that every sober hour is grace. And grace becomes the predominant storyline in any real sobriety story. And my sobriety is no different. I could tell you story upon story about my sobriety and the grace that has been provided to me by a loving God. And I would need much more of your time to tell you about the grace God brought into my life the day I met my wife. And the grace that has been poured into my life ever since. Grace upon grace upon grace. But that’s not what this story is about.

He reported what happened to the police, but it didn’t go well.

The police went to David’s residence to speak with him. David actually admitted to an inappropriate relationship and David was arrested. But then, shortly after, he hired a lawyer, retracted his statements, and I spent the next year and a half driving between Atlanta and North Carolina to attend every hearing scheduled. I sat there in the audience while David’s attorney argued that what happened was only “mutual masturbation”. I couldn’t believe that an attorney could say that with a straight face. I was thirteen years old. A man who was more than twice my age would admit to something called “mutual masturbation,” but everyone is supposed to believe that’s all he did. But that was good enough for the court system and David Wood pleaded guilty to Indecent Liberties with a Minor and received 36 months of probation. He is still on North Carolina’s sexual offenders registry today.

He didn’t want to sue the church, but the church, which Kevin DeYoung leads today, didn’t care about him.

When I started this process, the attorney asked me if I had any desire to file a civil suit against the church. I immediately said that I hadn’t even thought about it. I couldn’t imagine suing my church. The place I loved to spend my time. Where I grew up. The home I pursued. That was the furthest thing from my mind. But apparently, it was the first thing on the mind of Christ Covenant. My attorney reached out to Christ Covenant to let them know I was pressing charges against David. They were asked to give me support through the process. Christ Covenant never contacted me, nor did they offer any sort of emotional help throughout the process. The church I loved and grew up in wouldn’t pursue me during the most critical time in my life. (How does this feel? Like a betrayal?)

He would go on to find other victims of the monster.

I expect there will be excuses for Kevin DeYoung: “He wasn’t there when this happened, blah, blah, and blah.” The reader can read the exact wording that DeYoung used to tell the church about the monster’s abuse. Here are Stuart’s thoughts.

This man, Kevin DeYoung, who wasn’t even present at the church when the abuse took place, nor had he treated me with respect up to this point nor had he or any other person in the leadership at the church, shown me and care or concern for what happened, was now standing up telling my story. Or at least his version of my story. He was glossing over incredibly important details and, in a very manipulative way, minimizing the institution’s role in what happened to me. Kevin also minimized the inaction of the church when my mother originally reported what happened. It was clear from the beginning that Kevin had no desire to be completely honest with his church, but he was using his position and his pulpit to manipulate. And my story was used to make them all look like they were really good Christians. The sole reason they wanted to do this was to check a box. Well, I didn’t know the full reason yet, but I would later find out.

North Carolina introduced a look-back law, and Griffin decided to sue both the school and the church. (Dee cheers at this juncture.)

Under this new law, my attorneys filed a civil suit against Charlotte Christian School and Christ Covenant Church. The civil suit against the church also included two other victims. Once we filed the lawsuit, here is the letter Kevin DeYoung sent to his congregation…

Dear Christ Covenant Family,

In January 2019 we gathered as a church family and I shared that three men had alleged that they were sexually abused as teenagers in the early 1990s by a man, whom they claim was a youth volunteer at our church. I also shared the steps our church had taken and was taking to reach out to these men and extend pastoral care and tangible support. I need to let you know, on behalf of the Session, that these three men recently filed a civil lawsuit against our church. The matter has been turned over to our legal counsel and insurance company. Please know that leadership at the church is informed on all the necessary details and is committed to shepherding this matter as wisely and redemptively as possible. Please continue to pray for these three men, that they would know the Lord’s power and grace. We covet your prayers as well.

In Christ,
Kevin DeYoung, Senior Pastor

The church tried to settle for a paltry sum of money. Didn’t they offer Cindy Cleminshire the same amount, $25,000? She didn’t settle, and neither did Stuart.

In April of 2020, the church’s attorney and our attorney met with me to talk about a settlement. The church offered me $25,000. The attorney for the insurance company told me that she didn’t believe the Supreme Court in North Carolina would allow the lookback window in the SAFE Child Act to stay in the bill, so she didn’t think I would have the ability to take Christ Covenant to court. She, along with most of her colleagues, believed that this portion of the legislation was unconstitutional. So she thought their offer of $25,000 ($15,000 after attorney’s fees) was sufficient. These attorneys know how weak our leaders really are and they exploit the system because they know the people in power will side with powerful institutions over protecting the vulnerable.

Is $25,000 a number these lawyers use for guilty churches and pastors?

The rest of the story: The school and church will be sued.

Of course, attorneys for abusers and the institutions in which they did their dirty work attempted to declare the Look-Back law unconstitutional. North Carolina has an onerous standard for child sex abuse victims. They had to report by the age of 21. The leaders in the legislature have not yet dealt with the fact that most victims of child sex abuse do not report what happened to them until they are in their 50s. Thankfully, the NC Supreme Court upheld that two-year look-back window. The AP posted North Carolina Supreme Court upholds law that allowed two more years for child sex abuse suits.

Before the law, victims of sexual abuse before age 18 effectively had until turning 21 to file such civil claims against perpetrators. Now such victims have until they’re age 28. But the issue before the court in the Gaston County case was the provision that gave other child sex abuse victims whose time period to sue ended the ability to file valid lawsuits for damages from January 2020 through December 2021.

…At least 250 child sex abuse lawsuits were filed in North Carolina under that one-time lookback period, according to a board legal brief.

…Lawyers for the state help defend the 2019 law in court. Attorney General Jeff Jackson and his predecessor — now Gov. Josh Stein — praised Friday’s ruling in a news release.

Since 2002, 30 states and the District of Columbia revived previously expired child sex abuse claims with limited or permanent expansions of claim periods, according to CHILD USA, a think tank advocating for children.

Extending the time to report to 28 years of age was positive, but it is a long way from the average reporting time for child sex abuse. I plan to do some education on that matter.

Stuart Griffin will sue Charlotte Christian School and Christ Covenant Church, where Kevin DeYoung is the lead pastor. He wants to bring his lawsuit to trial so people can learn how poorly abuse victims are treated by those who claim they care about children. Kevin DeYoung appears to be “concerned” about sex abuse, but his actions don’t seem to match his words. I wrote Kevin DeYoung’s Better Discussion on Abuse Isn’t. I called him out on what I believe to be his poor history of “caring about abuse.” This was in response to his post on The Gospel Coalition website: Toward a Better Discussion about Abuse. DeYoung had a chance to handle this well. He didn’t and is now hiding behind the lawyers. I hope Reformed Theological Seminary has other professors who know how to care for the abused. Shame on him! I can’t wait to hear the excuses he gives. For example, he may say, “I had no choice. I had to listen to the lawyers,” while nodding his head wisely.

The church and school could have responded well. Instead, they outlined the plan: “We’ll give you $25,000. Now sign an NDA and go away.” Thankfully, Griffin is in the outstanding care of Boz Tchividjian and the Lanier Law Group. It doesn’t get any better than that.

If this goes to trial, I plan to be present throughout the proceedings to report and silently cheer on Stuart and his legal team. I expect an outcome that will add lots more zeroes to the last offered check. Please join me in praying for justice for Stuart Griffin. It has been a long, painful road.