Latest news with #AssembliesofGod
NBC News
13-05-2025
- NBC News
U.S. news The 40-year mission to stop a Pentecostal preacher accused of raping children Joe Campbell says his calling is to share God's love, but a group of women say he sexually abused them as girls. An NBC News investigation uncovered decades of missed warnings and failures to act.
TULSA, Okla. — The women have spent decades trying to forget, but some memories haunt them. The way the children's pastor wrapped them in his arms. The terrifying stories he told about demons and the warmth in his voice as he promised to protect them. The chill of his hands on parts of their bodies where no grown man's hands should be. The blood some of them found in their underwear afterward. They can still picture the spaces where it happened: A church nursery. A childhood bedroom. His garage during a youth group sleepover. This, they say, is the dark secret behind the public ministry of Joseph Lyle Campbell, a magnetic Pentecostal preacher who built a national following with fiery sermons on sin, salvation and America's moral decline. As Campbell tells it, he was a teenager when God gave him a mission: to share his love of Jesus with children. In the decades since, as he evangelized from church to church across the South and Midwest, he has repeatedly faced accusations of child sexual abuse, an NBC News investigation found. 'Joe Campbell needs to be in jail,' said Cheryl Almond, who says he lured her to his home when she was a teenager, pushed her onto a bed and penetrated her with his finger. 'I just pray one day I can hear a judge tell Joe, 'You're guilty, and here's your sentence.'' Almond is one of five women who told NBC News that Campbell, now 67, sexually assaulted them when they were children in the 1970s and '80s. In Oklahoma, Kerri Jackson says he molested her once to twice a week for three years starting when she was about 9. In Arkansas, Lisa Ball says Campbell invited her to live with him after she became a teen mother, then raped her repeatedly. In Missouri, Kim Williams had just turned 15 when she says Campbell reached his hand up her shorts at his parsonage. In that same home, Phaedra Creed says Campbell sexually assaulted her night after night, at age 14, while his wife and children slept had been taught as children that God hears all prayers, but getting adults to listen was another story. Starting in the 1980s, when they were still teenagers, some of Campbell's accusers took their accounts to pastors, to local police and prosecutors, to child welfare workers and to federal law enforcement. At every turn, Campbell denied the allegations and remained in ministry. The pattern of missed warnings and failures to intervene repeated for decades. Congregants reported sexual misconduct as early as 1983, when Campbell was a young preacher rising in the Assemblies of God, the world's largest Pentecostal denomination. To the children, he was an almost mythical figure, anointed by the Lord with the power to speak in tongues, heal the sick and exorcise evil spirits. Parents trusted him to keep their kids overnight and bring them to youth revivals — until some returned with stories about Campbell showing them pornography and whisking little girls behind closed leaders let Campbell continue preaching for years, freeing him to abuse more children, his accusers say. The Assemblies of God told NBC News the allegations reached its national office in 1988; the Springfield, Missouri-based denomination banished Campbell the following year and said the accusations 'were reported to the appropriate legal authorities.' Campbell didn't let that keep him from his calling. He moved to the heart of the Missouri Ozarks in the early 1990s to start a nondenominational church and a youth campground seemingly named after himself — Camp Bell, which he has described as 'a real life Neverland.' The faith community he built there became a haven for people accused or convicted of sexually abusing children, NBC News found. Campbell allowed these individuals to preach, teach Sunday school and volunteer with children. In 2016, he went to work for the PTL Television Network, a Christian station founded by the disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker that has broadcast Campbell's sermons across the country. Campbell didn't respond to numerous inquiries from NBC News, which included letters, phone calls, emails and visits to his home and children's camp in Missouri. After reporters contacted Campbell, the PTL Television Network, which also didn't respond, removed years of his sermons from its website. Campbell says he started evangelizing at 13, dubbed the 'kid preacher' in the Missouri farm town where he grew up. He has described his childhood as rough and his father as abusive. As a minister, he gravitated to children from troubled homes like his. Those children came to see him as a father figure, a rugged protector with inviting hazel eyes. Several said he taught them the abuse he inflicted was an expression of his love for them. Their special secret. 'That was Joe,' Creed said. 'He could comfort you and make you feel warm. Stroke your face, push your hair behind your ears — at the same time, just looking for yet another way to draw you into him.' In telling their stories over and over, the women created a written record dating back to the 1980s. NBC News reviewed hundreds of pages of letters and emails, police and court files, and harrowing diary entries that Jackson wrote in looping cursive as a accounts are also supported by interviews with more than two dozen people — friends and family, former church members, retired law enforcement officials — who say they learned of the women's allegations years ago. Nine of them, including four men, described their own run-ins with Campbell as children. They said the pastor showed them pornography during sleepovers, handed them sex toys in his bedroom, made lewd comments or touched them in ways that made them uneasy. Do you have a story to share about the Assemblies of God's handling of sex abuse allegations? Email reporter Mike Hixenbaugh. For years, Campbell's accusers felt alone. Anxiety attacks and relationship struggles stalked some into adulthood. Then, one by one, as if God had willed it, they found each other. Beginning in 2000, they developed a sisterhood around their shared trauma. If their former pastor was on a mission from God to reach children, their bond gave them a divine purpose of their own: to send him to prison. Their efforts failed every time. But last year — inspired by the firestorm an Oklahoma grandmother unleashed when she accused celebrity pastor Robert Morris of molesting her as a child — they decided to try again. On a sunny afternoon in December, Jackson, Almond, Williams and a few supporters gathered outside a Tulsa police station. Under the bright blue Oklahoma sky, a retired pastor asked them to join hands. 'Lord, I pray that you will use these women and their story to stop the awful abuse in religious settings by men who think they will never be held accountable.' A moment later, Jackson strode inside. An officer pulled out a pen and notebook. Then, one more time, she began to tell her story. If the doors of Eastland Assembly of God were open, Kerri Jackson and her two siblings were there. Sunday mornings. Sunday evenings. Wednesday nights. Prayer meetings. Sleepovers. Vacation Bible school. 'It had to be hell or high water for us to miss church,' she said. Jackson was in kindergarten when Campbell and his wife, Becky, arrived in Tulsa in the late 1970s. The Eastland children loved his elaborate puppet shows and the tales of good and evil he told on church camping trips. Everyone could tell Jackson was his favorite. She was about 9 the first time the attention turned physical, she said. It was around 1981. She and a group of kids were at church making posters. Campbell said he needed to run home for markers. Jackson jumped in the car. Just the two of his house, she said, Campbell started acting strangely. Putting his hands on her. Following her as she backed away. She wrote about it six years later when she began recording memories of Campbell in a green spiral notebook. I tryed getting away by going into his hall closet but he came in there with me. The top of her head didn't quite reach the middle of his chest. He crouched down, and she felt the scratch of his mustache. She remembers trembling in the darkness and asking if he'd ever touched other girls that way. Over the next three years, she said, it happened again and again. Jackson journaled about staying the night with the Campbells after babysitting their three young children. After Becky and the kids went to bed, she said, Campbell put on the Playboy Channel. We were watching some movie and he starting running his hands up and down my body, feeling me, and kissing me. Then there was the night when Jackson said Campbell cornered her in his garage and locked the door during a church sleepover. He removed her clothes and directed her to lie on a green beanbag chair. Then, she said, he violated her with his tongue and raped her as other girls banged on the door, calling for them to come out. It hurt so bad, and I tryed telling him things like he's to big, im to small and I was scared. Jackson struggled to understand the contradictions. Campbell delivered soul-stirring sermons about Jesus' love and the lake of fire awaiting those who refused to accept him. How could a man so close to God do the things he did to her? Some adults noticed the contradiction, too. Around 1983, a Sunday school teacher and founding member of Eastland began hearing complaints from congregants who said Campbell touched girls inappropriately. Jackson, honoring Campbell's instruction to keep it secret, wasn't one of them. The teacher, who has since died, brought her concerns to senior pastor J.W. Ellsworth, according to four friends and family members who said they spoke to her at the time. The teacher told them that Ellsworth, who died in 2018, rebuked her for gossiping. Soon after, Campbell left Eastland for another Assemblies of God church, in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, about an hour and a half from Tulsa. It was there that he and his wife invited 14-year-old Lisa Ball to live with them. Ball's mother had left when she was 7; she'd gotten pregnant at 13. After Ball put the baby up for adoption, the Campbells were supposed to be her fresh start. The pastor had different plans, she Christmas 1984, Jackson, 12 at the time, visited the Campbells in Arkansas and spent the week with Ball. One evening, Campbell snapped a photo of the girls together inside an old movie house he'd been fixing up for his youth group. Afterward, Jackson and Ball said, he molested them in front of each other. The girls never discussed it. Campbell continued to see Jackson on return trips to Tulsa, but she started resisting his advances more forcefully, she said, and the abuse finally moved on to a megachurch in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and from there to another Assemblies of God church in Versailles, Missouri. Jackson tried to move on, too, but as she entered high school and more fully understood what Campbell had done, she began pleading with God for permission to kill herself. In 1987, the summer before her sophomore year, she got a call that haunts her. A friend from Eastland, Kim Williams, had been invited to travel with Campbell to Missouri to help with vacation Bible school. Williams asked her to come along. Jackson's heart raced as she contemplated whether to warn her. For 38 years, she has regretted her split-second decision. She told her friend no thank you, then hung up the phone. Williams couldn't understand why none of her Eastland Assembly girlfriends wanted to come. She rode up front with Campbell on the four-hour drive from Tulsa to Versailles; Becky sat in back. Williams celebrated her 15th birthday on the trip. She was creeped out, she said, when Campbell's brother scooped her over his shoulder as Campbell spanked her 15 times, and again when Campbell made sexual comments about a woman at his church with intellectual disabilities. But the moment that shattered her sense of safety came toward the end of the week. Certain details are etched in her memory. The peppermint candy she held as Campbell stood behind the couch and started rubbing her shoulders. The rerun of 'Gunsmoke' on the television. The chill that rushed through her as he silently reached down the front of her tank top. He came around front; she focused on the candy. His hand crept up her thigh; she held her breath. He moved his finger; she jumped to her feet. The phone on the wall was baby blue. She remembers grabbing it and dialing home. Bawling, she told her father she wanted to leave; she didn't say why. Campbell took the phone, she said, and, with his wife standing nearby, told her dad that everything was fine. Williams was just homesick. He said he would put her on the next flight to Tulsa. That afternoon, she remembers the Campbells scolding her for disrespecting them. She flew home the next morning. Afterward, Jackson called. She asked about the trip. Williams lied and said it was fun. Jackson was quiet. Then she asked: Did he touch you? Through tears, the girls told each other everything. Then they discussed what they were going to do about it. That October, Jackson, 15, called Campbell and confronted him. They spoke for about 45 minutes, according to notes she scribbled afterward. He said he thinks we're being taped ... ... told me he still loved + cared for me ... ... told me he would deny it all the way to the end. She hung up, angrier than ever. Jackson was done keeping Campbell's secret. At the urging of her best friend, she went to Eastland's new senior pastor, David Torgerson. Torgerson appeared to take the matter seriously. That fall, he collected letters from Jackson, Williams and other teens who said Campbell had violated them. Torgerson, now in his 80s, could not be reached by reporters. He took his findings to Assemblies of God officials, leading them to convene a hearing at the denomination's Southern Missouri District Council in Springfield on Feb. 4, 1988. Jackson was summoned to woke up feeling nervous. She put on a purple corduroy dress with a white lace collar that her mother had made. Torgerson and Eastland youth pastor Larry Kloefkorn drove. As soon as Jackson walked inside, she was startled to see Campbell and his wife waiting in the lobby. She wrote about the trip in her diary that night. Joe sat there and looked straight at me w/ the most creepest look on his face. She retreated to a bathroom and cried. Then Torgerson and Kloefkorn led her into a conference room. Two dozen Assemblies of God pastors sat around a U-shaped table. Jackson stood at the center. The men asked her how it began, where he touched her, who she told. One asked her to describe Campbell's penis. Kloefkorn, the youth pastor, said it seemed that the men were treating Jackson like a defendant rather than a victim. Afterward, they waited in the lobby while the Campbells told their side. Becky's father, a prominent Assemblies of God pastor who has since died, joined for support. Then the men invited everyone back inside. Jackson felt as if she might throw of the men told Jackson to place her hand on a Bible, then asked if she and Campbell ever had intercourse. She must have answered too quietly the first time. When asked to repeat herself, she shouted: 'He tried, got it in me, and I got scared so he took it out!' Campbell denied everything. At one point, Jackson said, he jabbed his finger and accused her of lying. In a statement to NBC News, pastor Don Miller, the Assemblies of God's southern Missouri district superintendent, said none of the council's current leaders were involved in Jackson's hearing. He said the council no longer requires victims to testify in front of their alleged abusers in sexual misconduct cases. 'We pray that those who experienced trauma from the actions of Mr. Campbell can find healing and closure,' Miller said. Jackson was inconsolable on the drive home in 1988, convinced that the men didn't believe her. Convinced that Campbell had them under his spell. She vented that night on diary pages lined with pink flowers. God, I hope he rots in HELL! To hear him tell it in sermons, Campbell has experienced trials and triumphs so epic, his life could be a tale out of the Old Testament. He was 21 when he made a bargain with God after being ejected 56 feet in a car crash. His body slammed into a stop sign, he says, breaking his neck. Lying on a train track, he remembers praying: 'You give me another chance ... I will do anything you ask me to do.' God spared him, he says, and in the years after, blessed him with the power of the Holy Spirit. He was given the gifts of prophecy and faith healing. Once, he says, he raised a man from the dead. And in 1988, he convinced the men leading the Assemblies of God district council to take his side, just as Jackson had feared. They shared their conclusion in a letter, which Kloefkorn said he reviewed, and allowed Campbell to continue leading Versailles First Assembly. Seven months after the hearing, he invited a new child into his home. Phaedra Creed had never met her father. Her mother struggled with addiction and was living in another state. But her pastor wanted to take her in. She remembers jumping up and down and screaming after Campbell told her. He and his wife went to court to make the guardianship official, and, in September 1988, they set up a room for Creed in the basement of their parsonage, a ranch home across a parking lot from the church. The 14-year-old had caught Campbell's attention while singing in the church choir, she said. He told her God had special plans for her. 'Many are called,' he would say, quoting scripture, 'but few are chosen.' One night she was lying awake clutching her Bible after seeing Campbell cast a demon out of a man at church, shouting: 'In the name of Jesus!' It terrified her. That night, the pastor came to comfort her, and she felt safe in his arms. Within weeks, though, she wondered if the real demon was the one tucking her in at night. It started with a bedtime kiss on the lips, she said, and quickly escalated. Three months later, Creed sat in an interview room at the Versailles Police Department. Afterward, the police chief typed his notes: THE SUBJECT JOE CAMPBELL ENTERED THE VICTIMS BEDROOM AND HAD INTERCOURSE... BETWEEN 15 AND 20 DIFFERENT TIMES... CAMPBELL COMMENTED SEVERAL TIMES ON HER BEING HIS PRECIOUS BABY... A doctor's examination confirmed Creed had been penetrated. Campbell was arrested and released on $25,000 bond. After a preliminary hearing, a judge found sufficient evidence to send the case to trial. While it was pending, Creed went to Springfield to testify in the same room where Jackson had stood. Confronted by the results of their earlier decision to let Campbell continue preaching, the Assemblies of God's Southern Missouri District Council banned him from the denomination. The months that followed were hell, Creed said. She moved in with her mother, who had returned to Missouri. Some church members accused Creed of seducing Campbell, whispering insults behind her back at the grocery store. They said Satan was using her to take down the church. Back in Tulsa, Jackson and Williams said they received subpoenas to testify. The girls weren't told the name of the alleged victim, but they were eager to support her. They never got the chance. Weeks before the case was set for trial in October 1989, Creed's therapist warned her mother, Rita Aye, that testifying might break her daughter, who had moved to a group home for children suffering severe psychological distress. 'She had gone through enough,' Aye said of their decision to not continue with the case. When the charges were dismissed, Campbell's lawyer accused Creed of fabricating the story, telling a local newspaper the teen did it to retaliate after 'Mr. Campbell denied her request to marry a 32-year-old man.' For years afterward, Creed panicked anytime a thunderstorm rolled in; it had been raining, she said, the night Campbell took her virginity. Eventually she learned to bury the memories, pushing the pain deep inside. After being ousted from the Assemblies of God, Campbell says God gave him a new assignment: to start a church of his own and build a children's camp on 40 remote acres in the Missouri Ozarks. The Family Worship Center of Marshfield — later renamed Lakeside Family Worship — had only a handful of members when it opened in an old Methodist church in 1990 but grew into the hundreds. Campbell soon launched Camp Bell on a wooded lot 20 minutes away. Volunteers added a swimming pool, showers and dorms for the thousands of children who visited. 'For one week the kids are separated from the world and can focus on God, and it changes their lives,' Campbell told a newspaper years later. 'They're never the same.' As he was rebuilding his career, the women who say he abused them were starting families and quietly struggling to cope with the lingering harm. Cheryl Almond, who says Campbell molested her around 1978, thought for decades she was the only returning to Eastland to raise her own children, Almond finally built the courage to tell someone. She confided in her spiritual mentor, a longtime church member. The woman gasped: 'Oh my gosh, you too?' Almond froze: 'What do you mean, 'You too'?' The woman told her about Jackson, whose family had long since left the church, and about others who had accused Campbell of abuse. Horrified to learn he'd found a new flock of believers in Missouri, Almond sent Campbell a letter at Lakeside Family Worship in 1999. 'After years of hiding this awful sin, God has instructed me to write this letter,' Almond wrote. 'Such a great pain you have caused to me, my family, and so many other great children.' She received no reply. A year later, Almond felt God nudging her again: It was time to find was 27, newly divorced, raising a first grader and struggling with panic attacks that hit with such ferocity, they left her hyperventilating and vomiting. The first one came as she was walking near a forest; the smell reminded her of Campbell's family farm in Missouri. Ever since, she'd been begging God to help her forget. Now Almond was on the phone, asking to meet. Jackson invited Almond to her house; Williams joined them. Around a kitchen table, they shared their stories, finding parallels. After years of feeling trapped by grief that no one else could understand, each of them felt empowered. Together, they decided to channel their pain into holding Campbell accountable. Remembering the subpoena she'd received in 1989, Jackson called authorities in Versailles and convinced someone to pass her number to the victim in the case. A few days later, Creed called. And then there were four. 'Just knowing that I wasn't alone,' Creed wrote to the women the next day. 'I can't even express those feelings.' Over the following decade, emails between the women describe a flurry of efforts to alert authorities in Oklahoma and Missouri. A message to the FBI went unanswered. Tulsa police told them the statute of limitations had passed and suggested they file a report where Campbell lived now. When Jackson tried calling the sheriff's office in Webster County, Missouri, she thought she heard Campbell's brother on the other end. He worked in dispatch, they learned. They filed reports nonetheless, but it didn't matter. Years rolled by, with no results. Refusing to quit, Almond adopted a verse from Ecclesiastes as her mantra: 'To everything there is a season ... a time to be silent and a time to speak.'In 2005, she heard Campbell was returning to Tulsa for the funeral of a former Eastland member and decided to act on it. A program listed him as one of the pallbearers. Afterward, Almond got in line to greet him. She grabbed his hand with both of hers and reintroduced herself, according to Almond and a woman who witnessed the exchange. 'He said, 'Oh, I remember you,'' Almond said. 'And I said, 'Well, I remember what you did to me.'' Campbell's face reddened, she said, and he tried to pull away. Almond squeezed tighter. She told him she knew about all the other kids, too. Appearing flustered, Campbell stammered, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' according to Almond and the other woman. Then she let go, and he headed for his car. After years of calls to local authorities, the women's allegations against Campbell became an open secret among law enforcement in Webster County. Two sheriff's deputies — each harboring suspicions about the charismatic preacher and his secluded children's camp — tried to investigate, they said, but no new victims emerged, and no charges were filed. Susie Dodson, a former chief deputy of the sheriff's office, said she spent a year looking into Campbell around 2000 after receiving a tip from a community member about sexual misconduct. Dodson, now retired, said she regrets not doing more. A decade later, Webster County detective John Everett said he noticed the preacher's habit of showing up at court to support people charged with sex crimes. He also learned of registered sex offenders who attended Campbell's church. Everett vented his concerns in a 2010 email to Jackson after hearing about her allegations from decades earlier. 'Ministering to them is one thing,' he wrote, 'but he takes it to far, in my opinion.' Everett, now retired, said he couldn't recall the names of the sex offenders. But an NBC News review of court records and social media posts found that, from 2008 to 2014, Campbell welcomed at least four people accused or convicted of sexual abuse into his congregation, allowing them to work with children. Around 2010, a mother said Campbell tried to silence her after a female Sunday school teacher repeatedly molested her 14-year-old son, arguing that such matters are best handled within the church. The teacher — who lived in a home owned by Campbell near his children's camp — confirmed that Campbell tried to get her to strike a deal with the victim's family to stop them from going to the police. She later confessed to the abuse and was convicted of statutory sodomy. A couple of years later, Campbell's wife, Becky, defended the church's decision to let a man convicted of statutory sodomy volunteer with children at Lakeside Family Worship, writing in response to criticism on social media, 'leadership is aware and will protect.' The man who raised the issue said he was ostracized for speaking out. Becky Campbell didn't respond to requests for comment. And after pastor Stephen Shorey pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl he had been counseling while leading an Assemblies of God church outside Tulsa, Shorey found refuge in Marshfield, where he often guest preached at Lakeside and worked with children at Camp Bell. He didn't respond to messages. In 2014, after Shorey was imprisoned for violating the terms of his probation, Campbell vouched for his friend in a letter to a judge, describing Shorey as 'one of the best Evangelists we have ever heard.' Jackson and the other women knew none of this, but what they saw of Campbell's ministry online was enough to make their stomachs turn. They found photos of him at his camp — which he continues to operate — lounging on a bunkbed and doing baptisms in the pool, surrounded by kids. In sermons broadcast by the PTL Network, Campbell — now with gray hair and weathered skin — presented himself as a defender of the vulnerable. In 2022, he talked about the many wayward children he and his wife had taken in over the years. Some still call him Dad, he said. A year later, he preached passionately about what happens to people who have been abused. They wall themselves off from loved ones, he said, and go through life mentally and spiritually crippled. 'They will turn toward drugs, alcohol, sexual sins,' Campbell said, his voice rising. 'And it's because of a wounded heart.' Only God, the preacher said, can heal someone's heart. After giving her statement to an officer in December, Jackson exited the Tulsa police station and let out a deep breath. 'I'm OK,' she told the others. Despite decades of disappointment, the women were hopeful. They believed recent changes to Oklahoma law might allow the statute of limitations to be extended. While they waited to hear from the police, they spoke to others with twisted childhood memories from Eastland Assembly — including two who singled out Campbell's wife. Sarah Boren, who grew up with Jackson, said Becky Campbell played sexually graphic videos in hotel rooms on church trips. And Jody Kirk told his cousin, Kim Williams, that both Campbells showed him porn and pulled out sex toys at church sleepovers; once, he said, Becky instructed him, at around age 12, to put a dildo down his underpants.'Becky not only knew,' Kirk said, 'Becky was very much a part of it.' As the stories accumulated, the women convinced themselves this time would be different. They had spoken to The Wartburg Watch, a website focused on exposing abuse in churches, hoping to inspire others to come forward. Then, in January, Jackson's phone rang. The head of the Tulsa police department's special victims unit told her there was nothing they could do. It was the same story: The allegations were too old. Yet another door slammed shut. The police department made the determination after consulting with prosecutors, officials said. Jackson was upset but undeterred. After rereading her childhood journal for the first time in years, she felt God leading her to track down a girl whose name appeared in it. Lisa Ball, it turns out, lived near her. Four decades after their nightmare evening with Campbell at a movie house in Arkansas, the women met in February at a Mexican restaurant, where they traded memories over chips and salsa. Ball initially hesitated to get involved. Then she learned Campbell was still in ministry. 'I want to see him stop,' she said. 'He needs to pay for what he did.' The sisterhood had grown once more. And in March, as the women debated their next move, another door cracked open. Oklahoma's attorney general announced the indictment of megachurch pastor Robert Morris in response to child sex abuse allegations from the 1980s. Morris pleaded not guilty to the charges, which were built on a novel interpretation of an archaic state law with roots in Oklahoma's founding on the wild frontier, originally meant to stop marauding criminals from running out the clock on the statute of limitations by fleeing the state. The women texted each other: Could the same law apply to Campbell? If they shared their stories with reporters like Morris' accuser did, would that make a difference? Jackson thought of all that she'd endured and overcome. The debilitating panic attacks and sleepless nights searching Campbell's name online. The bottle of pills she didn't swallow. The trigger she didn't pull. Campbell had taken her innocence, she said, but not her faith. God wanted her alive for a reason. And he had given her Williams, Almond, Creed and now Ball because he knew she couldn't do it alone. For decades, Campbell taught his followers that the Lord had a purpose for each of women had found theirs, and they planned to finish the job. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, or go to to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, or visit You can also access the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) online chat service at
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Yahoo
A preacher's dark secret: Sleepovers, porn and sex abuse allegations dating back decades
TULSA, Okla. — The women have spent decades trying to forget, but some memories haunt them. The way the children's pastor wrapped them in his arms. The terrifying stories he told about demons and the warmth in his voice as he promised to protect them. The chill of his hands on parts of their bodies where no grown man's hands should be. The blood some of them found in their underwear afterward. They can still picture the spaces where it happened: A church nursery. A childhood bedroom. His garage during a youth group sleepover. This, they say, is the dark secret behind the public ministry of Joseph Lyle Campbell, a magnetic Pentecostal preacher who built a national following with fiery sermons on sin, salvation and America's moral decline. As Campbell tells it, he was a teenager when God gave him a mission: to share his love of Jesus with children. In the decades since, as he evangelized from church to church across the South and Midwest, he has repeatedly faced accusations of child sexual abuse, an NBC News investigation found. 'Joe Campbell needs to be in jail,' said Cheryl Almond, who says he lured her to his home when she was a teenager, pushed her onto a bed and penetrated her with his finger. 'I just pray one day I can hear a judge tell Joe, 'You're guilty, and here's your sentence.''Almond is one of five women who told NBC News that Campbell, now 67, sexually assaulted them when they were children in the 1970s and '80s. In Oklahoma, Kerri Jackson says he molested her once to twice a week for three years starting when she was about 9. In Arkansas, Lisa Ball says Campbell invited her to live with him after she became a teen mother, then raped her repeatedly. In Missouri, Kim Williams had just turned 15 when she says Campbell reached his hand up her shorts at his parsonage. In that same home, Phaedra Creed says Campbell sexually assaulted her night after night, at age 14, while his wife and children slept upstairs. They had been taught as children that God hears all prayers, but getting adults to listen was another story. Starting in the 1980s, when they were still teenagers, some of Campbell's accusers took their accounts to pastors, to local police and prosecutors, to child welfare workers and to federal law enforcement. At every turn, Campbell denied the allegations and remained in ministry. The pattern of missed warnings and failures to intervene repeated for decades. Congregants reported sexual misconduct as early as 1983, when Campbell was a young preacher rising in the Assemblies of God, the world's largest Pentecostal denomination. To the children, he was an almost mythical figure, anointed by the Lord with the power to speak in tongues, heal the sick and exorcise evil spirits. Parents trusted him to keep their kids overnight and bring them to youth revivals — until some returned with stories about Campbell showing them pornography and whisking little girls behind closed doors. Church leaders let Campbell continue preaching for years, freeing him to abuse more children, his accusers say. The Assemblies of God told NBC News the allegations reached its national office in 1988; the Springfield, Missouri-based denomination banished Campbell the following year and said the accusations 'were reported to the appropriate legal authorities.' Campbell didn't let that keep him from his calling. He moved to the heart of the Missouri Ozarks in the early 1990s to start a nondenominational church and a youth campground seemingly named after himself — Camp Bell, which he has described as 'a real life Neverland.' The faith community he built there became a haven for people accused or convicted of sexually abusing children, NBC News found. Campbell allowed these individuals to preach, teach Sunday school and volunteer with children. In 2016, he went to work for the PTL Television Network, a Christian station founded by the disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker that has broadcast Campbell's sermons across the country. Campbell didn't respond to numerous inquiries from NBC News, which included letters, phone calls, emails and visits to his home and children's camp in Missouri. After reporters contacted Campbell, the PTL Television Network, which also didn't respond, removed years of his sermons from its website. Campbell says he started evangelizing at 13, dubbed the 'kid preacher' in the Missouri farm town where he grew up. He has described his childhood as rough and his father as abusive. As a minister, he gravitated to children from troubled homes like his. Those children came to see him as a father figure, a rugged protector with inviting hazel eyes. Several said he taught them the abuse he inflicted was an expression of his love for them. Their special secret. 'That was Joe,' Creed said. 'He could comfort you and make you feel warm. Stroke your face, push your hair behind your ears — at the same time, just looking for yet another way to draw you into him.' In telling their stories over and over, the women created a written record dating back to the 1980s. NBC News reviewed hundreds of pages of letters and emails, police and court files, and harrowing diary entries that Jackson wrote in looping cursive as a teenager. Their accounts are also supported by interviews with more than two dozen people — friends and family, former church members, retired law enforcement officials — who say they learned of the women's allegations years ago. Nine of them, including four men, described their own run-ins with Campbell as children. They said the pastor showed them pornography during sleepovers, handed them sex toys in his bedroom, made lewd comments or touched them in ways that made them years, Campbell's accusers felt alone. Anxiety attacks and relationship struggles stalked some into adulthood. Then, one by one, as if God had willed it, they found each other. Beginning in 2000, they developed a sisterhood around their shared trauma. If their former pastor was on a mission from God to reach children, their bond gave them a divine purpose of their own: to send him to prison. Their efforts failed every time. But last year — inspired by the firestorm an Oklahoma grandmother unleashed when she accused celebrity pastor Robert Morris of molesting her as a child — they decided to try again. On a sunny afternoon in December, Jackson, Almond, Williams and a few supporters gathered outside a Tulsa police station. Under the bright blue Oklahoma sky, a retired pastor asked them to join hands. 'Lord, I pray that you will use these women and their story to stop the awful abuse in religious settings by men who think they will never be held accountable.' A moment later, Jackson strode inside. An officer pulled out a pen and notebook. Then, one more time, she began to tell her story. If the doors of Eastland Assembly of God were open, Kerri Jackson and her two siblings were there. Sunday mornings. Sunday evenings. Wednesday nights. Prayer meetings. Sleepovers. Vacation Bible school. 'It had to be hell or high water for us to miss church,' she said. Jackson was in kindergarten when Campbell and his wife, Becky, arrived in Tulsa in the late 1970s. The Eastland children loved his elaborate puppet shows and the tales of good and evil he told on church camping trips. Everyone could tell Jackson was his favorite. She was about 9 the first time the attention turned physical, she said. It was around 1981. She and a group of kids were at church making posters. Campbell said he needed to run home for markers. Jackson jumped in the car. Just the two of them. At his house, she said, Campbell started acting strangely. Putting his hands on her. Following her as she backed away. She wrote about it six years later when she began recording memories of Campbell in a green spiral notebook. I tryed getting away by going into his hall closet but he came in there with me. The top of her head didn't quite reach the middle of his chest. He crouched down, and she felt the scratch of his mustache. She remembers trembling in the darkness and asking if he'd ever touched other girls that way. Over the next three years, she said, it happened again and again. Jackson journaled about staying the night with the Campbells after babysitting their three young children. After Becky and the kids went to bed, she said, Campbell put on the Playboy Channel. We were watching some movie and he starting running his hands up and down my body, feeling me, and kissing me. Then there was the night when Jackson said Campbell cornered her in his garage and locked the door during a church sleepover. He removed her clothes and directed her to lie on a green beanbag chair. Then, she said, he violated her with his tongue and raped her as other girls banged on the door, calling for them to come out. It hurt so bad, and I tryed telling him things like he's to big, im to small and I was scared. Jackson struggled to understand the contradictions. Campbell delivered soul-stirring sermons about Jesus' love and the lake of fire awaiting those who refused to accept him. How could a man so close to God do the things he did to her? Some adults noticed the contradiction, too. Around 1983, a Sunday school teacher and founding member of Eastland began hearing complaints from congregants who said Campbell touched girls inappropriately. Jackson, honoring Campbell's instruction to keep it secret, wasn't one of them. The teacher, who has since died, brought her concerns to senior pastor J.W. Ellsworth, according to four friends and family members who said they spoke to her at the time. The teacher told them that Ellsworth, who died in 2018, rebuked her for gossiping. Soon after, Campbell left Eastland for another Assemblies of God church, in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, about an hour and a half from Tulsa. It was there that he and his wife invited 14-year-old Lisa Ball to live with them. Ball's mother had left when she was 7; she'd gotten pregnant at 13. After Ball put the baby up for adoption, the Campbells were supposed to be her fresh start. The pastor had different plans, she said. Around Christmas 1984, Jackson, 12 at the time, visited the Campbells in Arkansas and spent the week with Ball. One evening, Campbell snapped a photo of the girls together inside an old movie house he'd been fixing up for his youth group. Afterward, Jackson and Ball said, he molested them in front of each other. The girls never discussed it. Campbell continued to see Jackson on return trips to Tulsa, but she started resisting his advances more forcefully, she said, and the abuse finally ended. He moved on to a megachurch in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and from there to another Assemblies of God church in Versailles, Missouri. Jackson tried to move on, too, but as she entered high school and more fully understood what Campbell had done, she began pleading with God for permission to kill herself. In 1987, the summer before her sophomore year, she got a call that haunts her. A friend from Eastland, Kim Williams, had been invited to travel with Campbell to Missouri to help with vacation Bible school. Williams asked her to come along. Jackson's heart raced as she contemplated whether to warn her. For 38 years, she has regretted her split-second decision. She told her friend no thank you, then hung up the phone. Williams couldn't understand why none of her Eastland Assembly girlfriends wanted to come. She rode up front with Campbell on the four-hour drive from Tulsa to Versailles; Becky sat in back. Williams celebrated her 15th birthday on the trip. She was creeped out, she said, when Campbell's brother scooped her over his shoulder as Campbell spanked her 15 times, and again when Campbell made sexual comments about a woman at his church with intellectual disabilities. But the moment that shattered her sense of safety came toward the end of the week. Certain details are etched in her memory. The peppermint candy she held as Campbell stood behind the couch and started rubbing her shoulders. The rerun of 'Gunsmoke' on the television. The chill that rushed through her as he silently reached down the front of her tank top. He came around front; she focused on the candy. His hand crept up her thigh; she held her breath. He moved his finger; she jumped to her feet. The phone on the wall was baby blue. She remembers grabbing it and dialing home. Bawling, she told her father she wanted to leave; she didn't say why. Campbell took the phone, she said, and, with his wife standing nearby, told her dad that everything was fine. Williams was just homesick. He said he would put her on the next flight to Tulsa. That afternoon, she remembers the Campbells scolding her for disrespecting them. She flew home the next morning. Afterward, Jackson called. She asked about the trip. Williams lied and said it was fun. Jackson was quiet. Then she asked: Did he touch you? Through tears, the girls told each other everything. Then they discussed what they were going to do about it. That October, Jackson, 15, called Campbell and confronted him. They spoke for about 45 minutes, according to notes she scribbled afterward. He said he thinks we're being taped ... ... told me he still loved + cared for me ... ... told me he would deny it all the way to the end. She hung up, angrier than ever. Jackson was done keeping Campbell's secret. At the urging of her best friend, she went to Eastland's new senior pastor, David Torgerson. Torgerson appeared to take the matter seriously. That fall, he collected letters from Jackson, Williams and other teens who said Campbell had violated them. Torgerson, now in his 80s, could not be reached by reporters. He took his findings to Assemblies of God officials, leading them to convene a hearing at the denomination's Southern Missouri District Council in Springfield on Feb. 4, 1988. Jackson was summoned to testify. She woke up feeling nervous. She put on a purple corduroy dress with a white lace collar that her mother had made. Torgerson and Eastland youth pastor Larry Kloefkorn drove. As soon as Jackson walked inside, she was startled to see Campbell and his wife waiting in the lobby. She wrote about the trip in her diary that night. Joe sat there and looked straight at me w/ the most creepest look on his face. She retreated to a bathroom and cried. Then Torgerson and Kloefkorn led her into a conference room. Two dozen Assemblies of God pastors sat around a U-shaped table. Jackson stood at the center. The men asked her how it began, where he touched her, who she told. One asked her to describe Campbell's penis. Kloefkorn, the youth pastor, said it seemed that the men were treating Jackson like a defendant rather than a victim. Afterward, they waited in the lobby while the Campbells told their side. Becky's father, a prominent Assemblies of God pastor who has since died, joined for support. Then the men invited everyone back inside. Jackson felt as if she might throw up. One of the men told Jackson to place her hand on a Bible, then asked if she and Campbell ever had intercourse. She must have answered too quietly the first time. When asked to repeat herself, she shouted: 'He tried, got it in me, and I got scared so he took it out!' Campbell denied everything. At one point, Jackson said, he jabbed his finger and accused her of lying. In a statement to NBC News, pastor Don Miller, the Assemblies of God's southern Missouri district superintendent, said none of the council's current leaders were involved in Jackson's hearing. He said the council no longer requires victims to testify in front of their alleged abusers in sexual misconduct cases. 'We pray that those who experienced trauma from the actions of Mr. Campbell can find healing and closure,' Miller said. Jackson was inconsolable on the drive home in 1988, convinced that the men didn't believe her. Convinced that Campbell had them under his spell. She vented that night on diary pages lined with pink flowers. God, I hope he rots in HELL! To hear him tell it in sermons, Campbell has experienced trials and triumphs so epic, his life could be a tale out of the Old Testament. He was 21 when he made a bargain with God after being ejected 56 feet in a car crash. His body slammed into a stop sign, he says, breaking his neck. Lying on a train track, he remembers praying: 'You give me another chance ... I will do anything you ask me to do.' God spared him, he says, and in the years after, blessed him with the power of the Holy Spirit. He was given the gifts of prophecy and faith healing. Once, he says, he raised a man from the dead. And in 1988, he convinced the men leading the Assemblies of God district council to take his side, just as Jackson had feared. They shared their conclusion in a letter, which Kloefkorn said he reviewed, and allowed Campbell to continue leading Versailles First Assembly. Seven months after the hearing, he invited a new child into his home. Phaedra Creed had never met her father. Her mother struggled with addiction and was living in another state. But her pastor wanted to take her in. She remembers jumping up and down and screaming after Campbell told her. He and his wife went to court to make the guardianship official, and, in September 1988, they set up a room for Creed in the basement of their parsonage, a ranch home across a parking lot from the church. The 14-year-old had caught Campbell's attention while singing in the church choir, she said. He told her God had special plans for her. 'Many are called,' he would say, quoting scripture, 'but few are chosen.' One night she was lying awake clutching her Bible after seeing Campbell cast a demon out of a man at church, shouting: 'In the name of Jesus!' It terrified her. That night, the pastor came to comfort her, and she felt safe in his arms. Within weeks, though, she wondered if the real demon was the one tucking her in at night. It started with a bedtime kiss on the lips, she said, and quickly escalated. Three months later, Creed sat in an interview room at the Versailles Police Department. Afterward, the police chief typed his notes: THE SUBJECT JOE CAMPBELL ENTERED THE VICTIMS BEDROOM AND HAD INTERCOURSE... BETWEEN 15 AND 20 DIFFERENT TIMES... CAMPBELL COMMENTED SEVERAL TIMES ON HER BEING HIS PRECIOUS BABY... A doctor's examination confirmed Creed had been penetrated. Campbell was arrested and released on $25,000 bond. After a preliminary hearing, a judge found sufficient evidence to send the case to trial. While it was pending, Creed went to Springfield to testify in the same room where Jackson had stood. Confronted by the results of their earlier decision to let Campbell continue preaching, the Assemblies of God's Southern Missouri District Council banned him from the denomination. The months that followed were hell, Creed said. She moved in with her mother, who had returned to Missouri. Some church members accused Creed of seducing Campbell, whispering insults behind her back at the grocery store. They said Satan was using her to take down the church. Back in Tulsa, Jackson and Williams said they received subpoenas to testify. The girls weren't told the name of the alleged victim, but they were eager to support her. They never got the chance. Weeks before the case was set for trial in October 1989, Creed's therapist warned her mother, Rita Aye, that testifying might break her daughter, who had moved to a group home for children suffering severe psychological distress. 'She had gone through enough,' Aye said of their decision to not continue with the case. When the charges were dismissed, Campbell's lawyer accused Creed of fabricating the story, telling a local newspaper the teen did it to retaliate after 'Mr. Campbell denied her request to marry a 32-year-old man.' For years afterward, Creed panicked anytime a thunderstorm rolled in; it had been raining, she said, the night Campbell took her virginity. Eventually she learned to bury the memories, pushing the pain deep inside. After being ousted from the Assemblies of God, Campbell says God gave him a new assignment: to start a church of his own and build a children's camp on 40 remote acres in the Missouri Ozarks. The Family Worship Center of Marshfield — later renamed Lakeside Family Worship — had only a handful of members when it opened in an old Methodist church in 1990 but grew into the hundreds. Campbell soon launched Camp Bell on a wooded lot 20 minutes away. Volunteers added a swimming pool, showers and dorms for the thousands of children who visited. 'For one week the kids are separated from the world and can focus on God, and it changes their lives,' Campbell told a newspaper years later. 'They're never the same.' As he was rebuilding his career, the women who say he abused them were starting families and quietly struggling to cope with the lingering harm. Cheryl Almond, who says Campbell molested her around 1978, thought for decades she was the only one. After returning to Eastland to raise her own children, Almond finally built the courage to tell someone. She confided in her spiritual mentor, a longtime church member. The woman gasped: 'Oh my gosh, you too?' Almond froze: 'What do you mean, 'You too'?' The woman told her about Jackson, whose family had long since left the church, and about others who had accused Campbell of abuse. Horrified to learn he'd found a new flock of believers in Missouri, Almond sent Campbell a letter at Lakeside Family Worship in 1999. 'After years of hiding this awful sin, God has instructed me to write this letter,' Almond wrote. 'Such a great pain you have caused to me, my family, and so many other great children.' She received no reply. A year later, Almond felt God nudging her again: It was time to find Jackson. Jackson was 27, newly divorced, raising a first grader and struggling with panic attacks that hit with such ferocity, they left her hyperventilating and vomiting. The first one came as she was walking near a forest; the smell reminded her of Campbell's family farm in Missouri. Ever since, she'd been begging God to help her forget. Now Almond was on the phone, asking to meet. Jackson invited Almond to her house; Williams joined them. Around a kitchen table, they shared their stories, finding parallels. After years of feeling trapped by grief that no one else could understand, each of them felt empowered. Together, they decided to channel their pain into holding Campbell accountable. Remembering the subpoena she'd received in 1989, Jackson called authorities in Versailles and convinced someone to pass her number to the victim in the case. A few days later, Creed called. And then there were four. 'Just knowing that I wasn't alone,' Creed wrote to the women the next day. 'I can't even express those feelings.' Over the following decade, emails between the women describe a flurry of efforts to alert authorities in Oklahoma and Missouri. A message to the FBI went unanswered. Tulsa police told them the statute of limitations had passed and suggested they file a report where Campbell lived now. When Jackson tried calling the sheriff's office in Webster County, Missouri, she thought she heard Campbell's brother on the other end. He worked in dispatch, they learned. They filed reports nonetheless, but it didn't matter. Years rolled by, with no results. Refusing to quit, Almond adopted a verse from Ecclesiastes as her mantra: 'To everything there is a season ... a time to be silent and a time to speak.' In 2005, she heard Campbell was returning to Tulsa for the funeral of a former Eastland member and decided to act on it. A program listed him as one of the pallbearers. Afterward, Almond got in line to greet him. She grabbed his hand with both of hers and reintroduced herself, according to Almond and a woman who witnessed the exchange. 'He said, 'Oh, I remember you,'' Almond said. 'And I said, 'Well, I remember what you did to me.'' Campbell's face reddened, she said, and he tried to pull away. Almond squeezed tighter. She told him she knew about all the other kids, too. Appearing flustered, Campbell stammered, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' according to Almond and the other woman. Then she let go, and he headed for his car. After years of calls to local authorities, the women's allegations against Campbell became an open secret among law enforcement in Webster County. Two sheriff's deputies — each harboring suspicions about the charismatic preacher and his secluded children's camp — tried to investigate, they said, but no new victims emerged, and no charges were filed. Susie Dodson, a former chief deputy of the sheriff's office, said she spent a year looking into Campbell around 2000 after receiving a tip from a community member about sexual misconduct. Dodson, now retired, said she regrets not doing more. A decade later, Webster County detective John Everett said he noticed the preacher's habit of showing up at court to support people charged with sex crimes. He also learned of registered sex offenders who attended Campbell's church. Everett vented his concerns in a 2010 email to Jackson after hearing about her allegations from decades earlier. 'Ministering to them is one thing,' he wrote, 'but he takes it to far, in my opinion.' Everett, now retired, said he couldn't recall the names of the sex offenders. But an NBC News review of court records and social media posts found that, from 2008 to 2014, Campbell welcomed at least four people accused or convicted of sexual abuse into his congregation, allowing them to work with children. Around 2010, a mother said Campbell tried to silence her after a female Sunday school teacher repeatedly molested her 14-year-old son, arguing that such matters are best handled within the church. The teacher — who lived in a home owned by Campbell near his children's camp — confirmed that Campbell tried to get her to strike a deal with the victim's family to stop them from going to the police. She later confessed to the abuse and was convicted of statutory sodomy. A couple of years later, Campbell's wife, Becky, defended the church's decision to let a man convicted of statutory sodomy volunteer with children at Lakeside Family Worship, writing in response to criticism on social media, 'leadership is aware and will protect.' The man who raised the issue said he was ostracized for speaking out. Becky Campbell didn't respond to requests for comment. And after pastor Stephen Shorey pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl he had been counseling while leading an Assemblies of God church outside Tulsa, Shorey found refuge in Marshfield, where he often guest preached at Lakeside and worked with children at Camp Bell. He didn't respond to messages. In 2014, after Shorey was imprisoned for violating the terms of his probation, Campbell vouched for his friend in a letter to a judge, describing Shorey as 'one of the best Evangelists we have ever heard.' Jackson and the other women knew none of this, but what they saw of Campbell's ministry online was enough to make their stomachs turn. They found photos of him at his camp — which he continues to operate — lounging on a bunkbed and doing baptisms in the pool, surrounded by kids. In sermons broadcast by the PTL Network, Campbell — now with gray hair and weathered skin — presented himself as a defender of the vulnerable. In 2022, he talked about the many wayward children he and his wife had taken in over the years. Some still call him Dad, he said. A year later, he preached passionately about what happens to people who have been abused. They wall themselves off from loved ones, he said, and go through life mentally and spiritually crippled. 'They will turn toward drugs, alcohol, sexual sins,' Campbell said, his voice rising. 'And it's because of a wounded heart.' Only God, the preacher said, can heal someone's heart. After giving her statement to an officer in December, Jackson exited the Tulsa police station and let out a deep breath. 'I'm OK,' she told the others. Despite decades of disappointment, the women were hopeful. They believed recent changes to Oklahoma law might allow the statute of limitations to be extended. While they waited to hear from the police, they spoke to others with twisted childhood memories from Eastland Assembly — including two who singled out Campbell's wife. Sarah Boren, who grew up with Jackson, said Becky Campbell played sexually graphic videos in hotel rooms on church trips. And Jody Kirk told his cousin, Kim Williams, that both Campbells showed him porn and pulled out sex toys at church sleepovers; once, he said, Becky instructed him, at around age 12, to put a dildo down his underpants. 'Becky not only knew,' Kirk said, 'Becky was very much a part of it.' As the stories accumulated, the women convinced themselves this time would be different. They had spoken to The Wartburg Watch, a website focused on exposing abuse in churches, hoping to inspire others to come forward. Then, in January, Jackson's phone rang. The head of the Tulsa police department's special victims unit told her there was nothing they could do. It was the same story: The allegations were too old. Yet another door slammed shut. The police department made the determination after consulting with prosecutors, officials said. Jackson was upset but undeterred. After rereading her childhood journal for the first time in years, she felt God leading her to track down a girl whose name appeared in it. Lisa Ball, it turns out, lived near her. Four decades after their nightmare evening with Campbell at a movie house in Arkansas, the women met in February at a Mexican restaurant, where they traded memories over chips and salsa. Ball initially hesitated to get involved. Then she learned Campbell was still in ministry. 'I want to see him stop,' she said. 'He needs to pay for what he did.' The sisterhood had grown once more. And in March, as the women debated their next move, another door cracked open. Oklahoma's attorney general announced the indictment of megachurch pastor Robert Morris in response to child sex abuse allegations from the 1980s. Morris pleaded not guilty to the charges, which were built on a novel interpretation of an archaic state law with roots in Oklahoma's founding on the wild frontier, originally meant to stop marauding criminals from running out the clock on the statute of limitations by fleeing the state. The women texted each other: Could the same law apply to Campbell? If they shared their stories with reporters like Morris' accuser did, would that make a difference? Jackson thought of all that she'd endured and overcome. The debilitating panic attacks and sleepless nights searching Campbell's name online. The bottle of pills she didn't swallow. The trigger she didn't pull. Campbell had taken her innocence, she said, but not her faith. God wanted her alive for a reason. And he had given her Williams, Almond, Creed and now Ball because he knew she couldn't do it alone. For decades, Campbell taught his followers that the Lord had a purpose for each of them. The women had found theirs, and they planned to finish the job. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, or go to to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, or visit You can also access the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) online chat service at article was originally published on
NBC News
12-05-2025
- NBC News
They say their children's pastor sexually abused them. As adults, they united in a quest to send him to prison. September Bottoms for NBC News U.S. news The 40-year mission to stop a Pentecostal preacher accused of raping children Joe Campbell says his calling is to share God's love, but a group of women say he sexually abused them as girls. An NBC News investigation uncovered decades of missed warnings and failures to act.
By Mike Hixenbaugh, Roberto Daza and Antonia Hylton TULSA, Okla. — The women have spent decades trying to forget, but some memories haunt them. The way the children's pastor wrapped them in his arms. The terrifying stories he told about demons and the warmth in his voice as he promised to protect them. The chill of his hands on parts of their bodies where no grown man's hands should be. The blood some of them found in their underwear afterward. They can still picture the spaces where it happened: A church nursery. A childhood bedroom. His garage during a youth group sleepover. This, they say, is the dark secret behind the public ministry of Joseph Lyle Campbell, a magnetic Pentecostal preacher who built a national following with fiery sermons on sin, salvation and America's moral decline. As Campbell tells it, he was a teenager when God gave him a mission: to share his love of Jesus with children. In the decades since, as he evangelized from church to church across the South and Midwest, he has repeatedly faced accusations of child sexual abuse, an NBC News investigation found. 'Joe Campbell needs to be in jail,' said Cheryl Almond, who says he lured her to his home when she was a teenager, pushed her onto a bed and penetrated her with his finger. 'I just pray one day I can hear a judge tell Joe, 'You're guilty, and here's your sentence.'' For more on this story, watch NBC's 'Nightly News with Lester Holt' tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT. Almond is one of five women who told NBC News that Campbell, now 67, sexually assaulted them when they were children in the 1970s and '80s. In Oklahoma, Kerri Jackson says he molested her once to twice a week for three years starting when she was about 9. In Arkansas, Lisa Ball says Campbell invited her to live with him after she became a teen mother, then raped her repeatedly. In Missouri, Kim Williams had just turned 15 when she says Campbell reached his hand up her shorts at his parsonage. In that same home, Phaedra Creed says Campbell sexually assaulted her night after night, at age 14, while his wife and children slept upstairs. They had been taught as children that God hears all prayers, but getting adults to listen was another story. Starting in the 1980s, when they were still teenagers, some of Campbell's accusers took their accounts to pastors, to local police and prosecutors, to child welfare workers and to federal law enforcement. At every turn, Campbell denied the allegations and remained in ministry. The pattern of missed warnings and failures to intervene repeated for decades. Congregants reported sexual misconduct as early as 1983, when Campbell was a young preacher rising in the Assemblies of God, the world's largest Pentecostal denomination. To the children, he was an almost mythical figure, anointed by the Lord with the power to speak in tongues, heal the sick and exorcise evil spirits. Parents trusted him to keep their kids overnight and bring them to youth revivals — until some returned with stories about Campbell showing them pornography and whisking little girls behind closed doors. Church leaders let Campbell continue preaching for years, freeing him to abuse more children, his accusers say. The Assemblies of God told NBC News the allegations reached its national office in 1988; the Springfield, Missouri-based denomination banished Campbell the following year and said the accusations 'were reported to the appropriate legal authorities.' Campbell didn't let that keep him from his calling. He moved to the heart of the Missouri Ozarks in the early 1990s to start a nondenominational church and a youth campground seemingly named after himself — Camp Bell, which he has described as 'a real life Neverland.' The faith community he built there became a haven for people accused or convicted of sexually abusing children, NBC News found. Campbell allowed these individuals to preach, teach Sunday school and volunteer with children. In 2016, he went to work for the PTL Television Network, a Christian station founded by the disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker that has broadcast Campbell's sermons across the country. Campbell didn't respond to numerous inquiries from NBC News, which included letters, phone calls, emails and visits to his home and children's camp in Missouri. After reporters contacted Campbell, the PTL Television Network, which also didn't respond, removed years of his sermons from its website. Campbell says he started evangelizing at 13, dubbed the 'kid preacher' in the Missouri farm town where he grew up. He has described his childhood as rough and his father as abusive. As a minister, he gravitated to children from troubled homes like his. Those children came to see him as a father figure, a rugged protector with inviting hazel eyes. Several said he taught them the abuse he inflicted was an expression of his love for them. Their special secret. 'That was Joe,' Creed said. 'He could comfort you and make you feel warm. Stroke your face, push your hair behind your ears — at the same time, just looking for yet another way to draw you into him.' In telling their stories over and over, the women created a written record dating back to the 1980s. NBC News reviewed hundreds of pages of letters and emails, police and court files, and harrowing diary entries that Jackson wrote in looping cursive as a teenager. Their accounts are also supported by interviews with more than two dozen people — friends and family, former church members, retired law enforcement officials — who say they learned of the women's allegations years ago. Nine of them, including four men, described their own run-ins with Campbell as children. They said the pastor showed them pornography during sleepovers, handed them sex toys in his bedroom, made lewd comments or touched them in ways that made them uneasy. Do you have a story to share about the Assemblies of God's handling of sex abuse allegations? Email reporter Mike Hixenbaugh. For years, Campbell's accusers felt alone. Anxiety attacks and relationship struggles stalked some into adulthood. Then, one by one, as if God had willed it, they found each other. Beginning in 2000, they developed a sisterhood around their shared trauma. If their former pastor was on a mission from God to reach children, their bond gave them a divine purpose of their own: to send him to prison. Their efforts failed every time. But last year — inspired by the firestorm an Oklahoma grandmother unleashed when she accused celebrity pastor Robert Morris of molesting her as a child — they decided to try again. On a sunny afternoon in December, Jackson, Almond, Williams and a few supporters gathered outside a Tulsa police station. Under the bright blue Oklahoma sky, a retired pastor asked them to join hands. 'Lord, I pray that you will use these women and their story to stop the awful abuse in religious settings by men who think they will never be held accountable.' A moment later, Jackson strode inside. An officer pulled out a pen and notebook. Then, one more time, she began to tell her story. If the doors of Eastland Assembly of God were open, Kerri Jackson and her two siblings were there. Sunday mornings. Sunday evenings. Wednesday nights. Prayer meetings. Sleepovers. Vacation Bible school. 'It had to be hell or high water for us to miss church,' she said. Jackson was in kindergarten when Campbell and his wife, Becky, arrived in Tulsa in the late 1970s. The Eastland children loved his elaborate puppet shows and the tales of good and evil he told on church camping trips. Everyone could tell Jackson was his favorite. She was about 9 the first time the attention turned physical, she said. It was around 1981. She and a group of kids were at church making posters. Campbell said he needed to run home for markers. Jackson jumped in the car. Just the two of them. At his house, she said, Campbell started acting strangely. Putting his hands on her. Following her as she backed away. She wrote about it six years later when she began recording memories of Campbell in a green spiral notebook. I tryed getting away by going into his hall closet but he came in there with me. The top of her head didn't quite reach the middle of his chest. He crouched down, and she felt the scratch of his mustache. She remembers trembling in the darkness and asking if he'd ever touched other girls that way. Over the next three years, she said, it happened again and again. Jackson journaled about staying the night with the Campbells after babysitting their three young children. After Becky and the kids went to bed, she said, Campbell put on the Playboy Channel. We were watching some movie and he starting running his hands up and down my body, feeling me, and kissing me. Then there was the night when Jackson said Campbell cornered her in his garage and locked the door during a church sleepover. He removed her clothes and directed her to lie on a green beanbag chair. Then, she said, he violated her with his tongue and raped her as other girls banged on the door, calling for them to come out. It hurt so bad, and I tryed telling him things like he's to big, im to small and I was scared. Jackson struggled to understand the contradictions. Campbell delivered soul-stirring sermons about Jesus' love and the lake of fire awaiting those who refused to accept him. How could a man so close to God do the things he did to her? Some adults noticed the contradiction, too. Around 1983, a Sunday school teacher and founding member of Eastland began hearing complaints from congregants who said Campbell touched girls inappropriately. Jackson, honoring Campbell's instruction to keep it secret, wasn't one of them. The teacher, who has since died, brought her concerns to senior pastor J.W. Ellsworth, according to four friends and family members who said they spoke to her at the time. The teacher told them that Ellsworth, who died in 2018, rebuked her for gossiping. Soon after, Campbell left Eastland for another Assemblies of God church, in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, about an hour and a half from Tulsa. It was there that he and his wife invited 14-year-old Lisa Ball to live with them. Ball's mother had left when she was 7; she'd gotten pregnant at 13. After Ball put the baby up for adoption, the Campbells were supposed to be her fresh start. The pastor had different plans, she said. Around Christmas 1984, Jackson, 12 at the time, visited the Campbells in Arkansas and spent the week with Ball. One evening, Campbell snapped a photo of the girls together inside an old movie house he'd been fixing up for his youth group. Afterward, Jackson and Ball said, he molested them in front of each other. The girls never discussed it. Campbell continued to see Jackson on return trips to Tulsa, but she started resisting his advances more forcefully, she said, and the abuse finally ended. He moved on to a megachurch in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and from there to another Assemblies of God church in Versailles, Missouri. Jackson tried to move on, too, but as she entered high school and more fully understood what Campbell had done, she began pleading with God for permission to kill herself. In 1987, the summer before her sophomore year, she got a call that haunts her. A friend from Eastland, Kim Williams, had been invited to travel with Campbell to Missouri to help with vacation Bible school. Williams asked her to come along. Jackson's heart raced as she contemplated whether to warn her. For 38 years, she has regretted her split-second decision. She told her friend no thank you, then hung up the phone. Williams couldn't understand why none of her Eastland Assembly girlfriends wanted to come. She rode up front with Campbell on the four-hour drive from Tulsa to Versailles; Becky sat in back. Williams celebrated her 15th birthday on the trip. She was creeped out, she said, when Campbell's brother scooped her over his shoulder as Campbell spanked her 15 times, and again when Campbell made sexual comments about a woman at his church with intellectual disabilities. But the moment that shattered her sense of safety came toward the end of the week. Certain details are etched in her memory. The peppermint candy she held as Campbell stood behind the couch and started rubbing her shoulders. The rerun of 'Gunsmoke' on the television. The chill that rushed through her as he silently reached down the front of her tank top. He came around front; she focused on the candy. His hand crept up her thigh; she held her breath. He moved his finger; she jumped to her feet. The phone on the wall was baby blue. She remembers grabbing it and dialing home. Bawling, she told her father she wanted to leave; she didn't say why. Campbell took the phone, she said, and, with his wife standing nearby, told her dad that everything was fine. Williams was just homesick. He said he would put her on the next flight to Tulsa. That afternoon, she remembers the Campbells scolding her for disrespecting them. She flew home the next morning. Afterward, Jackson called. She asked about the trip. Williams lied and said it was fun. Jackson was quiet. Then she asked: Did he touch you? Through tears, the girls told each other everything. Then they discussed what they were going to do about it. That October, Jackson, 15, called Campbell and confronted him. They spoke for about 45 minutes, according to notes she scribbled afterward. He said he thinks we're being taped ... ... told me he still loved + cared for me ... ... told me he would deny it all the way to the end. She hung up, angrier than ever. Jackson was done keeping Campbell's secret. At the urging of her best friend, she went to Eastland's new senior pastor, David Torgerson. Torgerson appeared to take the matter seriously. That fall, he collected letters from Jackson, Williams and other teens who said Campbell had violated them. Torgerson, now in his 80s, could not be reached by reporters. He took his findings to Assemblies of God officials, leading them to convene a hearing at the denomination's Southern Missouri District Council in Springfield on Feb. 4, 1988. Jackson was summoned to testify. She woke up feeling nervous. She put on a purple corduroy dress with a white lace collar that her mother had made. Torgerson and Eastland youth pastor Larry Kloefkorn drove. As soon as Jackson walked inside, she was startled to see Campbell and his wife waiting in the lobby. She wrote about the trip in her diary that night. Joe sat there and looked straight at me w/ the most creepest look on his face. She retreated to a bathroom and cried. Then Torgerson and Kloefkorn led her into a conference room. Two dozen Assemblies of God pastors sat around a U-shaped table. Jackson stood at the center. The men asked her how it began, where he touched her, who she told. One asked her to describe Campbell's penis. Kloefkorn, the youth pastor, said it seemed that the men were treating Jackson like a defendant rather than a victim. Afterward, they waited in the lobby while the Campbells told their side. Becky's father, a prominent Assemblies of God pastor who has since died, joined for support. Then the men invited everyone back inside. Jackson felt as if she might throw up. One of the men told Jackson to place her hand on a Bible, then asked if she and Campbell ever had intercourse. She must have answered too quietly the first time. When asked to repeat herself, she shouted: 'He tried, got it in me, and I got scared so he took it out!' Campbell denied everything. At one point, Jackson said, he jabbed his finger and accused her of lying. In a statement to NBC News, pastor Don Miller, the Assemblies of God's southern Missouri district superintendent, said none of the council's current leaders were involved in Jackson's hearing. He said the council no longer requires victims to testify in front of their alleged abusers in sexual misconduct cases. 'We pray that those who experienced trauma from the actions of Mr. Campbell can find healing and closure,' Miller said. Jackson was inconsolable on the drive home in 1988, convinced that the men didn't believe her. Convinced that Campbell had them under his spell. She vented that night on diary pages lined with pink flowers. God, I hope he rots in HELL! To hear him tell it in sermons, Campbell has experienced trials and triumphs so epic, his life could be a tale out of the Old Testament. He was 21 when he made a bargain with God after being ejected 56 feet in a car crash. His body slammed into a stop sign, he says, breaking his neck. Lying on a train track, he remembers praying: 'You give me another chance ... I will do anything you ask me to do.' God spared him, he says, and in the years after, blessed him with the power of the Holy Spirit. He was given the gifts of prophecy and faith healing. Once, he says, he raised a man from the dead. And in 1988, he convinced the men leading the Assemblies of God district council to take his side, just as Jackson had feared. They shared their conclusion in a letter, which Kloefkorn said he reviewed, and allowed Campbell to continue leading Versailles First Assembly. Seven months after the hearing, he invited a new child into his home. Phaedra Creed had never met her father. Her mother struggled with addiction and was living in another state. But her pastor wanted to take her in. She remembers jumping up and down and screaming after Campbell told her. He and his wife went to court to make the guardianship official, and, in September 1988, they set up a room for Creed in the basement of their parsonage, a ranch home across a parking lot from the church. The 14-year-old had caught Campbell's attention while singing in the church choir, she said. He told her God had special plans for her. 'Many are called,' he would say, quoting scripture, 'but few are chosen.' One night she was lying awake clutching her Bible after seeing Campbell cast a demon out of a man at church, shouting: 'In the name of Jesus!' It terrified her. That night, the pastor came to comfort her, and she felt safe in his arms. Within weeks, though, she wondered if the real demon was the one tucking her in at night. It started with a bedtime kiss on the lips, she said, and quickly escalated. Three months later, Creed sat in an interview room at the Versailles Police Department. Afterward, the police chief typed his notes: THE SUBJECT JOE CAMPBELL ENTERED THE VICTIMS BEDROOM AND HAD INTERCOURSE... BETWEEN 15 AND 20 DIFFERENT TIMES... CAMPBELL COMMENTED SEVERAL TIMES ON HER BEING HIS PRECIOUS BABY... A doctor's examination confirmed Creed had been penetrated. Campbell was arrested and released on $25,000 bond. After a preliminary hearing, a judge found sufficient evidence to send the case to trial. While it was pending, Creed went to Springfield to testify in the same room where Jackson had stood. Confronted by the results of their earlier decision to let Campbell continue preaching, the Assemblies of God's Southern Missouri District Council banned him from the denomination. The months that followed were hell, Creed said. She moved in with her mother, who had returned to Missouri. Some church members accused Creed of seducing Campbell, whispering insults behind her back at the grocery store. They said Satan was using her to take down the church. Back in Tulsa, Jackson and Williams said they received subpoenas to testify. The girls weren't told the name of the alleged victim, but they were eager to support her. They never got the chance. Weeks before the case was set for trial in October 1989, Creed's therapist warned her mother, Rita Aye, that testifying might break her daughter, who had moved to a group home for children suffering severe psychological distress. 'She had gone through enough,' Aye said of their decision to not continue with the case. When the charges were dismissed, Campbell's lawyer accused Creed of fabricating the story, telling a local newspaper the teen did it to retaliate after 'Mr. Campbell denied her request to marry a 32-year-old man.' For years afterward, Creed panicked anytime a thunderstorm rolled in; it had been raining, she said, the night Campbell took her virginity. Eventually she learned to bury the memories, pushing the pain deep inside. After being ousted from the Assemblies of God, Campbell says God gave him a new assignment: to start a church of his own and build a children's camp on 40 remote acres in the Missouri Ozarks. The Family Worship Center of Marshfield — later renamed Lakeside Family Worship — had only a handful of members when it opened in an old Methodist church in 1990 but grew into the hundreds. Campbell soon launched Camp Bell on a wooded lot 20 minutes away. Volunteers added a swimming pool, showers and dorms for the thousands of children who visited. 'For one week the kids are separated from the world and can focus on God, and it changes their lives,' Campbell told a newspaper years later. 'They're never the same.' As he was rebuilding his career, the women who say he abused them were starting families and quietly struggling to cope with the lingering harm. Cheryl Almond, who says Campbell molested her around 1978, thought for decades she was the only one. After returning to Eastland to raise her own children, Almond finally built the courage to tell someone. She confided in her spiritual mentor, a longtime church member. The woman gasped: 'Oh my gosh, you too?' Almond froze: 'What do you mean, 'You too'?' The woman told her about Jackson, whose family had long since left the church, and about others who had accused Campbell of abuse. Horrified to learn he'd found a new flock of believers in Missouri, Almond sent Campbell a letter at Lakeside Family Worship in 1999. 'After years of hiding this awful sin, God has instructed me to write this letter,' Almond wrote. 'Such a great pain you have caused to me, my family, and so many other great children.' She received no reply. A year later, Almond felt God nudging her again: It was time to find Jackson. Jackson was 27, newly divorced, raising a first grader and struggling with panic attacks that hit with such ferocity, they left her hyperventilating and vomiting. The first one came as she was walking near a forest; the smell reminded her of Campbell's family farm in Missouri. Ever since, she'd been begging God to help her forget. Now Almond was on the phone, asking to meet. Jackson invited Almond to her house; Williams joined them. Around a kitchen table, they shared their stories, finding parallels. After years of feeling trapped by grief that no one else could understand, each of them felt empowered. Together, they decided to channel their pain into holding Campbell accountable. Remembering the subpoena she'd received in 1989, Jackson called authorities in Versailles and convinced someone to pass her number to the victim in the case. A few days later, Creed called. And then there were four. 'Just knowing that I wasn't alone,' Creed wrote to the women the next day. 'I can't even express those feelings.' Over the following decade, emails between the women describe a flurry of efforts to alert authorities in Oklahoma and Missouri. A message to the FBI went unanswered. Tulsa police told them the statute of limitations had passed and suggested they file a report where Campbell lived now. When Jackson tried calling the sheriff's office in Webster County, Missouri, she thought she heard Campbell's brother on the other end. He worked in dispatch, they learned. They filed reports nonetheless, but it didn't matter. Years rolled by, with no results. Refusing to quit, Almond adopted a verse from Ecclesiastes as her mantra: 'To everything there is a season ... a time to be silent and a time to speak.' In 2005, she heard Campbell was returning to Tulsa for the funeral of a former Eastland member and decided to act on it. A program listed him as one of the pallbearers. Afterward, Almond got in line to greet him. She grabbed his hand with both of hers and reintroduced herself, according to Almond and a woman who witnessed the exchange. 'He said, 'Oh, I remember you,'' Almond said. 'And I said, 'Well, I remember what you did to me.'' Campbell's face reddened, she said, and he tried to pull away. Almond squeezed tighter. She told him she knew about all the other kids, too. Appearing flustered, Campbell stammered, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' according to Almond and the other woman. Then she let go, and he headed for his car. After years of calls to local authorities, the women's allegations against Campbell became an open secret among law enforcement in Webster County. Two sheriff's deputies — each harboring suspicions about the charismatic preacher and his secluded children's camp — tried to investigate, they said, but no new victims emerged, and no charges were filed. Susie Dodson, a former chief deputy of the sheriff's office, said she spent a year looking into Campbell around 2000 after receiving a tip from a community member about sexual misconduct. Dodson, now retired, said she regrets not doing more. A decade later, Webster County detective John Everett said he noticed the preacher's habit of showing up at court to support people charged with sex crimes. He also learned of registered sex offenders who attended Campbell's church. Everett vented his concerns in a 2010 email to Jackson after hearing about her allegations from decades earlier. 'Ministering to them is one thing,' he wrote, 'but he takes it to far, in my opinion.' Everett, now retired, said he couldn't recall the names of the sex offenders. But an NBC News review of court records and social media posts found that, from 2008 to 2014, Campbell welcomed at least four people accused or convicted of sexual abuse into his congregation, allowing them to work with children. Around 2010, a mother said Campbell tried to silence her after a female Sunday school teacher repeatedly molested her 14-year-old son, arguing that such matters are best handled within the church. The teacher — who lived in a home owned by Campbell near his children's camp — confirmed that Campbell tried to get her to strike a deal with the victim's family to stop them from going to the police. She later confessed to the abuse and was convicted of statutory sodomy. A couple of years later, Campbell's wife, Becky, defended the church's decision to let a man convicted of statutory sodomy volunteer with children at Lakeside Family Worship, writing in response to criticism on social media, 'leadership is aware and will protect.' The man who raised the issue said he was ostracized for speaking out. Becky Campbell didn't respond to requests for comment. And after pastor Stephen Shorey pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl he had been counseling while leading an Assemblies of God church outside Tulsa, Shorey found refuge in Marshfield, where he often guest preached at Lakeside and worked with children at Camp Bell. He didn't respond to messages. In 2014, after Shorey was imprisoned for violating the terms of his probation, Campbell vouched for his friend in a letter to a judge, describing Shorey as 'one of the best Evangelists we have ever heard.' Jackson and the other women knew none of this, but what they saw of Campbell's ministry online was enough to make their stomachs turn. They found photos of him at his camp — which he continues to operate — lounging on a bunkbed and doing baptisms in the pool, surrounded by kids. In sermons broadcast by the PTL Network, Campbell — now with gray hair and weathered skin — presented himself as a defender of the vulnerable. In 2022, he talked about the many wayward children he and his wife had taken in over the years. Some still call him Dad, he said. A year later, he preached passionately about what happens to people who have been abused. They wall themselves off from loved ones, he said, and go through life mentally and spiritually crippled. 'They will turn toward drugs, alcohol, sexual sins,' Campbell said, his voice rising. 'And it's because of a wounded heart.' Only God, the preacher said, can heal someone's heart. After giving her statement to an officer in December, Jackson exited the Tulsa police station and let out a deep breath. 'I'm OK,' she told the others. Despite decades of disappointment, the women were hopeful. They believed recent changes to Oklahoma law might allow the statute of limitations to be extended. While they waited to hear from the police, they spoke to others with twisted childhood memories from Eastland Assembly — including two who singled out Campbell's wife. Sarah Boren, who grew up with Jackson, said Becky Campbell played sexually graphic videos in hotel rooms on church trips. And Jody Kirk told his cousin, Kim Williams, that both Campbells showed him porn and pulled out sex toys at church sleepovers; once, he said, Becky instructed him, at around age 12, to put a dildo down his underpants. 'Becky not only knew,' Kirk said, 'Becky was very much a part of it.' As the stories accumulated, the women convinced themselves this time would be different. They had spoken to The Wartburg Watch, a website focused on exposing abuse in churches, hoping to inspire others to come forward. Then, in January, Jackson's phone rang. The head of the Tulsa police department's special victims unit told her there was nothing they could do. It was the same story: The allegations were too old. Yet another door slammed shut. The police department made the determination after consulting with prosecutors, officials said. Jackson was upset but undeterred. After rereading her childhood journal for the first time in years, she felt God leading her to track down a girl whose name appeared in it. Lisa Ball, it turns out, lived near her. Four decades after their nightmare evening with Campbell at a movie house in Arkansas, the women met in February at a Mexican restaurant, where they traded memories over chips and salsa. Ball initially hesitated to get involved. Then she learned Campbell was still in ministry. 'I want to see him stop,' she said. 'He needs to pay for what he did.' The sisterhood had grown once more. And in March, as the women debated their next move, another door cracked open. Oklahoma's attorney general announced the indictment of megachurch pastor Robert Morris in response to child sex abuse allegations from the 1980s. Morris pleaded not guilty to the charges, which were built on a novel interpretation of an archaic state law with roots in Oklahoma's founding on the wild frontier, originally meant to stop marauding criminals from running out the clock on the statute of limitations by fleeing the state. The women texted each other: Could the same law apply to Campbell? If they shared their stories with reporters like Morris' accuser did, would that make a difference? Jackson thought of all that she'd endured and overcome. The debilitating panic attacks and sleepless nights searching Campbell's name online. The bottle of pills she didn't swallow. The trigger she didn't pull. Campbell had taken her innocence, she said, but not her faith. God wanted her alive for a reason. And he had given her Williams, Almond, Creed and now Ball because he knew she couldn't do it alone. For decades, Campbell taught his followers that the Lord had a purpose for each of them. The women had found theirs, and they planned to finish the job. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, or go to to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, or visit You can also access the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) online chat service at Mike Hixenbaugh Mike Hixenbaugh is a senior investigative reporter for NBC News, based in Maryland, and author of "They Came for the Schools." Roberto Daza Roberto Daza is a producer and cinematographer with the NBC Digital Docs team, based in New York. Antonia Hylton Antonia Hylton is a correspondent for NBC News. Ala'a Ibrahim contributed.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Goodbye blue: Assemblies of God starts big remodel of headquarters
SPRINGFIELD, MO. The bluest building in the Ozarks is undergoing a major remodel that'll drastically alter the look of the longtime landmark. In recent days, construction crews have started work on a major multi-million-dollar makeover of the Assemblies of God National Office at 1445 N. Boonville Ave. A rendering on site (see photo below) shows the big changes in store for the building. This week, contractors have started removing some of the old blue exterior panels and replacing them with sections of dark glass. But, the color change appears to be just one element of the overall plan. A rendering on a sign in the construction zone shows a new multi-story wing on the south side of the building. There will also be a new entrance driveway and parking. Building permits filed with the City of Springfield also reveal several interior changes are taking place. Ozarks First reached out to the General Council of the Assemblies of God for additional details about the project, but we haven't heard back from them. The area around the AG campus has become a beehive of activity in recent weeks. Construction is also taking place across Campbell Ave. on the new Pipkin Middle School. Springfield Public Schools purchased the 8.86-acre property from the denomination back in January. The former AG-owned buildings on the site were demolished in recent months to make way for the new school set to open in 2027. The Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world, moved its headquarters to Springfield in 1914 just four years after the group's founding. According to the A/G's website, the organization constructed its first buildings on its current site (a Gospel Publishing House production plant and office building) in 1949. That was followed by the construction of a new four-story administration building facing Boonville Ave. in 1962. Additional expansions resulted in a new six-story distribution center in 1972 and a shipping warehouse in 1980. The Assemblies' Springfield office serves as an administrative and ministry base for the denomination's United States arm, which has 13,000 churches and 3 million members. Across the world, the group claims nearly 70 million members. According to data from the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, more than 700 people are employed at the General Council of the Assemblies of God National Office. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KOLR -
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
James River Church leaves Assemblies of God
OZARK, MO – The largest Assemblies of God church in Missouri has severed formal ties with its denomination. On Wednesday evening, James River Church announced that its Board of Trustees had decided to leave the Springfield-based Assemblies of God organization. In a media statement, the church explained, 'We are thankful for the Assemblies of God, and we intend to continue partnering with the Assemblies of God in a variety of ways – including our continued support of missionaries and missions efforts to take the Gospel around the world. In addition, the announcement stated, 'James River Church is not changing its doctrine, and the church remains committed to preaching the Bible and impacting the local community and the world for the cause of Christ.' The release did not provide a reason for the church breaking ties with the Assemblies of God. James River Church was founded in 1991 as James River Assembly of God. The church quickly outgrew its original home in a south Springfield shopping center and moved into a new campus on S. Southwood Avenue. The congregation then built and moved into a new multi-million dollar facility in north Ozark. The church, which has grown to become one of the largest churches in the country, has expanded to include several satellite campuses in the Springfield area and one in Joplin. According to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, nearly 9,000 people attend the Ozark campus alone each week, making it the largest congregation in the state. Several years ago, James River dropped the 'Assembly' from its name and replaced it with 'Church.' The move was in line with the trend of many congregations dropping denominational names in hopes of appealing to the public. Despite the change, James River retained its full affiliation with the Assemblies. This is a developing story. Ozarks First will update this story when additional details become available. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
