HOUSTON (TX)
Chron [Houston TX]
October 17, 2024
By Eric Killelea, Religion Reporter
The plaintiffs sought $1 million in relief for the boy’s medical bills and his “pain and suffering.”
Champion Forest Baptist Church in far northwest Houston agreed to pay “minimal money” to settle a civil case that alleges one of its Sunday school teachers beat and sexually assaulted a 4-year-old boy in 2019, an attorney for the church confirmed this week.
“The case, like many lawsuits in North America, was settled by the church’s insurance company,” Marc Sheiness, a Houston-based attorney representing Champion Forest, said in an email Wednesday. “The insurance company paid minimal money to eliminate the expense of ongoing litigation.” In response to additional questions via email, Sheiness declined to disclose the cost of the proposed settlement. He said the amount “was not determined by the church and had nothing to do with the allegations or injuries being claimed.”
The remarks come nearly two years after the suit was filed in Harris County District Court in December 2022. The proposed settlement hashed out this month still has to be approved by Judge Tanya Garrison, who is scheduled to oversee a minor hearing on Monday, Oct. 21.
According to the suit, the plaintiff was attending religious classes at Champion Forest when he was sexually assaulted by a teacher named David Taylor on Jan. 27, 2019. In the suit, Andrew Bivona, the Houston personal injury attorney who represents the boy and his family in the case, accused Champion Forest of negligence, claiming it failed to train its employees and failed to keep the boy safe from Taylor. The suit also claimed that Champion Forest neither investigated nor reported allegations of abuse to law enforcement. Bivona also accused the church of gross negligence via the suit, saying its staff “had actual, subjective awareness of the risks, but proceeded with conscious indifference to the rights, safety, and welfare of the plaintiff.”
Bivona wrote in the suit that the boy has “suffered serious personal injuries and other damages, surely causing lifelong trauma.” The plaintiffs sought $1 million in relief to pay for the boy’s medical bills and for “pain and suffering” in the past and future. Bivona has declined to answer questions about the case “due to confidentiality.” It’s unclear whether a proposed settlement includes any kind of non-disclosure agreement or non-disparagement clause.
Champion Forest Baptist, founded in 1970, is a multi-site megachurch affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. The plaintiffs described how the SBC and its members “have a known history of hiding sexual accusations from the public and have a history of not taking any further actions to report those involved in the accusations to the proper authorities, as had happened in the incident at issue.”
The suit also refers to a separate case in which three Jane Does who claimed they were sexually abused as minors by a youth pastor at Champion Forest sued the megachurch and the SBC in April 2024, alleging negligence and seeking more than $1 million in damages. That case against the church, which remains in litigation, came after ex-minister Timothy Jason Jeltema was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to sexual abuse crimes. Sheiness, who represents Champion Forest in the case, filed a “general denial” response this year in the Harris County district court.
In recent months, advocates for sexual abuse survivors told me they’ve been tracking the most recent Champion Forest case, which was filed after the church’s senior pastor Jarrett Stephens joined the SBC’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force in August 2022. The task force, dubbed ARITF, is a volunteer group charged with launching an online database of abusers within the church. However, SBC and ARITF faced criticism this year for once again releasing a report without including a single named abuser on the database, according to the Religion News Service. SBC leaders said the group’s progress has been slowed due to a lack of funding and due to insurance concerns.
According to the suit, Champion Forest staff didn’t immediately tell the boy’s family about the alleged abuse. Instead, family members found out only after the boy “expressed fear” in attending a women’s ministry program. In a meeting with Campus Pastor Steven Morris, one church leader at Champion Forest apparently “justified” Taylor’s abuse of the boy because Taylor had recently found out his wife had cancer, the suit said.
“Surprisingly, Defendant did not report the incident to law enforcement authorities,” Bivona, the plaintiff’s attorney, wrote in the suit. “Shockingly, Taylor was not fired after these allegations arose but was rather asked by Defendant’s administration to take a break from teaching. There was no communication by Defendant to inform other churchgoers of the incident at issue. Defendant has failed to provide any meaningful assistance to law enforcement or government bodies to facilitate a comprehensive investigation of the incident.”
As of Thursday, Sheiness, Champion Forest Baptist and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office didn’t respond to questions about Taylor’s whereabouts. “As far as the allegations against the church,” Sheiness said via email, “there was an eyewitness who advised the mother within 24 hours of the outcry that the incident did not and could not have occurred as alleged.”