LOUISVILLE (KY)
NBC News [New York NY]
March 26, 2025
By Mike Hixenbaugh
Joel Collier is accused of grooming and sexually abusing Riley Neville beginning when she was 14 and attending music camps where he taught, according to a new lawsuit.
A decade ago, the Salvation Army fired a talented young music director after discovering that he’d sent graphic sexual messages to a child — only for another branch of the ministry to hire him a year later to lead youth camps in a different part of the country, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Louisville, Kentucky.
Those camps are where the music director, Joel Collier, met then-14-year-old Riley Neville in 2017. In the years that followed, she alleges that he sexually groomed and abused her, leading her to attempt suicide. The alleged abuse included sexually explicit text messages, requests to describe her naked body, fondling and, after she turned 18, “non-consensual intercourse” and “perverse, violent, and obscene sexual acts,” according to the lawsuit.
Neville and her family only learned years later that the Salvation Army’s Eastern Territory, headquartered in New York, had in 2014 placed Collier on an internal registry of individuals reasonably suspected of child sex abuse, the lawsuit says. Officials overseeing the Salvation Army’s Southern Territory, based in Atlanta, knew Collier had been flagged as a possible danger to children, but they removed him from the list and hired him anyway, according to the complaint.
NBC News typically does not identify people who say they have been sexually abused, but Neville, who turns 23 this week, said she wanted her name included. She’s seeking damages from the Salvation Army and its subsidiary branches, alleging negligence in hiring and failures in their duty to protect children.
“They’re an organization whose fundamentals are caring for and serving the most vulnerable populations,” Neville said in an interview. “They can’t knowingly hire pedophiles and not be held accountable.”
Collier, now 35, is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit and no longer works for the Salvation Army. He has since moved to the United Kingdom, according to his website. In an email, Collier said he hadn’t read the allegations “but I hope we’re able to find a swift resolution to them.” He didn’t immediately respond after a reporter emailed a copy of the complaint. The Salvation Army didn’t immediately respond to messages. The Salvation Army, a protestant church and international charitable organization best known for its Christmastime bell ringers and red kettles, operates hundreds of Christian community centers, rehab programs, thrift shops and youth camps across the U.S.
As the former music director for the Salvation Army’s Kentucky and Tennessee division, Collier was tasked with leading faith-based music programs in the region. This included attending and leading music camps, where he was expected to tend to the spiritual needs of children in his care, according to the lawsuit.
Collier entered Neville’s life in early 2017, during a period of loneliness and vulnerability following her family’s move from Massachusetts to Tennessee. As a gifted pianist and cornet player, she found purpose and friendship in the Salvation Army’s student music program led by Collier, she said.
That summer, he accompanied her and other students to Texas for an intensive weeklong music camp hosted by the Salvation Army. Throughout the week, Collier shared memories from his childhood with Neville and the other children, including stories of how he “engaged in various sexual endeavors” without his parents, bosses, or pastors finding out, according to the lawsuit.
After the camp ended, Collier texted Neville constantly, the complaint said, with the messages growing more sexual over time. He asked Neville how and whether she shaved her genital area, sharing his own preference for sexual partners to “groom themselves,” according to the lawsuit. He encouraged Neville to share her insecurities and updates on daily life, offering her “special treatment” at music camps while simultaneously working to gain the trust of her mother, the lawsuit said.
A pastor raised concerns to the Salvation Army in 2018 about Collier’s texting with Riley, but no one followed up, according to the lawsuit. Allie Collier for NBC News
Interspersed with messages about personal and spiritual matters, the lawsuit said, Collier shared details of his “unhappy marriage” and described the sexual acts he expected from Neville once she turned 18. “As a result of Collier’s grooming and manipulation, all of Riley’s defenses and boundaries were destroyed,” the lawsuit said. “She had shared every aspect of her life with him and became solely dependent on him.”
NBC News has not independently reviewed text messages and other correspondence described in the lawsuit.
In the summer of 2019, after Neville turned 17, she was riding alone with Collier in a Salvation Army equipment truck, in violation of the ministry’s child protection polices, according to the lawsuit. While driving, the complaint said, he reached across the seat and fondled her vagina.
Afterward, he told Neville he loved her, then sent her a nude photo of his wife, according to the lawsuit. In March 2020, on her 18th birthday, Collier sent Neville a video of himself masturbating, according to the complaint.
At a music camp four months later in Kentucky, Collier repeatedly attempted to initiate sexual contact with Neville, the lawsuit said. Toward the end of the weekend, he got her alone in a room, where he “fondled and kissed her while she cried,” according to the complaint. Neville asked Collier if she could leave, then ran back to her room.
With her view of herself and their relationship warped by years of grooming, the lawsuit said, Collier had dismantled Neville’s capacity to consent to the sometimes-violent sex acts that he performed on her in the months that followed. “I either convinced myself, or was convinced by him, to just sort of play along in order to keep that key piece of my life going,” she said in an interview.
Her parents could see the joy fading from her, but they didn’t know why. In December 2020, and again the following February, Neville attempted suicide, the lawsuit said. In April 2021, her parents finally learned what had been happening and immediately reported the allegations to the Salvation Army, according to the lawsuit. Soon after, they discovered that the Salvation Army’s Southern Territory had hired Collier despite the 2014 report of sexual misconduct. The lawsuit also alleges that two pastors raised concerns to the Salvation Army about Collier texting with Neville and keeping her out past curfew, but no one followed up.
“I’m a fifth generation Salvation Army person,” said Terri Neville, Riley Neville’s mother. “It was an organization we trusted, and they had knowledge they didn’t share with us.”
In 2005, the Salvation Army issued a national policy statement on child sex abuse that established territorial registries that contain the names of individuals previously associated with the Salvation Army who have been credibly accused of child sex abuse. Any former volunteers or employees included on the registry are to be excluded from future hiring, according to the policy, which has since been updated.
Collier landed on the registry in the Salvation Army’s Eastern Territory in 2014, after sending sexually explicit texts to a girl attending a music camp where he worked, the lawsuit said. The complaint describes internal correspondence indicating that former leaders in the Salvation Army’s Southern Territory sought to remove Collier from the registry before hiring him the following year.
In September 2015, the Southern Territory’s top officer at the time, Commissioner Don Bell, had determined that “no additional sanctions regarding Mr. Collier’s participation in Salvation Army program and activities are required,” according to a letter written by one of Bell’s deputies, which was described in the lawsuit. The Salvation Army’s Eastern Territory strongly disagreed with that decision and warned the Southern Territory not to hire Collier, the lawsuit said.
“This should have never happened,” said Boz Tchividjian, Neville’s lawyer, a former prosecutor who spent decades investigating sexual misconduct and child abuse. “Had the Salvation Army followed its own policies, Riley would have never been targeted and groomed and victimized.”
Bell, who has since retired, didn’t immediately respond to messages.
Neville said she still struggles. Music had been at the center of her identity, but after her experience with Collier, it became a painful reminder. About six months ago, she sat down at a piano again for the first time in years. It wasn’t the same, she said. But she hasn’t lost her voice.
“I felt like I needed to do something,” she said of her decision to file the lawsuit. “Because it will keep happening.”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.