SHAWNEE (OK)
The Oklahoman [Oklahoma City OK]
April 11, 2025
By Jessie Christopher Smith
- A lawsuit alleges the Shawnee First Church of the Nazarene covered up the sexual abuse of children by a donor and former board member.
- The accused, Charles Sulivant, 92, faces criminal charges related to the alleged abuse.
- The victims are seeking damages exceeding $75,000.
(Editor’s note: This article contains descriptions of child sexual abuse that some readers may find disturbing.)
The Shawnee First Church of the Nazarene is facing a civil suit amid allegations of a coverup after a church donor was charged with sexually abusing four women when they were children.
Several women, remaining anonymous in a lawsuit filed last month, allege that Charles Sulivant, a donor and former board member at the First Church of the Nazarene in Shawnee, stalked and abused children at the church. Their suit accuses the church of not only knowing about the abuse but also covering it up by threatening anyone who discussed it or attempted to report it.
The lawsuit was filed in Oklahoma County District Court.
Sulivant, now 92, was charged in November in Pottawatomie County District Court with two counts of lewd or indecent acts to a child under age 16 related to the accusations in the civil filing. Court filings state that various incidents involving Sulivant took place between 2008 and 2013.
“For years, Plaintiffs suffered in silence because (the church) refused to protect them,” lawyers for the alleged victims wrote. “Only recently did Plaintiffs learn that those they trusted within the church knew about Sulivant all along and could have easily prevented their suffering.”
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One victim was a 15-year-old girl who was groped by Sulivant while in the church’s administrative office in 2008, according to the lawsuit.
The girl and her mother brought the accusations to Johnny Stephens, the church pastor at the time, who denied them and defended Sulivant, according to the lawsuit. The pastor also privately told the girl she was a “bad kid” and that her story would not be believed, the girl alleged. Stephens added that if she tried speaking up, Sulivant would leave the church, it would lose his significant tithes, and her mother would be out of a job, according to the suit.
Stephens then told the mother he would call the Shawnee Police Department, but the family later found out he never called the police, the suit alleges.
Another alleged victim was a 9-year-old girl. She claimed that in 2009 Sulivant lured her to his truck in the church parking lot, where he began kissing her neck and trying to “get under her clothes,” according to the suit. She said she was eventually able to break free of his grip and flee to a restroom.
“To this day, she remembers what she was wearing, how scared she was, and how disgusting she felt,” the lawsuit states. “Her self-image was destroyed. To this day no guy can hug her or touch her without her remembering what Sulivant did.”
When the 9-year-old’s mother reported her daughter’s abuse to the church pastor in 2016, “he had already known of at least four other girls that Charles Sulivant had ‘tried something with,’” according to the suit. At the time, Stephens told the mother his way of taking care of the issue was by not allowing Sulivant to be away from the foyer without his wife.
Another woman alleged that when she was 18 years old in 2011, Sulivant came up behind her, rubbed her body and tried kissing her while she was at the church’s gym. He told her, “I could really go for a girl like you,” before she turned her head away and ran, as detailed in the suit.
When the 18-year-old’s parents confronted Stephens about what happened, he brought the woman’s parents and Sulivant into his office, according to the suit. Sulivant did not deny the allegations, but Stephens said Sulivant “was just confused” and might have dementia, according to the suit.
The suit also claims that the pastor told the 18-year-old’s parents that Sulivant would not be allowed anywhere but the lobby and that he could no longer be alone with women or girls. But he did not tell Sulivant’s previous issues to the family and did not report the incident to the police, according to the suit.
One more woman alleged she was abused by Sulivant from 2008 to 2012, starting when she was 8 years old. Sulivant would inappropriately touch her chest underneath her dress, kiss her on the mouth, and spin her around and call her his “little girlfriend,” as detailed in the suit.
The woman said she stopped wearing dresses to church because of what Sulivant was doing, but that he regularly engaged in this behavior with her until she was 12, according to the suit.
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When her mother reported Sulivant to the pastor, Stephens instead said that Sulivant “was just being friendly,” according to the suit. He also did not let the complainant’s family know about Sulivant’s prior incidents and, again, did not report Sulivant to the police, per the suit.
It wasn’t until March 2024, the suit alleges, that one of the women found out from her former Sunday school teacher that Sulivant had allegedly harassed and assaulted her, as well. The teacher told her that Sulivant “made comments about the size of her breasts and constantly tried to hug her and touch her breasts” against her will, and this happened “regularly throughout the late 90s and early 2000s,” as stated in the suit. When the teacher allegedly reported the harassment to Stephens and his wife, “they both shook their head and ignored the report,” according to the suit.
Police uncover multiple attempts allegedly silencing complaints, whistleblower
In August 2024, two Shawnee police detectives visited the pastor and his wife at their home. According to a probable cause affidavit written by one of the detectives, “Johnny (Stephens) knew that I was there to talk about Sulivant. Johnny also asked initially before I told him what girls were involved if I was there to talk about [Jane Doe 1]. When I told him that it was actually the [Jane Doe 2] situation that was reported in 2016, Johnny advised that he was familiar with that situation too.”
When the detectives further questioned Stephens about Sulivant, the pastor said he’d told Sulivant, “Charlie, if you don’t stop this, you’re going to jail, son. You have (got) to stop this,” and “You have got to stay away from these young girls and we are watching you,” according to the affidavit.
Stephens also told investigators he’d reached out to Terry Rowland, the church’s district superintendent, for help with Sulivant. “Johnny stated that Rowland told him that he needed to continue doing what he was doing to handle the situation,” detectives wrote.
The pastor also admitted he did not make any police reports or Occupational Health Service referrals about Sulivant’s alleged actions, saying that he had “never seen Sulivant be inappropriate” but had “always heard about it,” according to the affidavit. Stephens also denied knowing people had lost their jobs or been threatened when trying to go to higher-ups, according to the affidavit, but said people should “sue somebody.”
Detectives later questioned Sulivant during an August interview at the police department. Sulivant admitted Stephens had called him into his office multiple times and told him to stop touching girls, attributing it to “stupidity, I guess,” according to the affidavit. Detectives also wrote that Sulivant described his feelings toward the girls as “lust” and that he “never thought of the girls as being kids,” according to the affidavit.
Sulivant also said he had “repented” for his actions and had apologized to one of the girl’s parents and that he still owed the other girls an apology. “Sulivant admitted that he knows what he did to the girls was inappropriate, criminal and wrong,” the detectives wrote.
Sulivant’s attorney, Ryan Coventon, did not return requests for comment by press time. When contacted by The Oklahoman, Stephens said he could not make any comments on the case, acknowledging that he previously “might have already made too many.” Michael Thompson, legal counsel for the Church of the Nazarene, did not return a phone call to The Oklahoman before publication.
The affidavit also states that a Choctaw Church of the Nazarene youth minister, Drew Dinnel, found out during a summer camp about two of the women’s experiences and attempted to report their allegations to Rowland and his then-lead pastor Mike Meaks.
According to Dinnel’s interview detailed in the affidavit, both church officials said he should not report them and leave it up to the girls’ families. Dinnel told investigators that he sent the appropriate statute to the church authorities and made an anonymous referral to DHS. According to the affidavit, Dinnel was let go from his position about six months later.
“Dinnel also told me that at that time, the church tried to pass a board motion stating that church staff could not report issues like this to DHS,” a detective wrote.
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Victims seek damages arguing gross negligence of church leaders
The alleged victims cited in the lawsuit, now all adults, are pursuing damages from the church in excess of $75,000, arguing that church officials were grossly negligent in their failure to stop Sulivant’s abuse.
Also named as defendants in the lawsuit were the church’s southeast district advisory board, the statewide district organization, and the nationwide Kansas-headquartered Church of the Nazarene as a whole, the women’s attorneys argue.
The church was “aware, or simply did not care, that there was a substantial risk that the policies and customs it promulgated, the practices it condoned, and the negligence and indifference of its agents and employees would — and were — causing serious harm to young girls at the church,” lawyers wrote.
The four women are being represented by Nix Patterson LLP, a law firm headquartered in Texas that specializes in civil claims arising from sexual abuse and assault throughout the country. Attorneys with the law firm also recently represented dozens of women in a New York lawsuit against film director James Toback, who was accused of sexual harassment and assault that allegedly spanned decades.
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Wednesday, a jury awarded a total of $1.7 billion in damages to 40 women in the Toback case.
“The jury’s verdict is about justice,” said Nix Patterson attorney Brad Beckworth in a statement to USA TODAY. “But more importantly, it’s about taking power back from the abusers — and their enablers — and returning it to those they tried to control.”