Minister accused of sex abuse landed one high-profile job after another

FALLS CHURCH (VA)
Washington Post

January 15, 2025

By Story by Ian Shapira, Videos by Reshma Kirpalani

One weekend in early 1991, Jeff Taylor, the youth minister at a centuries-old church catering to Washington’s elite, invited a boy in his congregation to a religious retreat in Illinois. The 13-year-old from the Falls Church Episcopal in Northern Virginia felt flattered, he later recalled. He said he had admired Taylor, a married man with children, even if Taylor bothered him with questions about how often or whether he masturbated.

On their last night, the man said, he and Taylor stayed at someone’s home in suburban Chicago. Somehow, he said, the pair wound up sharing a bed. Then, Taylor — who years later would lead a Red Cross chapter in Georgia and a fundraising arm at the University of Cincinnati Foundation — fondled the middle-schoolerwith lotion in the middle of the night, the church youth group alumnus recalled.

“He kept saying, ‘You seem stressed out, you seem anxious,’” said the youth group alumnus, now a partner at a financial firm in his 40s, who is speaking for the first time with a news organization about his allegations. “I recall feeling shame. The next morning, Jeff said, ‘Did you feel that, too? This was an evil room, and we need to pray about this room.’”

The alumnus was one of three Falls Church Episcopal youth group members who an independent investigation revealed in April were allegedly sexually abused by Taylor in the 1990s or the early 2000s when they attended the church. The report found that Taylor’s behavior during his employment there constituted “sexual grooming or sexual abuse.” Eleven male students reported that Taylor asked them how frequently they masturbated; six children said he talked with them about the sizes of their penises or his own.

The independent investigation was conducted by Eddie Isler, an employment attorney of the Northern Virginia-based law firm Isler Dare. It was commissioned by the Falls Church Anglican, which was established in 2006 by leaders and other members of Falls Church Episcopal who chose to disaffiliate from the denomination. One of the report’s findings was that the church — first under the Rev. John Yates and later under the Rev. Sam Ferguson — failed to thoroughly investigate sex abuse allegations against Taylor when the rectors were first alerted.

In recent months, several youth group alumni told The Washington Post that the FBI has interviewed them about their experiences with Taylor.

The Post has uncovered details of Taylor’s alleged abuse that extend beyond the IslerDare report, including an account from a California man in his 30s who said in an interview that he began a physical relationship with Taylor when he was in eighth or ninth grade in Atlanta and that their encounters eventually involved intense sexual activity, including sodomy.

Ultimately, throughout three decades, Taylor ministered at multiple churches — two of them high-profile — despite many ofthose organizations either questioning his honesty, investigating him for possible rules violations or learning that Taylor had been accused of sex abuse with the boy on the Illinois trip.

After Taylor was forced out of his final church, was suspended from ministering and resigned his orders as a priest, none of the three institutions that later hired him — the Red Cross, the University of Cincinnati Foundation and the Cincinnati Nature Center — could tell The Post whether they vetted him with his churches.

“The abuse is horrifying in its own right, but what also concerns me is the number of times his behavior was overlooked, left unchecked and protocols broken, enabling him to move from church to church and gaining access to even more students,” said the Rev. Porter “Pete” Taylor, the oldest of Taylor’s four sons, and an Episcopal priest in Georgia.

Reached by phone, Jeff Taylor, 64, who public records say lives in Ohio, declined an interview request. He referred The Post to his attorney, Christopher McDowell, of the law firm Strauss Troy. McDowell said his client has not worked for any religious organization in more than 15 years. He said that Taylor did not want to share his “employment information” because “people have contacted his employers in the past regarding these allegations.”

McDowell added: “We can tell you that he is not working with or around any juveniles. This should not be taken as an admission of anything.”

The Post emailed dozens of questions to McDowell and Taylor. In response, McDowell provided a broad statement, declaring that “no physical evidence or independent corroboration links Mr. Taylor to any abusive conduct.” The report from the IslerDare investigation, he added, “makes up” sexual abuse definitions, “parroting Woke terminology like ‘covert sexual abuse’ found nowhere in the Virginia Code.”

“Many of the fictionalized claims are founded on nothing more than hearsay or double hearsay, which would never stand up in a court of law because they lack inherent reliability,” McDowell wrote. Some accusers, he said, cannot recall the year or location of the alleged abuse, precluding attempts to verify their claims. “This is not a forensic law enforcement investigation but a witch-hunt that should not form the basis of a Washington Post story.”

“Mr. Taylor is deeply troubled by the allegations,” McDowell added, “yet he prays for healing for everyone involved and knows that He who sits in judgment of us all will rightly judge him.”

Isler defended his investigation. “The assertions of Taylor’s counsel are misplaced,” he said. “And I believe the conclusions of the report about Taylor’s conduct are well substantiated by firsthand testimony.”

The revelations about Taylor haveshocked some Falls Church Episcopal alumni and validated the long-held suspicions of other former churchfamilies. The church, which originated in the 1730s, belonged to a parish or governing body whose vestry once included George Washington. During the Civil War, the Union used the church as a hospital. A new church report, though, revealed that its rectors and vestrymen held about 750 enslaved people in bondage between the 1730s and 1860s.

In more recent decades, the church attracted as members or worshipers a slew of prominent Washingtonians — including congressmen from both political parties, a CIA director and Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger.

But in 2006, Yates — the church’s longtime rector and anationally known priest and book author — and many of his parishioners began leaving the U.S. Episcopal Church. They believed that the denomination’s consecration in 2003 of a gay bishop in New Hampshire signified its broader repudiation of Christian orthodoxy. Eventually, they formed the Falls Church Anglican, a 2,000-member congregation and one of the largest within the 1,000-plus churches of the Anglican Church in North America.

Occupying a neo-Gothic building, the Falls Church Anglican remains a home for influential figures. One vestry member is the outgoingchief executive of a Republican super PAC. Another worshiper served as thechief of staff to former vice president Mike Pence, who has also prayed there.

Three days before Thanksgiving, the Right Rev. Chris Warner, Anglican bishop of the Mid-Atlantic Diocese, took the unusual step of publicly announcing he had issued “Godly Admonitions” to Yates andFerguson, his successor. The admonitions criticized them for failing to conduct an investigation into the sex abuse allegations when first informed. Warner warned that if they failed to follow his directives — the details of which were not disclosed — they could face “severe” disciplinary actions.

In his letter, Warner addressed Taylor’s alleged victims directly. “What was done to you by Mr. Taylor was wrong and sinful,” he wrote. “In the event that the civil authorities do not or cannot implement civil justice, be assured the Lord will ultimately do so.”

Isler, whose firm has done some legal work for The Post, wrote in his report that he didn’t contact Taylor “in light of” a possible law enforcement investigation. In a recent addendum, Isler said he met for three hours with two FBI agents assigned to the case.

An FBI spokesperson declined to comment.

Mary Graw Leary, a Catholic University law professor and former federal prosecutor who focuses on human trafficking and the exploitation of children, said the FBI could be involved simply because the alleged abuse occurred in multiple states, which can “implicate federal concerns.” The bureau, she said, sometimes participates because “state investigators have more limits on their investigatory powers outside their jurisdiction.”

Legal experts at the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network say law enforcement authorities, in connection with the two most serious allegations against Taylor, could consider filing state criminal child sex abuse charges in Georgia or Illinois.

In the 1980s, Taylor, thena youth minister at the Winnetka Bible Church in Illinois, distinguished himself with a self-promotional brochure. He was a speaker, a teacher and a counselor. One of his most popular talks: “I Need Intimacy Not Sex.”

Yates brought him to the Falls Church Episcopal as a youth minister by mid-1990, right after he turned 30. Taylor’ssessions involved skits, a student band and a talk by Taylor.

But Taylor, married with young sons, sometimes indulged in unseemly horseplay. He slid his hand between students’ butt cheeks over their clothes or poked his finger into or around the same space — “credit card swipes” and “oil checks” — according to the IslerDare report and Post interviews.

Yates, staffers and some parents knew that Taylor also discussed masturbation with students to teach restraint against “sexual sin,” the law firm’s report said. Youth group alumni told The Post and the independent investigator that Taylor asked them how frequently they masturbated and what they thought of or looked at while doing so; some also said Taylor asked them about the size of their penises. Many of those conversations occurred when Taylor treated kids to one-on-one “Coke dates,” which included stops at fast-food joints and time alone in his parked car.

In an interview with The Post, Yates said he asked Taylor in the 1990s why he was discussing masturbation with the church’s children. Taylor explained he was addressing a gap left by parents avoiding the topic. But, upon learning from the IslerDare report about the frequency, scope and setting of those conversations, Yates said, “I was very shaken and upset.”

In the summer of 1998, in a sermon titled “Pleasing God,” Taylor warned congregants about “sexual immorality.”

“Some will use sexual activity for selfish gains but sexual purity, as God has ordained it, is to be holy and honorable, not passionate lust,” he said, according to a transcript of the sermon.

He encouraged anyone who “struggle[s] with homosexual orientations” to seek out an organization that specializes in gay conversion therapy.

The next summer, he gave a deeply personal sermon. At age 13, Taylor said, he was depressed and started drinking. He engaged in “stupid activities and antics to draw attention away from my pain and my hurt and onto something or someone that I thought the world wanted to have around instead of the real Jeff Taylor.” So, Taylor recalled in the sermon, he asked his ownyouth minister to address his “hidden darkness.” The youth minister’s solution, Taylor recounted, was touring him and others around a funeral home, where they viewed a “display room of caskets.”

Outside of the sanctuary, Taylor’s behavior went beyond antics,according to the IslerDare report and Post interviews.“Some will use sexual activity for selfish gains but, sexual purity, as God has ordained it, is to be holy and honorable, not passionate lust.”— Jeff Taylor, in a 1998 sermon

One youth group alumnus, now in his 40s in New York, told The Post that, in the 1990s, Taylor pursued a frightening line of inquiry with him. “He would say something like, ‘If I paid you 20 dollars to masturbate in front of me right now, what would you do?’” recalled the man, now a marketer in New York. “My answer was, ‘I’d get out of the car.’” Then Jeff asked, ‘Then, why would you do it for free in front of God?’”

Another alumnus, now in his 40s in Bethesda, recalled how Taylor moved his hand toward his private parts while parked in his car on “Coke dates” in Maryland. Sometimes, the Bethesda man swatted Taylor’s hand away. Other times, Taylor touched his genitals over his clothing, he said.

The Post generally does not name victims of alleged sex abuse without their consent.

On March 4, 2001, Taylor gave a confession.

“With the tongue, we tell lies,” Taylor sermonized. “… I know that my tongue has caused injury to my wife, my children, my colleagues, and to parishioners. … Why is Jeff Taylor prone to the sin of the tongue?”

He gave numerousreasons: pride, carnality, Satan.

“Insecurity. This is my root issue,” he said. “I can’t take the time to go into it now, but something happened in my youth. … That insecurity causes me to say ‘yes’ when I should say ‘no,’ causes me to stretch the truth, causes me to not want you to see me as weak.”

About two weeks later, one unidentified vestry member emailed Yates, accusing Taylor of “abusing the truth” and “bullying” the staff, the law firm report said. The vestry member insisted that Yates place Taylor on leave and order him to undergo psychological counseling.

Afterward, Yates jotted down notes about Taylor that he preserved in a supervisor file on him. “We don’t know if we can believe you,” the notes said, according to the IslerDare report. And: “Feel you manipulate facts.”

Around that time, Yates said he urged Taylor to get counseling. “I was close to Jeff and his family, and I cared about them, and it seemed to me that all was not well with him,” Yates told The Post.

But in December 2001, Taylor informed Yates he was leaving to work with youths at the Church of the Apostles in Atlanta, an Anglican congregation. Apostles boasted a 2,800-seat sanctuary, plus 17-foot video screens. Its founding rector, the Rev. Michael Youssef, also led a television and radio program broadcast to millions globally.

Randy Evans, an Apostles attorney who was the ambassador to Luxembourg under President Donald Trump, said Taylor came strongly recommended by the Falls Church Episcopal. McDowell, Taylor’s attorney, said his client “was respected, loved and admired by everyone when he departed” from Virginia for Georgia.

At Apostles, Taylor quickly became popular. But questions about his conduct eventually surfaced.

In late 2003, Jonathan Adams, then an assistant minister at Apostles, said he met with Youssef to talk about Taylor. One issue he said hereported: Taylor was collecting computer disks from a boy that contained pornography. Taylor told Adams that the boy was giving the disks to him so he could monitor and wean him off his habit, said Adams, now the rector of the Trinity Episcopal Church in Upperville, Virginia.

Youssef, through Evans, declined an interview request.

By early 2004, Evans said, Apostles told Taylor that it was investigating whether he had violated various church rules. Evans declined to specify which rules but stressed they weren’t related to sexual misconduct. The church was also looking into whether Taylor viewed pornography on his home computer, which he also used for work, Evans said.

But in April, Taylor announced his resignation. Shortly afterward, he began ministering at Christ Church of Atlanta, a smaller Anglican congregation.

Christ Church required him to sign forms asking if he had ever been investigated for physical or sex abuse and if any prior circumstance would call into question his being trusted with the supervision of young people, according to those documents. Around the same time, a Christ Church founding member vetting Taylor emailed a Christ Church lawyer, stating that an Apostles leader had also endorsed Taylor to him during a phone call. The Christ Church member said the Apostles official assured him that Taylor was not leaving Apostles because of “any sexual misconduct,” the email said.

Evans, the Apostles lawyer, said Apostles received no calls from Christ Church to vet Taylor before he had been hired away.

Later, in November 2004, after Taylor had left Apostles, an Apostles couple wrote a 21-page letter to Youssef, chronicling their family’s meetings with Apostles leaders about Taylor’s “improprieties concerning the young boys and their families in our church.” The letter by Patricia Bentley, a retired physician, and her husband, Fred Bentley, a lawyer, said Taylor “would log on a napkin” various “records” regarding the masturbation habits of children.

Fred Bentley, who’d recentlyrepresented a family of two boys allegedly molested by a Catholic church pastoral aide,said in an interview that when he and his wife met with Youssef to discuss their letter, Youssef said,“I’vewashed my hands of this.” Evans said church officials do not remember the letter or meeting them to discuss it.

In the early to mid-2000s, a boy in the Atlanta area struck up a friendship with Taylor when he was in middle school as part of a youth group that Taylor led outside of Christ Church. But the relationship soon drastically escalated.

The Post is identifying the boy, now an adult in California, by a letter in his first name, D.

Initially, Taylor put his hand on D’s knee and slid it up his leg to see how far he would get, D recalled. Over time,on about a half-dozen occasions, Taylor masturbated him, D said.“I was close to Jeff and his family, and I cared about them, and it seemed to me that all was not well with him.”— John Yates

D sometimes slept at the Taylor house because he was friends with a couple of Taylor’syounger children. Before bedtime, Taylor whispered, “Come see me tonight,” D recalled. At the time, D said he was about 14 or 15 years old.

With Taylor’s family asleep, D entered an empty bedroom. Sometimes, Taylor penetrated him or nearly did, D said.

“It would be too painful or intense and then we’d stop,” D recalled. “The next morning, he’d get up and put on his priest collar and head to the church.”

Taylor found ways to justify their encounters.

“He’d say, ‘This is good that you’re expressing this now and not acting out on this homosexual lifestyle,’” D recalled.

Soon, though, they stopped talking.

“He was in a position of power, and I was a minor,” said D, who works in media. “I wasn’t armed with the knowledge of what consent was, but it was being violated for me all the time.”

By July 2007, the boy allegedly molested by Taylor in Illinois was working as a business manager in the entertainment industry. But that one night lingered. He remembered that Taylor insisted that he keep what transpired a secret and how he complied, fearful of punishment.

Encouraged by a mentor, the victim — whom The Post is identifying as R, a letter in his name — met Yates in Virginia and told him that Taylor sexually abused him.

Yates apologized and appeared shocked, R said. Yates told The Post that he believed R “fully.” Yates said he sought the advice of R’s mentor to understand how to help him, talked with R’s parents and arranged for the church to pay for R to attend sessions with a nationally known sex abuse counselor.

At some point, Yates asked Rwhat he wanted him to do. R said he didn’t know. Privately, he feared that informing police might reveal his name.

“I was still processing what happened all those years ago. I was feeling shame,” R said. “But I came to John because he was the person I trusted who would know what to do. I wanted to do the right thing and make sure this wouldn’t happen to anyone else.”

According to the IslerDare report, Yates and the church’s executive committee determined that Virginia law did not require them to report R’s allegations, partly because he was now well into adulthood. Additionally, Yates told The Post that he believed R preferred to avoid any action that might reveal his identity.

Yates didn’t inform the Episcopal bishop of Virginia, as his congregation had recently disaffiliated from the church over frustrations with its perceived departure from orthodox Christianity and its acceptance of a gay bishop in New Hampshire. Nor did he notify his new Anglican Church bishop, a decision he said he now regrets. The breakup with the Episcopal Church, Yates said in an interview, “was really a tumultuous time” — and the tension was only ratcheting up. He and his followers and members of other divided Episcopal churches in Virginia were preparing for a legal battle that fall over who would get to keep their properties: the Episcopal Church or the breakaway congregants.

R’s case wasn’t the first time Yates had handled a sex abuse allegation at Falls Church Episcopal. In 1993, a former parishioner sued an ex-assistant pastor, alleging that when they belonged or worked at the church, he coerced her into an intimate relationship and sexually abused her. But the lawsuit, which became the subject of a Post front-page story, also named Yates as a defendant. Her complaint, ultimately dismissed, said Yates blamed her for the affair and that he counseled her “in an attempt to control her actions and ensure that she not disclose her sexual abuse to others.” Yates told The Post that he never held her responsible for the relationship. He said his bishop at the time instructed him “not to speak publicly about this with anyone” because the bishop wanted to handle the matter himself.

As for R’s allegations, Yates got Taylor to fly up from Atlanta in September 2007 and confronted him at his Falls Churchoffice.“He was in position of power, and I was a minor.”— an alleged victim of Taylor

It was a tense moment. Taylor, after all, had spoken at some of Yates’s children’s weddings. Now, though, Taylor rocked back and forth on a couch, clutching a pillow, the law firm report said. Yates said Taylor rejected the allegation. But he did admit “that his judgment had not been good” with the boy, the report said.

Taylor quickly called his boss in Georgia — the Rev. Alfred Sawyer, Christ Church’s rector — about the accusations. Taylor “denied sexual contact” butsaid he gave R a back rub in the bed, according to an investigation that Christ Church later initiated.

Yates called Sawyer, too. He recounted Taylor’s reaction in the meeting as “essentially, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to jail,’” the Christ Church probe said.

But Yates kept R’s allegation quiet from his entire congregation. Senior church leaders were concerned that anannouncement could jeopardize R’s anonymity. Still, Yates contacted several former youth group students, parents and staffers, searching for other victims similar to R. He found none, the IslerDare report said.

“If we’d notified the whole congregation with a blanket notification, then I don’t know if it would have served any valuable purpose in terms of getting to the root of what Jeff was up to,” said Carol Jackson, who was the church’s junior warden at the time.

In September 2007, two-plus weeks after confronting Taylor, Yates delivered a sermon titled “Loving My (Gay) Neighbor,” encouraging congregants to maintain friendships with same-sex couples even “when their lifestyle is contrary to God’s will.” Midway, he shifted to address church sexual misconduct, urging anyone abused by a minister to speak with him or another clergy member.

But he didn’t reveal that a sexual abuse allegation had arisen in their own church. Yates told The Post he feared it might lead to the exposure of R’s identity.

Meanwhile, in Atlanta, Christ Church leaders transferred Taylor to run its family life ministry, Sawyer said. Not enough evidence, the rector said, existed to fire him.

But two years later, in 2009, Sawyer said that he and Yates spoke again. At least one more accuser, Sawyer recalled Yates saying, had come forward with allegations against Taylor. Yates said that he doesn’t recall the conversation and that he didn’t know then of more victims.

This time, Christ Church launched an investigation.

Its confidential memo, obtained by The Post, reported that it learned thirdhand about a college student who said that when he was in seventh grade, he went on a trip organized by one of Taylor’s prior, unidentified churches. During the excursion, Taylor asked the boy to perform a sex act, but the boy refused, the memo said.

So, in September 2009, Christ Church forced Taylor’s resignation. It gave him a $52,600 severance over six months, the equivalent of half of his annual salary and tuition and housing allowances, according to his separation agreement obtained by The Post. His exit papers also included his denial of “any unlawful or improper” conduct involving Christ Church members, prior employers or two youth ministries. ButFrank Lyons, the diocesan bishop overseeing Christ Church at the time, told The Post that he “inhibited” ortemporarily banned Taylor from ministering within the denomination. Then, Taylor, who several years earlier had been ordained as a priest, resigned his orders, avoiding an ecclesiastical trial, Lyons said.

Shortly afterward, Taylor and his eldest son, Porter, spoke. His father, Porter said, told him he had left the priesthood and resigned from Christ Church over two “baseless” accusations: that he asked a male student to masturbate in front of him and that he asked a second male student to masturbate him.

Deeply suspicious, Porter began withdrawing from him.

Several months later, in late 2009, Taylor was exploring YMCA jobs, he told his family in an email. But the search wasn’t panning out.

“I could sit back and blame John Yates or blame someone for the situation I am in,” Taylor wrote his family in early 2010. “But does that help? … I learned how to play the victim card real well, but the truth is that I hid behind the victim card rather than step up and take responsibility.”

Soon, another potential job surfaced: executive director of the American Red Cross’s East Georgia chapter. Taylor said he didn’t “know how the various reference checks and background checks being conducted by the Red Cross” were going in an email to his sons in February 2010. “I did not sleep well last night. I had to pray a lot and fight Satan a lot.”

David Waters, the East Georgia Red Cross chapter’s board chairman from 2010 to 2013, said he didn’t call Taylor’s prior employers before hiring him. He said the Red Cross’s staff in Atlanta had passed along Taylor’s name to him and the chapter’s other volunteer board members and he assumed they checked his references.

An American Red Cross spokeswoman said she could not determine whether the organization vetted Taylor with his churches.

Sawyer, the Christ Church rector, said the Red Cross didn’t call him.

During his Red Cross tenure, which began in March 2010, Taylor deployed to New York to aid in Hurricane Irene’s aftermath. One YouTube video shows Taylor discussing fundraising. He even promoted a CPR training on “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

But then, in October 2013, Taylor left.

That fall, he became a fundraiser at the University of Cincinnati Foundation. A foundation spokeswoman declined to say whether it called the churches where he worked.

“We can’t comment on specifics of a former employee’s hiring but can confirm that our reference checks followed protocols,” said Julie Engebrecht, a foundation spokeswoman.

In December 2015, two youth group alumni, Zach Cregger and Ryan Holladay — a godson of Yates’s — met with Yates at his home, the two men told The Post. Theyknew about a serious allegation against Taylor years earlier and urged Yates to reach out to a comprehensive list of alumni. Cregger mentioned friends subjected to Taylor’s explicit conversations. When he was 12, Cregger told Yates, Taylor advised him on masturbation techniques.

“We asked John for help,” said Cregger, a film writer and director. “Instead, he did nothing.”

Yates said that he cared for the two men but believed they hadn’t presented any new, urgent information and that he had done all he could years earlier when R came forward.

In April 2021, a Bethesda couple also wrote to Yates following the loss of their 34-year-old son. In their letter, the parents said he died of complications of chronic liver disease, which they attributed to his alcohol abuse. Before his death, their son told them that he was trying to “numb the pain caused by Jeff Taylor.” The parents’ letter explained that their son, on a trip somewhere with Taylor in middle school, woke up with Taylor on top of him in the bed in the dark, with his face over him, whispering “Shhh!” On another occasion, Taylor touched him inappropriately at Taylor’s house, according to their letter, which they provided The Post.

Yates, by now no longer the Falls Church Anglican rector, alerted its new leadership about the allegations. But the church, whose new rector was Ferguson, “failed to initiate any kind of investigation,” the IslerDare report said.

Ferguson declined an interview request.

In April 2023, the Bethesda couple said they submitted a tip to the FBI, prompting agents to confront Taylor. Afterward, the husband of the couple said, an agent told them that Taylor denied any wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, Taylor’s eldest son, Porter, had learned about all of his father’s primary accusers— and was now urging dozens of youth group alumni to contact the FBI if they had allegations against his dad. That summer, he wrote his parents, declaring their relationship over.

“I will not,” he said, “entertain questions or pushback about my decision.”

Brice Taylor, 36, a nurse in Athens, Georgia, and the second oldest of Taylor’s four children, said he cut ties with his parents and blocked their numbers after hearing the allegations from Porter. “I wanted to crawl out of my own skin,” he said.

Taylor’s two other children and his wife, Lolly Taylor, a retired teacher’s aide, declined interview requests.

Then, in September 2023, Warner, the Anglican bishop of the Mid-Atlantic Diocese — at the request of the Bethesda couple — ordered an investigation into Taylor. The church quickly hired Isler, who interviewed more than 80witnesses and was afforded unrestrained access to the church’s records.

In December 2023, Taylor left the University of Cincinnati Foundation, where he raised money for the college’s neuroscience institute.

Then, in early February, the Cincinnati Nature Center hired him as a major gifts officer.

Taylor seemed happier. “I had forgotten what it felt like to be valued,” he texted an ex-colleague. “I am so grateful for a new chapter.”

Jeff Corney, the nature center’s executive director, declined an interview request.

On April 18, the Falls Church Anglican issued a letter to its congregants: Since the fall, a law firm hired by the church had been investigating Taylor’s tenure. The inquiry, now complete, made a clear conclusion. “The report establishes that Taylor engaged in sexual abuse of students who participated in the youth program while he was employed,” the letter said.

Three days later, hundreds of parishioners streamed inside their nearly 1,000-seat sanctuary, built after they lost their court battle years earlier over the Falls Church Episcopal campus. Isler described the contents of his report, but then Yates and Ferguson took turns from the podium, tearing up and offering their apologies.

“I know now that I did let him down,” Yates said, referring to R, the youth group alumnus who came to him in 2007 with the first allegation about being abused on the trip to Illinois. “As the investigators have concluded, I didn’t do enough. Even though I love that young man, I didn’t do enough.”

Two days later, Taylor left the Cincinnati Nature Center for “personal reasons,” said Corney, the group’s executive director, in one of a handful of limited answers he provided The Post via text messages. Taylor’s job, he said, “did not involve direct contact with clients of any age.”

One possible catalyst for Taylor’s short tenure: theIslerDare report. Taylor’s lawyer said the investigation reached Taylor’s employer — and his friends and relatives — and became “a cudgel to cause maximum harm to his reputation.”

Up until then, it seemed like Taylor had been settling in well at the nature center. On Instagram and Facebook, the nonprofit had recently posted a group photo with Taylor in the back row, standing by a body of water. Dressed in a green hoodie, the ex-youth minister was smiling.

Reporting by Ian Shapira. Editing by Matt Zapotosky. Videos by Reshma Kirpalani. Video graphics by Sarah Hashimi. Video editing by Whitney Leaming. Photography by Thomas Simonetti, Matt McClain and Elijah Nouvelage. Photo editing by Mark Miller and Monique Woo. Design, development and illustration by Michael Domine. Design editing by Christian Font. Copy editing by Gaby Morera Di Núbila and Shay Quillen.

Illustration images from The Washington Post, Christ Church in Atlanta and iStock.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2025/falls-church-sex-abuse-allegations/