This is how I lost several friends whom I thought were close and the church community I grew up in.  At a former pastor’s ordination, I stayed over at another pastor friend’s apartment.  Another friend, a 36 year old church youth counselor also stayed over with three 18-year old girls.  I initially slept in the living room with the youth counselor while the three girls slept in an adjoining bedroom.  In the middle of the night, thinking I was asleep, the youth counselor enters the bedroom with the girls.  This doesn’t look good.  I ask my pastor friend what to do and he tells me to do nothing.  I thought about this and decide to pull the youth counselor out.

I report this incident to the church, as well as another incident where another female friend told me how he pushed her to the ground to presumably engage in some type of behavior.  When she pushes him off, he claims that he misread the situation.

I try to enlist the support of several friends, many of them respected and highly placed within the church.  They turn their back on me, asserting that I overreacted, was on a witch hunt, and was a bull in a China shop.  They stonewall and cover up.

Embarrassed, I resign my membership.  The church I attended and served in for 17 years.

Only recently, 15 years later, I found out that he pushed another two younger females to the ground.  Also throwing parties where he encouraged underage drinking and watching while several teens “experimented” with each other.

In a strange twisted way, this new knowledge was vindication as I was gaslit into believing the church may have been initially correct in their assessment.

He is still attending the church with his wife and family.