Assemblies of God Youth Ministry and Sexual Abuse

When parents drop their child off at church, they are making one of the most instinctive acts of trust a parent can make. They hand their child to someone who carries the moral authority of God, who operates inside a building they consider sacred, and who belongs to an institution they have chosen to center their family around. That trust is not naive — it makes complete sense. And that is exactly what makes its betrayal so devastating.

If you are reading this because something happened to your child in an Assemblies of God church, or because you are an adult survivor trying to understand how abuse inside a ministry program was even possible, you deserve a clear, honest answer. Understanding how these environments work — and where they fail — is not a small thing. It is the starting point for everything that comes next, including knowing your legal rights for Arkansas survivors.

The Role of a Children’s or Youth Pastor

To understand how abuse occurs in these settings, you first have to understand what makes the role of a children’s or youth minister so uniquely positioned for exploitation.

A children’s or youth pastor is not simply a teacher or a Sunday morning babysitter. Within the culture of an Assemblies of God church, this person occupies a role that carries genuine spiritual weight. They are seen as called by God, trusted by the senior pastor, endorsed by the denomination, and welcomed into the lives of families at a deeply personal level. Children are taught to respect and obey them. Parents are taught to trust them. The entire environment operates on the assumption that this person is safe — because why would God’s church put an unsafe person in charge of children?

That assumption creates the conditions for grooming before a single act of abuse ever takes place.

In the case of Tony Waller, the children’s pastor at what was then Jonesboro First Assembly of God (now Refuge Church), that dynamic played out over more than a decade. Waller held authority over a church homeschool program, giving him daily access to the same group of children in a controlled, enclosed environment. He ran gym classes. He supervised stretching routines. He was alone with girls in offices, closets, classrooms, and gymnasiums, and the adults around him — including the senior pastor and church leadership — took no steps to monitor what happened behind these closed doors. According to the complaint filed by survivors Stephanie Davis and Samantha Davis, Waller used that access to install hidden cameras in bathrooms used by the girls, force them to perform nude stretching routines while filming them, and physically molest them under the guise of play.

None of that was possible without the structural conditions that gave him unsupervised access and shielded him from accountability.

How Grooming Works in Ministry Settings

Grooming is a gradual process by which an abuser builds trust — with the child, with the family, and with the surrounding community — before any abuse begins. In church settings, this process is often accelerated by the spiritual authority the abuser already holds.

A children’s pastor does not need to work as hard to earn trust as a stranger would. That trust is pre-installed by the institution. Parents hand their children over willingly. They encourage close relationships between their kids and the pastor because those relationships are framed as spiritually beneficial. They may feel guilt or social pressure if they raise concerns, because questioning a called minister can feel like questioning God.

Abusers in ministry settings exploit this dynamic deliberately. They single out children who are particularly eager to please, particularly vulnerable, or who come from homes where parental involvement in church life is high enough to create proximity but stretched thin enough to create gaps in supervision. They create special relationships, offer private time, establish rituals and routines that normalize physical closeness or unusual requests. They build a sense of secrecy — not through threats, but through warmth and belonging. They make the child feel chosen.

The church setting also gives abusers a powerful tool for managing disclosure. In the Waller case, when survivors reported what had happened to senior pastor Mike Glover and other denomination leaders, the response from church leadership was not to call authorities. It was to pray over the matter, extend forgiveness to Waller, and tell the children and their mothers that it was not their place to question God’s will. That kind of response does not just protect an abuser — it teaches victims that speaking up is wrong.

Supervision Gaps and Structural Failures

One of the clearest lessons from documented cases of Assemblies of God youth ministry abuse is that supervision gaps are rarely accidental. They are the product of specific choices.

In the Assemblies of God model, there is no required ratio of adult supervisors to children in ministry settings. There are no rules requiring open-door policies during one-on-one interactions with minors. Staff members are not universally trained to recognize signs of grooming, and there exists a dearth of enforced protocol on how to respond when a child discloses abuse.

The complaint in the Refuge Church case lays out this failure in precise detail. Defendants, it alleges, failed to train staff to identify grooming and misconduct; failed to implement child abuse prevention policies; failed to establish codes of conduct governing how staff interacted with minors; and failed to report abuse to civil authorities despite being mandated reporters under Arkansas law. The denomination also allegedly stood behind a culture that treated pastoral forgiveness as a higher obligation than child protection — a culture that, according to the complaint, traces back decades and has been publicly acknowledged by AOG leadership without producing meaningful reform.

This is not a case of one bad actor slipping through the cracks. The complaint argues that the General Council, the Arkansas District Council, and Refuge Church leadership all learned of Waller’s conduct at least by 2004 — when a hidden camera was physically discovered, removed, and brought to leadership’s attention — and all made a conscious choice to handle it internally and return him to full access with no precautions whatsoever. It was not until other victims went directly to the police years later that Waller was finally arrested. He pleaded guilty to rape in April 2016 and is now serving a life sentence.

The denomination’s written policy on pastoral restoration, obtained by NBC News and referenced in the complaint, emphasizes tenderness and gentle forgiveness toward the accused pastor. Children receive no comparable institutional protection.

Understanding why that cover-up culture exists requires looking at a wider pattern across the denomination — a pattern that survivors across Arkansas and the country are now fighting to expose. The full scope of how reporting failures protect abusers within the AOG is something every survivor and parent deserves to understand.

What Parents Can Watch For

None of this means every church youth program is dangerous, or that every children’s pastor is a threat. What it means is that trust — even well-placed trust — is not a substitute for oversight. There are specific warning signs parents can learn to recognize.

An adult in a ministry setting who seeks one-on-one time with a child outside of formal program activities is worth scrutinizing. The same is true of an adult who creates a sense of special secrecy with a child, who communicates with children through private channels, or who is unusually physical in ways that seem to go beyond what the role calls for. Pay attention when a child becomes anxious about attending a program they previously enjoyed, or when their behavior changes noticeably after time spent with a specific adult.

Ask your church directly: what is the policy for one-on-one interactions between adult staff and children? Are staff trained in recognizing grooming behavior? What is the protocol when a child discloses abuse? A church that takes child safety seriously will have clear, written answers to these questions.

If a church leader responds to your questions with vague reassurances, spiritual deflection, or suggests that concern itself reflects a lack of faith — that is a warning sign about the institution itself.

Why the Denominational Structure Matters Legally

For survivors considering legal action, understanding the layered structure of the Assemblies of God matters for reasons that go beyond education. The relationship between a local church like Refuge Church, the Arkansas District Council, and the national General Council is not merely symbolic. It is institutional, financial, and documented.

As the complaint in the Refuge Church case argues, the General Council and District Council credentialed Tony Waller, had authority to remove him at any time, were directly notified of the 2005 camera incident, and participated in the decision about how to respond. That chain of knowledge and authority is central to why claims in this case extend far beyond the walls of a single Jonesboro congregation.

The Jonesboro case did not begin with the 2026 lawsuit. It has roots that go back through years of institutional failure, a criminal conviction, and a long history of silencing the people who were hurt. Understanding those roots is essential context for any survivor or family member trying to make sense of what happened to them. That full history is documented in the history behind the Refuge Church lawsuit.

If You or Someone You Know Was Abused

Survivors of Assemblies of God youth ministry abuse often carry their experiences for years — sometimes decades — before they find language for what happened, or learn that what was done to them was not their fault and not acceptable. The psychological effects of childhood sexual abuse in institutional settings are well-documented and serious. Anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, difficulty in relationships, shame, and a fractured sense of self are all common. Many survivors were also taught, within the same church environment where the abuse occurred, to distrust secular mental health treatment — a fact that can delay both healing and the decision to seek legal recourse.

If you are a survivor or the parent of a child who was abused in an Assemblies of God program, you have the right to understand what happened, who bears responsibility, and what options are available to you. Survivors in Arkansas have pursued legal action against both local churches and the broader denominational entities whose oversight failures allowed abuse to continue.

The full legal story of how one specific youth pastor’s crimes ultimately led to a landmark civil lawsuit — and what that case means for survivors across the state — is laid out in detail when you read about the Anthony Waller case and civil lawsuit.

If you believe you may have a claim, speaking with an attorney who understands both the specific dynamics of church sexual abuse cases and the legal framework in Arkansas is an important first step. You do not have to figure this out alone, and the statute of limitations in Arkansas may be longer than you think, particularly under the state’s delayed discovery statute for childhood sexual abuse survivors.

What happened at Refuge Church was not a private matter between one man and his victims. It was the product of a system that chose, at every level, to protect itself over protecting children. That system can be held accountable.