Posted on 02/22/2023 5:52:43 PM PST by Morgana
One mother warned people for years that a youth pastor was a danger to children. When his arrest made the news, they started listening.
A mother told Channel 9 news in Charlotte that in 2011, she attended a church in San Antonio where Benjamin Damron was a youth pastor. In an interview, she said she fought for over a decade to get Damron away from children after he got “weird” with her son.
Last November, eight years after the Texas mom began expressing her concerns, police arrested Damron in Charlotte for abusing multiple teenage boys at local public parks and inside his home.
By then, Damron, who relocated to North Carolina from Texas, had volunteered as a youth leader in several large Charlotte churches.
The mother, who requested to go by the name of Angelia for privacy, said she felt people ignored her warnings for years.
According to her interview, Angelia’s concerns began when she saw Facebook messages between Damron and her son that alarmed her.
In the messages, Damron, who was then in his mid-20s, contacted her then 13-year-old son in the middle of the night and encouraged him to discuss sexual topics.
On multiple occasions, via Facebook Messenger, Damron attempted to get time alone with her son.
The mom said she brought the messages to a prosecutor, who confirmed they were “certainly creepy” but said they were not criminal.
Angelia said the prosecutor warned her to ‘hold onto these—this is a sexual predator, and he knows exactly where the lines are.”
She also said she attempted to warn the San Antonio church, which did little about it, so her family left. When she heard Damron was volunteering as a youth leader and drummer at Elevation Church, she sent several emails to Elevation to warn them.
She said no one from Elevation responded.
Then, last November, Angelia saw Damron’s name in the news when three people came forward claiming they were sexually assaulted by Damron when they were teenagers.
Angelia said the arrest was no surprise. “This is the person that no one would believe me when I came to them and said this was a sexual predator,” she said.
Angelia contacted Elevation again after learning of Damron’s arrest and spoke to the director of security. According to her, the director said he knew nothing about her previous emails. He apologized and asked her to send them again, she said.
Channel 9 asked whether church leadership investigated Damron’s interactions with the youth group, notified parents about the concern, or went to the police. The article stated Elevation had yet to respond to those questions.
Elevation told Channel 9 they took Angelia’s allegations very seriously but didn’t do a good job communicating with Angelia.
The statement from Elevation Church said: “First of all, our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the families affected by this situation. We also are constantly working on internal systems and policies and procedures that will strengthen our campus security and our ability to protect children and students who are ever entrusted to our care, even if only for an hour or two a week.
“We have recently spoken with [Angelia] about the email she sent to one of our campus pastors in 2019, alerting him that Ben Damron had ‘groomed’ her son in 2011-2012 when they attended Damron’s church in Texas. Our campus pastor did take her email seriously and directed our then youth directors associated with Ben Damron’s campus to address the matter. Within weeks, the small group co-led by Ben Damron from approximately 2015-2019 had stopped meeting, dissolving completely shortly thereafter and Damron stopped attending the church. It appears we did not do a good job of communicating back with [Angelia] about the matter; we regret that and are making efforts to do so now.”
In November, Ministry Watch reported the responses from Mercy Church, Southbrook Church, and Soccer Shots, where Damron had also volunteered.
Angelia says she is just glad Damron has been arrested, and she will be happier if he is convicted.
“There was an exhilarating rush. ‘He’s caught, he’s caught,'” And then there was this reality about him that hit so hard,” she said. “Everything I knew about him was true.”
Dear mother,
the person you report this to is the police and CPS. NOT the church who will just cover it up.
Sincerely, Another church member.
Elevation is the very suspect mega-church led by Stephen Furtick, a name-it-and-claim-it guy...
As usual, the big problem is the failure of those in authority to take the warnings seriously and address the issue.
Predators will go where the kids are and that cannot be helped but it can be properly dealt with when it comes to someone’s attention.
And when it’s not, a large part of the blame for the number of victims and ruined lives rests on the shoulders of those who allow/enable it through their inaction.
The church leadership are also mandatory reporters.
I know of a church that had a similar issue. The police were involved in minutes.
Creepy looking guy
“The church leadership are also mandatory reporters.”
You know this, I know this.
But I don’t trust people in the church as far as I could freaking throw them.
Call the police and CPS. Then have your lawyer tell the church.
The appointment of youth pastors is a bad idea. No need to segregate teenagers from the rest of the community for doctrinal teaching. Youth pastors are prone to want to be trendy and faddish. They are put in charge of kids whose parents aren’t supervising their spiritual development.
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