Wolves Among the Sheep > Which wolf will be senator? Should gay, drug-using, repentant Newsboy be restored?

 

Adam Hamilton's church accused of protecting child molester 2 decades ago

Campaign slams 'desperate and shameful attack'

By Ian M. Giatti, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, October 06, 2026

Pastor Adam Hamilton appears in a U.S. Senate campaign ad released in September 2026. | YouTube/Kansas Senate 2026

The U.S. Senate campaign of United Methodist megachurch Pastor Adam Hamilton is again facing questions about how he handled reported sexual abuse by a volunteer at a church youth camp two decades ago, which is now featured in a seven-figure ad buy from his GOP opponent. 

The allegations — which resurfaced during Hamilton’s Democratic primary campaign for Kansas’ U.S. Senate seat — date back to 2005, when a camp leader at Hamilton’s Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, reportedly molested two teenage boys at a church youth camp.

Hamilton, the church’s founder and lead pastor, kept Scott Moore on as a church volunteer even after Moore was accused of child molestation in 2005 and 2006, according to the campaign attack ad from Hamilton’s opponent, Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan.

“What did Hamilton do when victims reported him to church leaders? Parents were ignored, and Hamilton never called the police,” the ad’s narrator says. “The next fall, Hamilton welcomed him back. Free to lurk for new victims, later convicted of more child sex crimes.”

“Adam Hamilton protected a pedophile,” the narrator says, before concluding, “He should never be our senator.”

In a statement to The Christian Post, Hamilton campaign spokesman Tyson Brody called the Marshall campaign's ad "a shameful attack."

“This is a desperate and shameful attack from a losing politician on his own state’s largest church," Brody said in a statement. "These smears from Roger Marshall were already examined in the primary by local reporters who found the church reported the incidents to law enforcement, and Adam later personally worked to help get this predator convicted.”

The video, part of a reported $1.2 million ad buy by the Marshall campaign, refers to allegations that first surfaced in local Kansas media in May, when Democratic state Sen. Patrick Schmidt accused Hamilton of a cover-up and called on him to drop out of the race.

Both teenagers said they told church leadership the day after the 2005 incident about what happened with Moore but were accused of “slander” by a youth minister, according to trial testimony reviewed by The New York Post. 

“Essentially he told us that we were trying to slander Scott’s name and trying to make him look bad, and basically told us that we were messing with his life, and there could be serious repercussions for that,” the first victim was quoted as saying. “And besides that, he really didn’t take any action to look into this further.”

Two church employees reportedly investigated the matter but couldn't definitively prove that Moore was at fault for the alleged molestations. Moore was allowed to return as a counselor to the church in late 2006 even though the children's parents were not told about the results of the church's investigation.  

After returning as a camp leader in 2006, court documents say that Moore again entered teenage boys’ rooms. This prompted the church to report Moore to local law enforcement, but prosecutors declined to pursue charges, The Kansas Reflector reported. 

Brody told the newspaper in May that the church began updating its volunteer and staff policies after the 2005 allegation. Moore passed the church's criminal background check at the time. 

“In 2006, when students reported another allegation, the church called law enforcement, and Adam was personally in contact with them,” Brody was quoted as saying, adding that Moore was then banned from having a role with the church. The church also notified the regional UMC conference and Boy Scouts of America, where Moore also volunteered.

Moore was convicted in 2013 of a misdemeanor for inappropriately touching a 16-year-old boy during a sleepover at his home in 2010. The earlier youth camp allegations were used as evidence during that trial. 

Moore also faced a similar charge in Massachusetts in 2011 but was not convicted. In 2015, Moore was found half-naked in a car with a teenage boy shortly before his death. 

Hamilton has denied any cover-up. But he told The Kansas Reflector in July that he would have “absolutely” handled the 2005 incident differently by notifying law enforcement directly. The outlet reports that the church went directly to police in 2006. 

In 2010, a former Kansas resident visited Hamilton after learning of Moore’s alleged abuse and said Moore had sexually abused him as a young child in 1979, according to court documents cited by The Kansas Reflector. Although the statute of limitations — the legal deadline for filing charges — had expired, Hamilton reportedly encouraged the man, whose name has not been released, to report the allegations to law enforcement.

On Monday, the Hamilton campaign posted a video ad response on social media defending how he handled the allegations. The ad's narrator says the church “conducted an internal investigation” and “reported to law enforcement.”

The church later “cut ties” with Moore, according to the video, which accused Marshall of “lying about [Hamilton] to cover up his own record” and cited Marshall’s vote to block the full release of the Epstein files, government records related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Brody accused Marshall of "resorting to these desperate lies and false attacks."

“Roger Marshall is desperate to hide from his record of protecting predators and preying on low-income families in Kansas," Brody told CP. 

With nearly a month to go before Election Day, polls show Hamilton and Marshall in a virtual dead heat, even as Republicans reportedly plan to shift $8 million in campaign spending from North Carolina to the Kansas race.

In his statement to CP, Brody repeated a Hamilton campaign ad's contested claim that in 2011, Marshall, an OB-GYN, had a woman who was eight months pregnant “arrested” for missing a $50 payment to him. The Hamilton campaign says she was one of more than 700 patients Marshall sued while practicing as a physician.

Last month, Marshall's attorneys sent Hamilton’s campaign a cease-and-desist letter over the Hamilton ad making that claim, which they called defamatory.

“The unmistakable message to a reasonable viewer is that Senator Marshall caused a pregnant patient to be arrested and jailed for missing a single $50 payment. That message is false in every material respect,” the letter reads. 

Michael Tait accuser responds after pastor posed for photo with former Newsboys frontman

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, October 06, 2026

Michael Tait of Newsboys performs during filming of "Candace" on Sept. 13, 2021, in Nashville, Tennessee. | Getty Images/Jason Davis

One of the men who accused former Newsboys lead singer Michael Tait of sexual assault is criticizing a pastor who posed for a photo with the contemporary Christian musician and appeared to equate the artist's actions to a “stumble.” 

Nathan Mudd, pastor of Ottawa Community Church in Ottawa, Kansas, shared a photo of himself with Tait on social media last week. Mudd has since made his Facebook and Instagram profiles private.

But a screenshot of his Facebook post, shared on Threads, shows the two men posing together with this caption: “Just gave Michael Tait a hug! So glad to see him at a KC MO [Kansas City, Missouri] gathering for pastors. We all stumble in many ways but in Christ our past is God’s weapon!!!”

Last year, Tait faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and substance abuse, and an extensive investigation was published by The Roys Report. The investigation spanned more than two years with interviews with over 50 sources. The accusers said Tait engaged in predatory behavior while they were in their early 20s. They all described similar patterns of grooming, alcohol use and non-consensual physical contact.

Randall Crawford, one of many men who have come forward in recent years to allege sexual abuse by Tait, responded to Mudd’s post in a message that investigative journalist Julie Roys shared on X over the weekend.

“I’m one of the men who came forward about Michael Tait, and calling what happened a ‘stumble’ is exactly what is wrong with celebrity Christianity,” he wrote. “I believe in grace. I believe in forgiveness. But forgiveness is not the same thing as restoration to a platform.”

“Repentance requires accountability and Michael has never contacted me to apologize or ask my forgiveness for what he did to me,” Crawford added. “Yet pastors are already embracing him while survivors were left wondering where the Church was when we needed those open arms.”

Crawford’s allegations against Tait became public in July 2025, after Tait made a public statement. Crawford accused Tait of drugging and sexually assaulting him 25 years earlier. He said he blacked out after drinking alcohol and woke up to find Tait performing a sex act on him.

The Christian Post contacted Mudd for comment but did not receive a response by press time.

Crawford worries that “this becomes the predictable comeback story … the book, the interviews, the tour, and eventually another stage.” He insisted that Tait “can receive God’s grace without ever receiving another microphone.”

He urged Mudd and anyone else trying to rehabilitate Tait’s image to “Stop reducing serious allegations to a ‘stumble’” and “Stop taking one truth about grace and using it to erase everything Scripture teaches about repentance, justice, accountability, and protecting people.”

“Before the church rushes to restore the platform, maybe it should finally reach out to the people who say they were harmed,” he concluded.

Tait responded last year to a wave of allegations against him. By then, he had already stepped down as lead singer of Newsboys for unrelated reasons.

“I want to say I’m sorry to everyone I have hurt. I am truly sorry,” he said at the time.

“I have hurt so many people in so many ways, and I will live with that shameful reality the rest of my life.” He also admitted, “For some two decades, I used and abused cocaine, consumed far too much alcohol, and, at times, touched men in an unwanted sensual way.”

“I am ashamed of my life choices and actions, and make no excuses for them. I will simply call it what God calls it — sin,” Tait said.

Tait also expressed regret for deceiving those close to him. “[I] lied and deceived my family, friends, and even misled my bandmates about aspects of my life,” he said.

“I was, for the most part, living two distinctly different lives. I was not the same person on stage Sunday night that I was at home on Monday. I was violating everything I was raised to believe by my God-fearing Dad and Mom, about walking with Jesus and was grieving the very God I loved and sang about for most of my life,” Tait said.

Approaching Sodom > Canada's far-left HR tribunals gaining power

 

Recent BC Cases Cast Light on Human Rights Tribunals’ Growing Power in Canada

The office that houses the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal is seen in Vancouver on March 28, 2023. The Canadian Press/Nono Shen

Paul Rowan Brian

10/3/2026|Updated: 10/4/2026

News Analysis, The Epoch Times

Human rights tribunals began emerging across Canada in the 1960s and 1970s with the stated goal of providing a quicker, more accessible way to resolve discrimination complaints outside the regular court system.

Since then, these quasi-judicial bodies have grown markedly, both in the scope and types of complaints they handle. At the same time, the penalties imposed in some cases have increased significantly.

Recent cases have drawn attention in B.C., including tribunal rulings against a former school trustee over comments criticizing gender ideology, and a family doctor who refused on religious grounds to administer a puberty-blocking drug to a transgender teen.

Most complaints before the B.C. tribunal involve disability. Civil liberties activists say the cases involving expression and religion raise broader concerns about the scope of tribunal powers and their interaction with Charter protections. Supporters of the tribunal system say it provides more accessibility outside of standard litigation procedures.

Recent Judgments

Related Stories

BC Tribunal Orders Doctor to Pay $28,100 for Refusing to Inject Transgender Teen With Puberty Blocker

BC School Trustee Quits After Tribunal Fines Former Trustee Critical of Gender Ideology $750,000

In February, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ordered former Chilliwack school trustee Barry Neufeld to pay $750,000 to LGBT members of the Chilliwack Teachers’ Association.

The case stemmed from comments Neufeld made criticizing the teaching of gender identity topics in the province’s public schools, which the tribunal said had exposed LGBT members of the teachers’ union to “hatred or contempt.”

More recently, the tribunal in September ordered Delta, B.C., family doctor Henry Ajaero to pay $28,100 in legal costs and fines after he refused in 2021 to inject a 14-year-old transgender patient with the puberty-blocking drug Lupron, citing his religious beliefs and saying administration of this drug was “outside the scope of his practice and expertise.”

The tribunal found that Ajaero’s refusal and failure to help the patient and the patient’s mother find another way to obtain the injection caused injury to the patient’s “dignity, feelings, and self-respect.”

The tribunal ruled it was “not relevant to liability” that the patient was still able to receive the drug later the same day at a walk-in clinic and continued to receive injections at walk-in clinics until acquiring a new family doctor.

‘Belief System’

Hamilton-based constitutional lawyer Hatim Kheir of Charter Advocates Canada said he believes certain tribunal decisions, particularly in B.C., reflect an ideological stance rather than a neutral application of the law.

“There’s been this stance of the tribunal basically adopting one particular belief system and then interpreting the actions of other people through that lens,” Kheir told The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times reached out to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal but did not receive a response by publication time.

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal says on its website that it offers parties to a complaint the opportunity to resolve the issue through mediation and that it’s committed to “accessibility, fairness and equality.”

Tribunals and Charter Rights

Courts generally defer human rights and other matters to administrative decision-makers, and the Supreme Court of Canada has held that decision-makers must balance Charter rights against provincial human rights legislation.

Kheir said tribunals often prioritize provincial human rights codes over Charter protections.

“It’s in their [tribunal members’] hands to favour, let’s say, the human rights law over the constitutional Charter protections, which should take precedence,” Kheir told The Epoch Times.

“There’s just sort of a case that human rights can—it doesn’t necessarily—but can often end up being pit against certain Charter rights, particularly the fundamental freedoms. Freedom of expression and freedom of religion come to mind,” he said.

Former Alberta Human Rights Commission chief Collin May said challenging a tribunal decision in court can take significant time and money when a respondent believes the decision conflicts with Charter protections.

Both said May and Kheir said those costs make the tribunals’ ability to impose significant financial penalties more concerning.

“The costs have increased so much if you’ve got to get a lawyer,” May told The Epoch Times. “The process is much more onerous. It’s longer, and the potential fines are much higher, especially in B.C.”

Kheir and May said part of the issue is financial: Filing and pursuing a human rights complaint does not itself carry tribunal fees, while complainants may qualify for free legal assistance.

By contrast, respondents who hire lawyers generally pay their own legal costs, even if they prevail, as well as any additional costs of seeking judicial review of a tribunal ruling.

“If a respondent does win a case, unlike in a court hearing, the losing party, the plaintiff or the complainant, generally does not have to pay any cost to the respondent who might have won,” May said.

B.C. Premier David Eby has praised the province’s human rights tribunal for helping to fight racism and discrimination.

“I’m glad that more people than ever before are standing up against discrimination and hate, including through the BC Human Rights Tribunal,” Eby said in past comments in a January 2023 news release.

“By supporting faster access to justice at the tribunal, we’re helping people get the justice they deserve in every community of the province.”

Evolving Power of Tribunals

Canadian provinces enacted human rights legislation beginning in the 1960s, including Ontario’s Human Rights Code in 1962, Alberta’s Human Rights Act in 1966 and Human Rights Commission in 1973, and B.C.’s Human Rights Act in 1969.

Various commissions and other bodies were established across Canada to handle discrimination complaints and have since evolved into tribunals and commissions with greater power and scope.

May said that tribunals were regarded as a more efficient way for people whose rights had been infringed to seek redress, but that the process has since become “much more like a trial.”

The first codes focused on discrimination in lodging, employment, and services, but over time, provincial human rights legislation has expanded to include additional protected grounds, such as gender expression and identity, as well as broader contexts in which discrimination complaints can be brought.

Kheir said the growing power of tribunals in provinces such as B.C., where they can adjudicate complaints involving publications and expression outside more traditional discrimination contexts, is his “number one concern.”

He contrasted this with Ontario, where the tribunal has jurisdiction over specific areas such as discrimination in employment, accommodation, and services.

“Things that people say outside of those contexts are not subject to the human rights tribunal,” he said of Ontario. “That’s not the case in a lot of other provinces.”

B.C.’s tribunal, established in 1997, says its process includes determining whether complaints fall within its jurisdiction, offering mediation, and holding hearings in a small fraction of cases. The tribunal says on its complaints process webpage that it currently receives more than 1,100 complaints per year, rejects more than 300, and resolves approximately 40 per year after a full hearing.

Those annual figures differ from the tribunal’s overall caseload. Its 2024–25 annual report put the tribunal’s active caseload at approximately 6,000 for that fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, due to a surge in complaints from 2020 to 2023 that doubled the historic average of 1,322 a year and accumulated into a backlog of overflow cases with corresponding delays.

Since 2003, the B.C. tribunal has operated under a direct-access framework in which complaints are filed directly with the tribunal rather than first being investigated by a human rights commission. Ontario established a direct-access framework in 2008.

May said there are advantages to a pre-screening model.

“The idea of having this screening process, sort of a gatekeeping process, was to try to flush out the ones that could be dealt with quickly, or that can go through a conciliation process,” he said.

Alberta constitutional lawyer James Kitchen, however, said his province’s pre-screening process has been used to exclude discrimination complaints from groups he says are not ideologically favoured, such as Christians.

“In Alberta, the pre-screening kicks out all the Christians—the complaints that the commission doesn’t like. That’s the problem I have with all mine,” Kitchen said in an interview.

“I’ve had a dozen complaints from Christians who lost their jobs for not taking the [COVID-19] shot for religious reasons,” he said. “The commissioners booted them all out. … I can’t even get to a hearing.”

B.C.’s Human Rights Commissioner Kasari Govender says the tribunal system is important for acting where the courts may not be able to.

Writing about litigation pertaining to the tribunal’s power in deciding a child custody and access case that involved alleged discrimination in 2023, Govinder stated that the tribunal’s role is irreplaceable and that “this case will be crucial in determining whether people facing discrimination in the child welfare system will be able to enforce their Human Rights Code-protected rights.”

University of Windsor associate professor of law Noel Semple said tribunals are more specialized forums that offer increased ability to resolve rights disputes than the regular court system.

“Tribunals have great potential to improve access to justice in Canada,” Semple wrote in a 2024 paper. They can take on dispute-resolution work that courts would otherwise do, as well as offer victims “authoritative legal vindication of rights that would otherwise be abandoned, or resolved in a completely privatized way,” he added.

Recommendations

While tribunal rulings can be subject to judicial review, the experts who spoke with The Epoch Times said the cost and time required to pursue such a challenge warrant several reforms.

Kheir said he would like to see human rights codes narrowed to apply only to specific areas of discrimination in employment, services, and accommodations. He said provincial legislatures have the responsibility to make those changes.

“The buck stops at the legislature. They’re the ones who pass the code,” he said.

Kitchen recommended that provincial governments pay more attention to appointments to human rights commissions and tribunals.

May called for several other changes, including writing Charter protections into human rights codes with clearer recognition of free speech protections, capping financial penalties, increasing scrutiny of appointments, and doing more to discourage frivolous complaints.

“There should be a disincentive to frivolous complaints,” May said, adding that if tribunals are going to act like courts, they should offer respondents similar protections.