Historical sexual abuse charges filed against B.C. minister belonging to church with no name
Complainant says she is speaking out about what happened in 1989 to protect others
A Vancouver Island woman is speaking out about the alleged sexual abuse she suffered as a teenager while a member of an insular and secretive Christian sect that has no official name, but is most commonly called the Two-by-Twos, or 2x2s.
Lyndell Montgomery was 14 years old in 1989 when the alleged abuse happened. She claims her alleged abuser was 2x2s minister, Lee-Ann McChesney.
McChesney, 60, was arrested in January and charged with one count of sexual abuse and one count of sexual exploitation after an investigation by the Delta Police Sexual Offence Section and Vulnerable Sector Unit.
According to court documents, the charges stem from incidents in 1989 in or around the B.C. communities of Terrace, Delta and Surrey.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.
Lyndell Montgomery says she wants to tell her story of alleged sexual abuse within the 2x2s church so other survivors don't feel alone.
Now 49, Montgomery says she wants to go public with her story to protect others in the church. She's asked that her name not be put under a publication ban by the court, as is usually the case with victims of alleged sexual violence.
"My story is one of thousands within this organization," she said in an interview. "I want to protect other kids that are still in that high control environment. I want to bring publicity to the fact that I am not the only [one]."
The 2x2s organization is being rocked by a wave of child sexual assault allegations making headlines in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.
According to the co-founder of a 2x2 victim hotline in the U.S. called Advocates For The Truth, 1,500 unconfirmed reports of child sexual abuse and other offences have been submitted in one year of operation.
"The response to the hotline has been overwhelming," said Cynthia Liles, who is also a private investigator specializing in child sex abuse cases against institutions of trust. "It's been a fire hose — just a deluge of reports coming in."
On Feb. 20, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced it was investigating the 2x2s in the United States, and issued an appeal for victims to come forward.
"The group has often been referred to by others outside of the group as '2x2,' 'The Way,' 'The Truth,' and 'The Church With No Name,' among others," reads the FBI alert.
"If you … believe your child or other children may have been victimized by individuals affiliated with 2x2, the FBI requests you complete a short online questionnaire."
Who are the 2x2s?
The roots of the 2x2s trace back to 19th-century founder William Irvine, an evangelist Scotsman. Followers brought the faith to Canada in the early 1900s.
2x2s do not own places of worship, publish a leadership structure or keep public records.
The sect is largely a home-based fellowship, but Sunday gospel meetings — like one CBC attended at a Port Coquitlam, B.C., funeral chapel — are held at public venues.
Ministers, called "workers," are supposed to be free of worldly possessions and rely on church members, called "friends," for support.
Workers are dispatched to communities in pairs — two-by-two — to preach the faith while living in the homes of congregants, moving frequently. They are expected to be celibate.
Workers in top leadership positions are called "overseers."
Estimates put the number of 2x2 followers in the world today at 75,000. Liles says the majority live in Canada, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.
Adopted into the faith
Montgomery says her membership in the 2x2 sect began when she was adopted at six weeks old by a family of devout first- and second-generation followers.
Growing up, there was violence in the family home, she says. After one particularly terrible blowup in 1989, she was sent to live with McChesney, who as a worker, held a position of authority and trust.
"My parents had implicit trust in the organization, in the workers, in all of it. They truly believed it was the one true way," said Montgomery.
Soon after the alleged abuse, Montgomery cut ties with her family and the 2x2s. In the intervening 35 years, she resisted overtures from church members to come back into the fold, wanting to keep her trauma firmly in the past.
But last year, a story in her local newspaper changed everything.
It was about the conviction of 2x2s worker Aaron Farough, who was found guilty on two counts of child pornography and sentenced to 175 days in prison. The offences took place while Farough was living in the family homes of 2x2 members on northern Vancouver Island.
"He was on the front page of the Comox Valley Record, and as soon as I started reading it, I was like, oh my God," said Montgomery.
"I thought that I was in a silo, that no one ever in a million years would believe that anything happened to me … and certainly not by a female minister-slash-worker."
CBC reached out to Merlin Affleck, the man identified by current and former church members as the 2x2 leader or "overseer" in British Columbia. Affleck declined to speak on camera or answer written questions about McChesney's charges, her status in the church and the FBI investigation.
"In the last few years we've implemented many positive measures to insure the safety of children," he wrote. "But positive things don't usually make for interesting news, so I will respectfully decline your request for an interview."
CBC also asked a 2x2 worker leading the gospel meeting in Port Coquitlam last weekend for an interview. She declined.
Public reckoning
To some in the faith and many who have left it, 2x2 leadership needs to answer for the public reckoning that is now taking place.
Bruce Murdoch is one of them. The lifelong and current 2x2 member has been pushing the issue for over a decade as co-founder of a website that posts about child sexual abuse within the church.
"One of the things that the church does is it denies that it's even an organization, even though it's quite well organized ... So the denial of the fact that we are even an organization has really prevented proper management," Murdoch said, speaking from his home in Cranbrook, B.C.
"There are hundreds and hundreds of allegations that have not gone to the legal authorities, and for many, many years, the leadership of the church would not go to the authorities on purpose," he said.
As someone who studies alternative and controversial religions, Steve Kent says a lack of public accountability is common in groups with antagonistic attitudes to the outside world.
"The outside secular world is evil, fallen, even Satanic, and consequently they almost never go to outside authorities to report incidents of abuse," said Kent, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta.
"What often happens is these groups have either internal investigative procedures that are very, very poor, or they get their abusers to repent and say they had a conversation with God and God has forgiven them."
CBC reached out to the FBI and RCMP to ask if the agencies were co-ordinating across borders on 2x2 allegations. B.C. RCMP Staff Sgt. Kris Clark said he could not confirm or deny any investigation before charges are laid.
"We would encourage any survivor of sexual abuse regardless of when the offence occurred, to contact their local police to report it," he said.
In an email, the FBI said in order to preserve the integrity and capabilities of its investigation, no details would be shared.
McChesney is next scheduled to appear in Surrey Provincial Court on March 14.
There is no update to be found.
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A Bishop who hides the sexual abuse of children from the law is no better than the pedophile who committed the abuse. He has blood on his hands, and is apparently too stupid to know that you cannot hide anything from God.
If you are wondering why Poland has moved to the political left while the rest of Europe is leaning to the right, this is why. God removed the conservative government because it was protecting the Catholic Church from the reckoning that is beginning to come down.
Vatican announces resignation of Polish bishop due to “negligence in handling sexual abuse”
The Vatican has announced the resignation of Andrzej Dziuba, the bishop of Łowicz, due to his “negligence in handling cases of sexual abuse against minors”. However, a leading Catholic commentator has criticised the church for allowing the bishop to go into retirement rather than facing real punishment.
Meanwhile, criminal proceedings against Dziuba are ongoing, after Poland’s state commission on paedophilia filed a notice to prosecutors on suspicion that the bishop had failed to notify law enforcement authorities of abuse committed by his subordinate.
On Saturday, the apostolic nunciature, the Vatican’s embassy in Poland, released two statements about Dziuba’s resignation. The first informed that Pope Francis had accepted Dziuba’s resignation and appointed a new bishop, Wojciech Osial, as his temporary replacement.
The second cited the reasons behind the decision as being “difficulties in the management of the diocese”, particularly “negligence in handling sexual abuse cases committed by some clergy against minors”, saying this had been confirmed in proceedings conducted by the Holy See.
The latter statement did not, however, provide any further details as to the nature of Dziuba’s negligence nor of the sexual abuse cases it had related to.
The Vatican’s investigation was prompted by a series of reports by investigative news website OKO.press regarding the claims that Dziuba, who had served as bishop of Łowicz since 2004, had failed to act on knowledge of sexual abuse of children by priests under his authority.
In 2020, the website published a secret recording of a conversation the bishop held in 2020 with a victim of one such priest, in which Dziuba admitted that the diocese had first received reports about the priest’s crimes in the mid-1990s but there had been “ommissions on our part” in the church’s response.
OKO.press reported that, despite being aware of the allegations against the priest, Dziuba had allowed him to continue working with children, including leading an altar boys’ football team.
A preliminary investigation into the priest, which should have taken weeks, lasted three years, only after which he was removed from contact with children, reports the website. In 2018, the Vatican removed Dziuba from overseeing the investigation and transferred responsibility to another bishop.
In 2021, the priest in question, named only as Piotr S. in Polish media was found guilty of abuse in church proceedings and expelled from the priesthood. In 2023, he was convicted in a public court and handed a three-year prison sentence.
In a separate case reported by OKO.press, Dziuba was found to have allowed three priests who had previously been caught in a room with naked altar boys watching a pornographic film to continue having unrestricted access to children, including one who taught Catholic catechism classes in a primary school,
The latest case of Dziuba’s alleged negligence, reported by OKO.press in 2022, concerned him launching an investigation into another priest’s abusive behaviour five years after having initially learned about it and doing so only after prosecutors started looking into the matter.
Dziuba then suspended the priest from his duties and sent him to a monastery. Later, a court sentenced the clergyman to two years in prison.
Last year, prosecutors in Poland began an investigation into whether Dziuba had failed in his obligation to notify the authorities of child sex abuse. They did so following a notification to this effect that was submitted to them by Poland’s state commission on paedophilia.
Separately, in 2020 the Vatican ordered an investigation into negligence by Dziuba following the reports by OKO.press. Another Polish bishop, Grzegorz Ryś, was tasked with overseeing it.
That process has led to Saturday’s announcement of Dziuba’s retirement. However, a leading Catholic journalist, Tomasz Terlikowski, criticised the church for such lenient treatment of the bishop.
In a column for RFM24, Terlikowski noted that the retired bishop will benefit from a monthly pension and a food allowance. Additionally, his rent, including all bills, will be covered, as will all healthcare costs and remuneration for one person helping him at home.
We must “ask ourselves whether what the Vatican did was a punishment or a mockery”, added Terlikowski, who has been a longstanding and vocal critic of failings by the church to deal with cases of sexual abuse.
In recent years, the Catholic church in Poland has come under increased scrutiny and criticism for its alleged failures in dealing with such cases, hundreds of which have come to light. In response, the Vatican has taken disciplinary action against a number of Polish bishops.
Last year, the Vatican for the first time handed over to a Polish court the case file of a former priest on trial for child sex abuse. The move came after the local Polish archbishop informed the judge that he was unable to make the documents available himself.
Shortly afterwards, one of Poland’s most senior bishops apologised for neglect in how the country’s Catholic church dealt with child sex abuse by priests in the past, saying that it had been “naive”.
We Exposed the Mormon Church’s Protection of an Ex-Bishop Accused of Sexual Abuse. He Was Just Arrested.
“I hope this case will finally bring justice for my childhood sexual abuse.”
In 1999, John Goodrich, an Idaho dentist who was also a bishop with the Mormon church, accompanied his teenage daughter Chelsea on a school field trip to the East Coast. During a stay in colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, he allegedly abused her sexually, as she later claimed he had done since she was at least nine.
Nearly a quarter-century later, Goodrich—whose story was at the center of an Associated Press/Reveal radio collaboration about how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints protects itself from sexual abuse allegations—has been arrested in Virginia following a grand jury indictment on multiple felony charges, including forcible rape, forcible sodomy, and aggravated sexual battery by a parent of a child.
The indictment came in January, weeks after AP investigative reporters Jason Dearen and Michael Rezendes exposed how the Mormon church used a legal playbook to keep accusations against Goodrich secret, despite numerous recordings and witnesses supporting the allegations. Goodrich has been accused of similar abuse in Idaho.
“Chelsea and her mother, Lorraine, went to Idaho police in 2016 to report wide-ranging allegations of abuse during her childhood,” Dearen and Rezendes write. Those charges were eventually dropped after a key witness in the case, another Mormon bishop to whom John had made a spiritual confession about him and his daughter, refused to testify. While the details of that confession have not been made public, the church excommunicated Goodrich.
Did they excommunicate the creep that refused to testify?
John Goodrich’s defense lawyer declined to comment.
The AP/Reveal episode, which first aired in December, drew on hours of audio recordings of Chelsea Goodrich’s meetings with Paul Rytting, a Utah attorney who directs the church’s risk management division. The recordings show how Rytting, despite expressing concern for what he called John Goodrich’s “significant sexual transgression,” discouraged the local bishop to whom John Goodrich confessed from testifying. Rytting cited Idaho’s clergy-penitent privilege that exempts clergy from having to divulge information to authorities that is gleaned in a spiritual confession.
As the AP reports:
Invoking the clergy privilege was just one facet of the risk management playbook that Rytting employed in the Goodrich matter. Rytting offered Chelsea and her mother $300,000 in exchange for a confidentiality agreement and a pledge to destroy their recordings of their meetings, which they had made at the recommendation of an attorney and with Rytting’s knowledge. The AP obtained similar recordings that were made by a church member at the time who attended the meetings as Chelsea’s advocate.
In a statement in December, a church spokesperson told the AP and Reveal that “the abuse of a child or any other individual is inexcusable.” The church said it dedicates “tremendous resources” to preventing and reporting abuse and noted that John Goodrich, following his excommunication, “has not been readmitted to church membership.”
Lawmakers in Utah, where the Mormon church is headquartered, recently passed a bill that provides legal protections to clergy if they notify authorities of ongoing child abuse based on information obtained from a perpetrator during a confession. The measure extends to clergy the same legal protections that exist for mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect, such as doctors, teachers, or therapists. However, religious leaders who report abuse still will not be required to testify.
“I hope this case will finally bring justice for my childhood sexual abuse,” Chelsea Goodrich, now in her 30s, said in a statement to the AP. “I’m grateful it appears that the Commonwealth of Virginia is taking one event of child sexual assault more seriously than years of repeated assaults were treated in Idaho.”
Idaho needs a slap upside the head! Yes, Virginia, there is justice in America, sometimes.
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