Modesto church settles lawsuit from decades-ago abuse. ‘Things will never be made right’
CrossPoint Community Church in Modesto has settled another lawsuit with a victim of childhood sexual abuse, perpetrated by a pastor there decades ago.
The church, formerly First Baptist, settled with Tracy Epler for the abuse by youth pastor Les Hughey in the 1970s. A lawsuit against Hughey is ongoing; a jury trial is set for September.
“While preparing for the lawsuit, having to relive the experience of the abuse and the church’s negligence and betrayal has triggered my PTSD symptoms and re-created the sadness and violation all over again,” Epler, who later moved to Los Osos, in San Luis Obispo County, said in an email to The Bee. “Reaching a settlement agreement, while satisfying ... felt like a personal interrogation in front of others as I answered intimate questions and explained details that were grueling and traumatic for me to verbalize.”
Epler was a 17-year-old virgin when Hughey coerced her into having sex with him, The Modesto Bee previously reported.
“It was about obedience and submissiveness,” Epler told The Bee. “You had to. It was being obedient to God.”
Hughey was 23 and married when the abuse started. It went on for two years before church leadership found out and one of them told Epler not to tell her parents or anyone else.
Hughey received a grand sendoff from First Baptist and went on to work in churches in Sonora, Little Rock, Arkansas and Scottsdale, Arizona, where the abuse allegedly continued.
Epler filed the lawsuit in 2019. A new law at the time extended the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse to file a lawsuit from age 26 to age 40, or within five years — formerly three years — from the date of discovery of an adult psychological injury caused by the childhood sexual assault. It also opened a three-year window for the revival of past claims that have expired due to the statute of limitations, which has allowed Epler, 63, to sue.
It was at least the third lawsuit against the former First Baptist Church alleging it took part in cover-ups, perpetuating the abuse.
There is an ongoing lawsuit against the church by two men who were young teenagers when youth pastor Robert Chapman molested them in the 1980s. Chapman eventually was arrested, but not before others fell victim to him.
In 2019, the church settled a lawsuit brought by Jennifer Roach, who was sexually abused by youth pastor Brad Tebbutt, beginning when she was 14 in the 1980s.
It was Roach telling her story to The Modesto Bee in 2018 that encouraged Epler to come forward with hers.
“The settlement process demanded more of me than even the initial telling of my #MeToo story in 2018,” Epler said. “Going public with my abuse story was a scary thing for me to do, but completely worthwhile as it awakened my own memories and the memories of many other women whose lives have also been harmed by the abuse of the same man. Healing began in a new way for all of us.”
Like Epler was inspired by Roach, several women in Arizona who also were victims of Hughey were inspired by her.
They were parishioners from a church in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Hughey worked before going on to found Highlands Community Church in the same city.
Hughey resigned from the megachurch he had founded 20 years before, and the Scottsdale Police Department launched an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct while he was a youth pastor at Scottsdale Bible Church in the mid- to late 1980s.
The department submitted a 100-page report, with interviews from more than a dozen alleged victims and witnesses, to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, but charges were never filed.
‘Things will never be made right’
Epler declined to say how much money she was awarded in the settlement but said the money to her is an “official declaration by the church, admitting that their ministry was more important to protect than young girls assaulted at the hands of their own leadership.”
“I am grateful for this, yes,” she said. “At the same time, it feels reminiscent of the past. It feels like their heads are turned away from me while handing me a check, saying, ‘Now please go away.’”
The church did not respond to an email from The Bee seeking comment.
In a practical sense, the money will give her the time and means to rest and seek medical attention in order to restore her health after “decades of inner secrecy, shame, survival and a type of self-disdain,” Epler said. She is an artist who has channeled her pain into some of her pieces, including one that incorporates lines from previous news articles about her ordeal.
She said she took the church to court to hold it accountable, but she has never received an apology from the leadership at the church, past or present.
Even the judge told her he was sorry that a lawsuit was her only recourse and acknowledged that she has forever been changed by an experience that never can be erased.
“Things will never be made right, of course. So the act of suing and being given money from the church because they’re being told to seems a strange way of settling a grave injustice,” Epler said. “Thus, experiencing the sincere, heartfelt, verbal apology for what happened to me (from my attorneys and the judge), as well as their acknowledgment of how the church covered it up and then ushered the offender on to other churches ... meant the world to me. Oh, to have the church do the same.”
This story was originally published July 12, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Modesto church settles lawsuit from decades-ago abuse. ‘Things will never be made right’."
