An antigay megachurch in Texas was just slapped with a $1 million lawsuit after it failed to take adequate responsibility when one of its youth pastors allegedly molested an 11-year-old girl.
Matthew Tonne is the former children’s minister from Village Church, a Southern Baptist megachurch in Flower Mount, Texas, where he regularly preached about the evils of homosexuality to young children.
MSN reports:
The suit alleges that the church was “willfully negligent” in its failure to protect a child in its care from being sexually assaulted. It also says the church is liable for the actions of the pastor, who was removed from the staff last year. The woman is seeking damages after she says the abuse caused emotional distress, including an ongoing struggle with depression.
“No one has ever apologized to her, ‘Hey we are so sorry we failed to protect you.’,” Christi Bragg, the victim’s mother, says. “That is what has stuck with me this entire time.”
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The alleged abuse happened in 2012. According to the lawsuit, 35-year-old Tonne abused the 11-year-old victim at a church summer camp, regularly creeping into her bedroom to molest her.
When the family learned what had happened and contacted church leaders in 2018, they say they were not taken seriously. Though Tonne was eventually fired, they say the congregation was told he was let go for “an alcohol problem” and not because he had molested a child.
Boz Tchividjian, the lawyer representing the family, says church leadership made no effort to “ascertain whether Tonne abused any other children under its care and supervision.”
Nor has church, which has an entire page dedicated to “sexual immorality” on its website, “demonstrated a good faith desire to resolve this.”
“We have provided ample opportunity and ample time for that,” Tchividjian says. “We have hit a brick wall, and at that point in time we had to make the difficult but necessary decision to press forward to filing the lawsuit.”
Tonne was indicted by a grand jury last November and arrested in January. His lawyer says he’s been falsely accused and believes he will be completely exonerated. Meanwhile, his wife says he has been nearly driven to suicide by all this “sin stuff.”
If convicted, Tonne faces between two and 20 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.
Cam
Because with the right wing religious people, Pedophilia and racism are acceptable. Respecting minorities civil rights are the real evil.
Tishthedish1
Why would you take a case of pedophilia and turn it into racism? That’s extremely bizarre
LukeHill1389
Because with the right wing religious people, ….- I can’t agree with you more But i am here not only to discuss this article but I AM LOOKING for NEW BoyFriend. My whatsapp number is 17732425635 . Drop me a line only if you are sngle and really miss for love and pleasure..
TomG
True, it does seem as though molesting young girls is okay (after all, God forgives EVERYTHING, at least that’s what they think) but if it was a young boy they’d be slamming this pastor right & left.
thisiswhatithunk
Why is this a gay news story? He’s a pedophile. Gays and pedophiles are not interchangeable. Stop peddling this shit and prolonging the utterly false connection.
PoetDaddy
Seriously! Statistically, it’s HETEROSEXUALS who should not be allowed around children. In fact, the vast majority of sexual abuse of children is committed by heterosexual male members of the family.
Henreid
Reading for comprehension memo:
The first 2 words in the title of this article – as well as the opening sentence of this article – clearly state that this is an “Antigay Church” being sued for failing to protect its children from a pedophile youth pastor.
The church is antigay — that’s why this article is on the Queerty website.
fur_hunter
This article is proof again against all those imbecilic MORONS who keep saying that ALL GAYS are pedophiles….When in actuality according to police records, the greatest percentage of pedophiles are….STRAIGHT!!!! THAT is why it is here. Get it?
iron
The structure is anti gay therefore we have the right to know
greybat
The Story is, an Anti-Gay Church shielded a Pedophile, while failing to apologize or make restitution to his victim.
As these sort of Organizations tend to conflate Pedophilia with Homosexuality, they deserve to be exposed for the hypocrites they are.
But you may have a point…. shouldn’t this be written up in the Straight News?
smartguyd
You misspelled the towns name, A+ journalism there
PoetDaddy
And you left the apostrophe out of town’s.
fur_hunter
To: PoetDaddy…….YES…..Yes, he did. EHEHEHHEHE.
TomG
Says the person with poor punctuation skills.
CanadianGuy62
PoetDaddy…that was HILARIOUS!
Kaaper
I am trying to figure out why this article is here. Although I despise the guy who did this and wish hope and healing to the girl, how is this an issue for gays? There is no indication the damned perp was gay!
Stop doing this as it perpetuates the notion that gay men are all pedophiles seeking to recruit!
Henreid
Reading for comprehension memo:
The first 2 words in the title of this article – as well as the opening sentence of this article – clearly state that this is an “Antigay Church” being sued for failing to protect its children from a pedophile youth pastor.
The church is antigay — that’s why this article is on the Queerty website.
Kangol2
He works at an ANTI-GAY church, that preached about the “evils of homosexuality” to young children. Can you not read???
From the two opening paragraphs of the article:
“An antigay megachurch in Texas was just slapped with a $1 million lawsuit after it failed to take adequate responsibility when one of its youth pastors allegedly molested an 11-year-old girl.”
“Matthew Tonne is the former children’s minister from Village Church, a Southern Baptist megachurch in Flower Mount, Texas, where he regularly preached about the evils of homosexuality to young children.”
iron
because the abusers are anti gay and using cya language
tallbradley
This story is relevant to the gay community because of the megachurch’s antigay stance. The megachurch’s obsession with sexual immorality is utterly hypocritical in the face of the youth pastor’s actions. The very same young man who preached about the evils of homosexuality was molesting a child.
GayEGO
These religious crimes keep going on and on, will they ever learn to stand against their sexual molesters? By the way, there is a bigger percentage of straight pedophiles than there is of gay ones.
fur_hunter
If all those MORONS who call all gays…pedophiles…would actually get off their asses and check police records, they would discover that the greatest percentage of pedophiles are……STRAIGHT PEOPLE!!!!!
1898
and the name of the town is “Flower Mount”? wow, can’t make this stuff up. stranger than fiction…
domen8r
The typo is mentioned above but not clarified…it is actually Flower Mound.
iron
l wonder who named that town virgin land =flower mound
JaredMacBride
“Anti-gay church” is redundant. They all are.
Chipper
Not all churches are anti-gay. Please do your research, before make a statement like that.
JaredMacBride
OK Chipper – all Christian and Islamic churches. Feel better now?
1898
nope you’re still wrong. the vast majority of United Church of Christ congregations are accepting and affirming of LGBTQ people. this is also true of a large and growing number of United Methodist and Episcopal congregations. there are even gay-friendly Baptist congregations (do a search for the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists)
fur_hunter
AND…..How did I KNOW it was a BAPTIST church? The Baptist church is the most HATE PROPAGATING, ignorant, intolerant, bigoted and backward thinking of ALL RELIGIONS! Anyone who is a Baptist is a narrow-minded stupid piece of s hit. If you happened to be a member, you can turn in your gay card, you are so f ucking stupid.
1898
once you’ve calmed down a bit, do a search for the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. you might find it interesting
Michael007
I don’t know where you are from but down here in the ‘south’ we have Missionary Baptist Churches. Which are FAR worse than your main stream Baptist churches. You have never seen IGNORANT until you attend one of those.
First of all, the ‘pastors’ are very uneducated. Most barely have a high school diploma and never gone to any sort of divinity schooling just to be able to read and understand the Bible. They believe they are the ONLY people who know how to understand the Bible and as one said, “We don’t need any big city learnin'”. You talk about backward! Oh, my! These ‘services’ are something everyone should experience in their lifetimes.
It starts out with this preacher beginning to talk normally and then he slowly evolves into a maniac. He starts this self-induced fake gasping for breath, and ending every phrase with something that sounds like “Nnyett”. He rips his tie off and his lips turn blue. It’s an exaggerated taking of a breath and done so for dramatic effect. Then, he goes into constant repetition of phrases and then yelling. After the yelling . . . that’s just a warmup . . . . he starts what I call ‘leap frogging’. He will turn left and slap the Bible while yelling some phrase and then leap in the air and over the ‘mourners bench’. He will turn right and do the same thing. This is done over and over and over until he finally jumps off the platform and starts roaming around the church telling some people they are destined for Hell. It is frightening to behold!
After awhile of him doing that and people jumping up and down and yelling “Praise Jesus” and “Halleluia”, women fainting and men jumping up and parading around the church waiving their hands in the air like a bunch of wild Indians, he jumps back up on the ‘altar’ and starts telling everyone if they are ‘SAVED’ to come forward. If they don’t then that is the sign they are the condemned. Well, hell yes! You ain’t got much choice! Ha. Everyone gets up and goes up there!!! I saw one guy not go because he said he was not worthy and they gathered around him in a circle and then begins all kinds of weeping and wailing and begging him to “get up!” It is not a church for the weak of heart. There are MANY of these where I live, mostly way out in the country. I find it simply disgusting to observe.
I went with a girl I was dating just to satisfy her family. It gave me the chills! They gathered around me and begged me to come up front. I knew one of the young ministers and I said in a soft voice, “Gary. I already belong to a church. I belong to St. Joseph Catholic Church and I . . . ” He jumped back and said, “I knowed there wuz somethin awrong with yoooo!!!! Yur a Cath-o-LICK!!” The main guy stood back up on that altar quieted everyone down and then and told everyone Satan was in their church tonight. It got all quiet except from some women sobbing, and all eyes were on me!!! That’s when I got up and walked out.
I know . . . I know . . . some of you are going to say that’s what I get for dating a GIRL! Haaaaa!
1898
@Michael007 “…like a bunch of wild Indians…”
wow. way to be racist, pal
fur_hunter
I just love it every time one of these incidents happens in a BAPTIST church. They are so f ucking hypocritical, it’s a joke.
Josh in OR
When I was in high school, the youth pastor of my church, the man put in charge of my safety and well-being, stood by and laughed when a couple of guys who had picked on me constantly for years for being a ‘fag’ (despite my being 14, and not at ALL out) threw me into the diving pool at the church. It was common knowledge that I couldn’t swim, due to medical issues (I am fine now and love the water), so these two boys flat out tried to kill me, and they and the youth pastor laughed about it. And the church did nothing about it but shrug and say ‘boys will be boys’ and suggest that I work harder to not provoke them and lead them to sin.
Yeah. Baptists…
But that’s not all! Two years later, at a Wednesday night youth group meeting, two friends of mine were having relationship issues – teenage drama! – and asked me to mediate (cause apparently, talking to kids and relating to them as people is something I, a teacher, am and have always been pretty good at…) instead of going to Ben, the youth pastor. When Ben found out about this, he flew into a rage and physically assaulted me right there, in the church hallway, in front of witnesses. He laid hands on me, spat in my face, called me names, hit me…the works. Once again, I reported him. This time, I had witnesses. The church let him go by the following Sunday, but the congregation was told only that ‘another opportunity that better serve his family and bring glory to God had opened up’ and that Ben would be moving to accept the gig.
That was when I gave up on religion. Seeing a church protect a child abuser is bad enough…I can’t imagine being a sexual abuse survivor and seeing the church protect my attacker…
Religion is toxic to human progress.
Josh in OR
*’another opportunity TO better serve’
Not ‘that’.
dean089
The problem in these cases, and the reason Evangelicals and other devout Christians are silent, is that if you’re looking for condemnation of adult men having sex with girls you will NOT find it in the Bible. Quite the contrary. Once a girl gets her period she’s ready to go. When it comes to not eating seafood or not mixing cotton thread with wool, those things ‘pertain to that time period and are no longer relevant,’ but when it comes to having sex with your teenage daughter, niece, neighbor, etc., go for it. ‘God’ does not mind (and will sometimes even command you to do so).
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
God and the powers that be in Heaven must look down on Earth and saw WTF???
Felecia
I hate to burst your bubble, 1898…but back in 1983 that Church of Christ you are so fond of told my bible-thumping step-mother that her LGBT step-child was ‘unclean and therefore unfit to attend church’. I was 20; who cared….but the REAL kicker to end this story is that 6 months later, the witch got caught screwing the pastor behind my father’s back. Wait a minute…this tale isn’t over yet, lol…my little brother went to this church before our step-twat got busted, around Christmas. I was outside in the parking lot having a smoke, but could hear the loud sermon. The pastor instructed the entire congregation to ‘forget the holiday and it’s presents; all you need is Jesus, and Jesus needs money, so use that fund to donate to the Waipahu Church of Christ instead’…then when the service was ending, this assh*le called for a ‘special prayer’…in the hope that their REGULAR pastor and his family would be safe, WHILE VACATIONING IN ARUBA !!! This church was located in HAWAII; why the fu*k would you need to go to Aruba..? And who paid for that, I do not wonder, lol….I ran inside, yelled for that pastor…who was screwing my father’s wife, but we didn’t know it yet…and told these poor folks (Waipahu was a working-class neighborhood then, Hawaiians barely above water financially) to keep their money and quit giving it to the Churchies. I was thrown out, yes, but to this day if I see a Church of Christ I want to burn that sucker down, lol…doesn’t matter what denomination; they’re all phony bastards with bullshit information. The King James bible is the FIFTH translation of the original Old Testament, and a LOT was left out in translation…not to mention added, as well…..it’s all a scam for power and mass-manipulation, people….
Felecia
And if anyone would like a detailed explanation of the bullshit, I recommend a book called ‘The Alexandria Link’ by Steve Berry….it’s fascinating, to say the least….and covers Judaism and Islam as well. Happy reading, Churchies, lol….:)
1898
you’re talking about something that happened 36 years ago. a lot of things have changed since then. the “open and affirming” movement began in the ’90s and it has grown steadily over the last 20 years. but hey, if you want to pretend it’s still 1983, you do you
BGinBigD
Baptist leaders refusing to apologize and take ownership for criminal and immoral acts??? You gotta be kidding me!
LOL
CanadianGuy62
‘…nearly driven to suicide by all this “sin stuff.”’ #BlessHim (and, I guess, his wife, too…seems she needs it).