Minnesota Previous Apostolic Lutheran Church Group Protected a Youngster Abuser — ProPublica

The lady pleaded to not go.

She fought together with her father on the drive over, screaming and crying in his truck till they arrived on the workplace constructing for Bruckelmyer Brothers, a house building firm on the outskirts of Duluth, Minnesota. She was simply getting into her first years of grade faculty.

Within the workplace, two males have been ready. Certainly one of them was Clint Massie, who the lady had not too long ago advised her dad and mom had touched her genitals and groped her below her shirt. The opposite was Daryl Bruckelmyer, a preacher and chief of the Previous Apostolic Lutheran Church down the street, the place the lady’s household worshipped. Massie was a revered member of the congregation. Bruckelmyer had requested all of them to the assembly, in response to the lady’s account to police years later.

In entrance of the lady, her father and Bruckelmyer, Massie requested her for forgiveness. Looming over her, the three males wept. Then the lady’s dad and preacher allowed the person who had been sexually abusing her since kindergarten to hug her.

“It was one of many worst issues ever,” she advised police some 15 years later.

In accordance with one of many core tenets of their church, the matter was resolved. It was forgiven. It ought to now be forgotten. If she spoke of it once more, she can be responsible of getting an unforgiving coronary heart and the sins would grow to be hers.

However she may always remember. And neither may the opposite youngsters.

Over the course of about 20 years in two states, Massie had, in response to court docket paperwork and by his personal admission, sexually abused youngsters throughout the Previous Apostolic Lutheran Church, or OALC, neighborhood. He touched women below blankets when their dad and mom have been current, within the backseat of a automotive with different passengers — even within the pews at church. His abuse was such an open secret among the many tight-knit congregation that moms warned their daughters to steer clear of him.

Some former victims, as adults, confronted preachers, together with Bruckelmyer, about what Massie had executed to them. Church leaders advised Massie to steer clear of the congregation’s youngsters, and so they despatched him to a therapist who specialised in intercourse offender therapy.

However they by no means reported Massie’s crimes to police, as required by the legislation. As a substitute, Bruckelmyer and different leaders within the church inspired the victims to participate in forgiveness classes — which allowed Massie, now 50, to proceed abusing youngsters, in response to an investigation by the Minnesota Star Tribune and ProPublica.

Massie didn’t reply to requests for remark however has denied abuse allegations regarding some particular person victims in pending lawsuits. In December 2024, he pleaded responsible to 4 counts of felony prison sexual conduct with victims below the age of 13. In March, a decide sentenced him to 7 1/2 years in jail. Church officers, together with Bruckelmyer, weren’t charged in reference to Massie’s crime, however prosecutors mentioned they need to have executed extra to cease him.

“It provides the looks of a bunch of people who find themselves not simply making an attempt to guard somebody — however one thing,” Mike Ryan, the St. Louis County assistant district legal professional who prosecuted Massie, mentioned at his sentencing. “And so they have enabled one thing terrible right here.”

Legislation enforcement there first grew to become conscious of the allegations towards Massie in 2017. They mentioned that the church’s lack of cooperation — together with pressuring potential witnesses and victims to remain quiet concerning the abuse and preachers failing to report it to authorities — was a significant component within the delay in bringing prices.

Bruckelmyer declined to remark or to reply an in depth checklist of questions. However in a 2023 interview with a St. Louis County detective, he acknowledged figuring out about Massie’s sexual abuse and didn’t dispute that he took half in forgiveness classes involving Massie and his victims.

He mentioned it was as much as the victims to report the crimes to police, a transparent misreading of the legislation for mandated reporters — docs, lecturers and others who’re required to report crimes towards youngsters.

“We don’t defend both one,” Bruckelmyer mentioned of sexual abusers and their victims.

Bruckelmyer additionally advised police his actions adopted church protocol. An inside church doc, obtained by the Star Tribune and ProPublica, means that, when acceptable, church leaders and others facilitate “a dialog with each events collectively” — an motion that specialists who work with abuse victims say can add to a sufferer’s trauma. Whereas the doc praises the police and the justice system, it doesn’t point out obligatory reporting legal guidelines and offers preachers large latitude on whether or not to contain police.

Kimberly Lowe, a lawyer and disaster supervisor for the church, mentioned its preachers are unpaid and due to this fact may not be legally required to report sexual abuse of kids. Requested if she believes the preachers are mandated reporters below Minnesota legislation, Lowe would solely say that the language of the statute is unclear. 

Bruckelmyer’s church, Woodland Park, is certainly one of two OALC congregations north of Duluth, within the bluff area above Lake Superior. Some members reside close by, in a rural, forest-lined neighborhood. Members are usually not clearly identifiable by their clothes — they costume modestly however modernly, in muted colours and lengthy skirts. Girls don’t put on make-up, jewellery or open-toed sneakers and so they maintain their hair up in a bun, giving rise to the nickname “bunners.” In keeping with church literature, members are to reside easy, modest lives like Jesus did; tv, music and dancing are seen as sinful, in response to former members.

On a current Sunday, the trendy, unadorned sanctuary of the Woodland Park church, which seats 1,000, was stuffed with households, dad and mom soothing babbling and crying infants, older youngsters clutching baggies of sweet or toy vehicles.

On the shut of the sermon, the preacher requested the whole congregation for forgiveness, which kicked off “actions” — a portion of the service when congregants embraced and begged each other for forgiveness for numerous sins, ceaselessly in tears.

OALC is a conservative Christian revival motion that got here to the U.S. with Nineteenth-century settlers from Norway, Finland and Sweden, and it’s not affiliated with any mainstream Lutheran denominations. There isn’t a official depend, however one tutorial examine estimated 31,000 members worldwide as of 2016, with most in the USA. The church is quickly rising, specialists say, and the member depend right this moment is probably going a lot larger. OALC’s emphasis on giant households has created booms in locations like Washington state and Duluth.

There are 33 OALC church buildings within the U.S. and Canada. Solely males maintain management positions. The much less formal nature of OALC construction — a spokesperson mentioned there’s no headquarters within the U.S. — implies that, not like sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic Church or Southern Baptist Conference, there’s no central authority to carry accountable. Nonetheless, information of the prison case towards Massie unfold broadly within the insular OALC, inspiring extra victims to come back ahead in Minnesota and different states.

St. Louis County investigators say they’ve been contacted by present and former church members in South Dakota and Washington who allege they have been victims of sexual abuse that was by no means reported to legislation enforcement. The Star Tribune and ProPublica have interviewed greater than a dozen alleged victims of Massie and of different church members in Wyoming, Maryland and Michigan.

By forgiving males like Massie, prosecutors and police mentioned, preachers created a state of affairs the place the alleged victims needed to worship subsequent to their alleged abusers — and allowed Massie to flee arrest and prosecution for years.

“He was so brazen about it — and there was so little executed about it — that he thought it was permission,” Ryan mentioned.

“Church Is aware of”

For the lady who mentioned she was pressured to forgive Massie at Bruckelmyer’s workplace, the silence that adopted solely compounded her trauma. She reported fighting debilitating anxiousness and obsessive-compulsive dysfunction in her teenagers. She grew tense each time she walked into the church, particularly when she noticed Massie holding one other little lady. 

“I lived in darkness for thus a few years of my life as a result of I couldn’t speak about it,” the lady mentioned in a recorded interview with police. “A number of occasions in my life I needed to die.”

When she was 16 and in counseling, she advised her therapist how Massie had abused her. The therapist reported it to the police, which is how the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Workplace in Duluth first realized about Massie in summer time 2017.

Sgt. Jessica LaBore was the investigator assigned to the case. In a recorded interview, the lady reluctantly advised LaBore how she used to sit down with Massie and his spouse, Sarah, at church, just some rows from the entrance. Massie would snake his arms up her skirt and contact her thighs and genitals. One other time, at a gathering on the dwelling of her dad and mom’ pals, she mentioned, Massie advised her to get a blanket and commenced touching her beneath it, together with her mother and pop close by.

She advised LaBore that she’d reported the abuse to a preacher, Calvin Raisanen, and that her mom had spoken to Bruckelmyer about it, in response to police paperwork and a recording of the interview obtained by means of a public information request. Raisanen didn’t reply to requests for remark. In her personal dialog with LaBore, the lady’s mom confirmed that Massie had requested forgiveness from her husband and daughter years in the past.

Like some victims within the information from Massie’s case, she declined to talk to reporters for this story and isn’t being recognized as a result of the information organizations sometimes don’t title victims of intercourse crimes with out their consent.

In an electronic mail to reporters, she wrote that she continues to be a member of the church and feels supported by its neighborhood: “I really consider I’m in the fitting place.”

When LaBore interviewed Massie, he confirmed some necessary particulars concerning the allegations: Bruckelmyer was conscious that a number of women had accused Massie of sexual abuse. And he remembered asking for forgiveness at his preacher’s enterprise workplace.

LaBore didn’t reply to requests for remark, however police reviews present that the lady’s household stopped cooperating with the investigation. The mom advised her that preachers on the church had spoken to Massie and that he’d “realized his lesson,” although the mom believed that Massie had “continued to sexually assault youngsters after this level,” in response to LaBore’s notes.

LaBore referred the case for prices to Deputy St. Louis County Legal professional Jon Holets. In an announcement to the Star Tribune and ProPublica, Holets mentioned he additionally spoke to the sufferer’s mom, who knowledgeable him “that there had been therapeutic intervention, that ‘they have been good’” and that her daughter didn’t need something extra to be executed. With out the lady’s cooperation, Holets mentioned he determined he couldn’t convey prices towards Massie, an end result he mentioned provides him “heartache” to this present day.

Three years later, Massie once more got here to the eye of the sheriff’s workplace. Two crime-reporting hotlines obtained nameless ideas saying Massie had sexually assaulted “little women” over the course of three a long time. “Church is aware of however no motion,” reads a police abstract of one of many ideas.

This time, LaBore went to Bruckelmyer. In keeping with her notes, Bruckelmyer mentioned the church encourages abuse victims to go to police, however he advised her he believed it was “on them to try this.”

LaBore defined the state’s mandated reporting legislation to Bruckelmyer and advised him that he and others on the church could possibly be charged criminally if “any individual that they already learn about” have been to maintain abusing youngsters and so they didn’t report it.

“We’re discovering out from our investigations that these Mandated Experiences are usually not being made, and as a substitute, these incidents are being handled throughout the church,” she wrote in a departmental memo to replace different detectives. “Generally the preachers are facilitating within the asking for forgiveness.”

For the second time, Holets determined to not convey prices, although this time it was about church preachers quite than Massie. In an announcement to reporters, Holets mentioned legislation enforcement determined to attempt to “educate” church leaders about their obligation to report the sexual abuse of kids.

“I believed it was simpler to work with present management to affect practices and attitudes concerning youngster abuse reporting, quite than to pursue prison enforcement at that stage,” Holets wrote. “That mentioned, prison prices for failure to report stay a chance in such instances.”

When LaBore spoke to Bruckelmyer, she learn him the whole mandated reporter legislation over the telephone, line by line, then texted it to him.

Haunted by Silence

In 2023, a name to police breathed new life into the case.

A girl advised police that she’d been sexually abused repeatedly as a child. Her abuser was a relative: Clint Massie.

The case landed on the desk of Sgt. Adam Kleffman of the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Workplace. He interviewed the sufferer and listened to the other ways the girl mentioned Massie sexually abused her: the nights when she slept over after serving to are inclined to his horses, the day when she rode a tractor with him, or swam with him and different members of her household on the lake.

Her mother had reported Massie to a preacher when she was a baby, she advised Kleffman. On the time, the preacher promised to deal with it, she mentioned, and advised her mom by no means to talk of it once more, not even to her husband. Later, she went by means of a session with Bruckelmyer, much like the opposite lady, the place she was pressured to forgive Massie and neglect the abuse.

As an grownup, she was alarmed to see Massie in church, hugging and kissing youngsters about the identical age she was when the abuse started, which is why she’d felt an obligation to report all of it these years later, she mentioned.

“I went again to the identical preacher, which is Daryl [Bruckelmyer], and mentioned, ‘Why is he nonetheless in a position to maintain youngsters and no matter?’” she recalled to Kleffman in a recorded interview. “And he’s like: ‘I don’t know. Like, we’ve advised him that he’s not presupposed to, however he nonetheless does.’”

Kleffman picked up the place LaBore left off and contacted the lady who spoke to their workplace in 2017. She was now in her early 20s, married, a brand new mother dwelling in Washington state. In a recorded dialog, she advised Kleffman that the trauma — and specifically, the mandate that she stay silent about it — nonetheless haunted her.

Although the girl had tried to place time and distance between herself and Massie, Massie’s spouse, Sarah, had requested for a gathering a few 12 months earlier when the girl returned to Duluth for a go to. At a Starbucks, she mentioned, Sarah Massie advised her that the abuse was no massive deal and he or she wanted to neglect about what occurred. The dialog, the girl mentioned, was “horrible.”

Sarah Massie declined to remark for this story.

The girl agreed to be a part of the police investigation however advised Kleffman that she had little religion it might go anyplace. It didn’t, in any case, go anyplace final time.

“I can inform you,” Kleffman mentioned, “you need to have a number of religion in me.”

The investigator now had two victims. They gave him the names of others they suspected had additionally been abused by Massie. Kleffman tried to contact them, however some have been reluctant to cooperate. One girl advised Kleffman that Massie had requested for forgiveness. The sin, she mentioned within the recorded name, was “washed away within the blood of reconciliation.”

“It’s gone eternally,” she advised Kleffman.

“So that you’re following what the church says to do,” Kleffman replied.

“I’m following what God says to do,” the girl advised him, earlier than hanging up.

“There May Be A whole lot”

On Feb. 10, 2023, Massie sat reverse Kleffman and Investigator Tony McTavish in a beige, windowless room on the sheriff’s workplace in Duluth. In a video of the interrogation, Massie downplayed the allegations as a collection of accidents and misunderstandings. However because the 90-minute interrogation progressed, his demeanor shifted. He admitted he’d felt a “tinge” of a “sick, perverted factor” when, he claimed, one very younger lady had pulled his hand to her vagina earlier than he realized what was occurring.

“I’m a lustful man, positive,” he mentioned, however he denied he touched women on function. “Strike me useless proper now if I’m mendacity to you. I used to be not making an attempt to the touch her sexually.”

“I name bullshit on that,” Kleffman mentioned.

Massie advised Kleffman and McTavish that Bruckelmyer had spoken to him “at the least” thrice about inappropriate habits with youngsters. The investigators requested what number of extra women may come ahead with tales about him touching or kissing them.

“I imply, there could possibly be tons of,” Massie mentioned.

5 days later, Bruckelmyer walked into the identical interview room with Raisanen, one other preacher on the church.

Bruckelmyer, now 68, is described as a sort however domineering power within the church, a father of at the least 12 who labored in building.

Not like in different branches of Christianity, OALC preachers like Bruckelmyer don’t attend conventional seminaries or obtain formal coaching earlier than assuming their management roles. As a substitute, in response to a church spokesperson, they’re chosen by the congregation.

Their recommendation is seen as coming immediately from God, in response to a number of former church members.

In a video recording of the police interview, Bruckelmyer and Raisanen joked quietly with each other earlier than Kleffman and Sgt. Eric Sathers, one other investigator, entered the room.

“Are you aware what the mandated reporting legal guidelines are within the state of Minnesota?” Kleffman requested.

“Now we have checked out them some, but it surely’s onerous for us to interpret every little thing,” Bruckelmyer replied.

“Have you ever ever been advised about them?” the officer requested.

“No,” Bruckelmyer mentioned.

Kleffman mentioned he knew that wasn’t true and introduced up the 2020 name with LaBore. “I simply listened to the audio recording, and it was line-for-line. You mentioned you understood what they have been,” Kleffman mentioned.

“We felt, except it’s modified, that as part of the church that we maintain silent,” Bruckelmyer mentioned.

Kleffman and Sathers defined that if somebody like Massie confessed to Bruckelmyer one-on-one, that might represent a protected dialog with clergy. However listening to immediately from the victims, from dad and mom of victims or about abuse allegations in a bunch setting was one other matter fully.

Bruckelmyer and Raisanen claimed ignorance of the authorized distinction and thanked the officers for the “clarification.” Bruckelmyer requested what grew to become of the 2017 investigation into Massie. “I imply, it ought to have been taken care of then, you recognize?” the preacher mentioned. “It’s like, what occurred?”

Kleffman reminded him {that a} decade earlier than that, the lady’s dad and mom had come ahead to Bruckelmyer and was advised to forgive Massie.

“Nothing was executed by you,” Kleffman mentioned. “So in that meantime, she isn’t being protected whereas Clint continues to be scot-free doing what he’s been doing for 15 years.”

“I see,” Bruckelmyer mentioned quietly.

“You’re simply protecting a pedophile in your church,” Kleffman mentioned.

Each Bruckelmyer and Raisanen confirmed they’d identified concerning the lady from the 2017 report, and Bruckelmyer mentioned he knew of two others as nicely. He expressed his eagerness to cooperate with legislation enforcement transferring ahead however denied data of another victims past the three.

Bruckelmyer and Raisanen left the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Division workplace with out dealing with any penalties. John Hiivala, a spokesperson for the Woodland Park Previous Apostolic Lutheran Church, mentioned that the church “has totally complied with the legislation within the referenced case, and it’s a matter of authorized document.” Hiivala declined to remark additional.

By the point prosecutors introduced the case towards Massie, the three-year statute of limitations had run out on charging Bruckelmyer with failure to report.

Reckoning

On the day of Massie’s sentencing in March 2025, Kleffman walked Kyla Chamberlin to the entrance row of the high-ceilinged courtroom. The other aspect of the courtroom shortly crammed with at the least a dozen Massie supporters, together with his spouse, Sarah.

Chamberlin had flown in from North Dakota alone. Of the 9 alleged victims prosecutors recognized from the case, she was the one one to attend the sentencing in individual. As she waited, she was shaking. She didn’t need to look again, notably at Sarah Massie, whom she’d adored as a baby. She mentioned she may really feel the eyes of her former church neighborhood on her, individuals she’d as soon as trusted and beloved.

A former EMT and mom of three, Chamberlin had grown up within the Black Hills of South Dakota within the Nineteen Nineties. Clint and Sarah Massie lived close by and opened their dwelling to Chamberlin and her 4 siblings. Her dad and mom generally requested Clint, beginning in his late teenagers, to babysit.

The sexual abuse started across the time Chamberlin was 7 years outdated, she advised police. In interviews with Kleffman, she described a remarkably related sample of abuse as the 2 Duluth victims.

After the Massies moved to Duluth within the early 2000s, Chamberlin’s dad and mom say she went from meek and candy to being crammed with an inexplicable anger. She rebelled, she drank. The close-knit household started to fray. She and certainly one of her older sisters, Kristi Bertolotto, stopped talking to one another.

“I’ve misplaced loads of friendships, loads of relationships, divorces, anger administration — didn’t perceive why I used to be so mad,” Chamberlin mentioned.

She stopped attending church in 2010 and, in response, her dad and mom made it clear that she was not welcome at household and vacation capabilities, a painful and customary expertise described by a number of former church members.

“It’s such as you don’t even assume for your self,” Janie Williamson, Chamberlin’s mom, mentioned in an interview. “To show towards your personal youngsters due to a few of these issues is — it’s terrible.”

After St. Louis County introduced prices towards Massie, Kleffman started receiving calls from alleged victims all around the nation. A type of was from Chamberlin. Months later, Kleffman realized that one of many different victims he interviewed was Chamberlin’s older sister, Bertolotto.

Neither of them knew what had occurred to the opposite. Neither knew the opposite sister had come ahead. Each girls agreed to be named on this story.

Court docket filings listed 9 alleged victims, however solely three of the instances resulted in prices of felony sexual conduct with a sufferer below the age of 13. The statute of limitations below South Dakota legislation had run out for Bertolotto and Chamberlin. And the lady who’d been pressured to forgive Massie in Bruckelmyer’s workplace hadn’t had her case charged both; below Minnesota legislation, an excessive amount of time had handed between her preliminary report in 2017 and the prosecution.

Nonetheless, six of the alleged victims whose instances didn’t lead to prices have been nonetheless a part of the case, and a few of the girls traveled to Duluth in December 2024 to testify at Massie’s trial. Simply after jury choice, Massie agreed to plead responsible to 4 felony counts. One cost was dropped.

4 months later, at his sentencing, Massie regarded pale and paunchy in an orange jumpsuit, his arms and toes shackled. His legal professional, citing Massie’s lack of a prison document, requested that he obtain no jail time and be allowed to hunt therapy and obtain probation that he may serve at dwelling. Massie apologized to his victims and their households.

“I encourage for his or her forgiveness, for the injury and damage that I’ve precipitated them through the years,” he mentioned in a quavering voice. “I really feel chargeable for the horrible acts to those youngsters.”

However Choose Eric Hylden famous that since Massie had pleaded responsible, he’d by no means tried to enroll in sex-offender therapy or written apology letters to his victims. Hylden additionally quoted aloud from certainly one of 17 letters of assist for Massie, many from OALC members, which he mentioned demonstrated that some in Massie’s neighborhood nonetheless didn’t consider he’d executed something unsuitable: “I want you discover ones which have really executed these items and get them put away quite than placing your power into mendacity and in search of evil the place there’s none to be discovered.”

The decide sentenced Massie to 7 1/2 years in jail.

Afterward, within the witness room a flooring larger within the courthouse, Chamberlin met Ryan, the assistant district legal professional, and Kleffman — the 2 males she credited with placing Massie in jail 30 years after he’d abused her. The three exchanged hugs.

“I really feel a way of justice for the primary time in 30 years,” Chamberlin mentioned.

On the identical time, none of them felt utterly glad that the issue started and ended with Massie — that church leaders had not been held accountable.

Ryan mentioned that he’d struggled as he ready to go to trial with protecting a number of of the ladies from succumbing to what he known as “a continuing effort” by members of the church to “attempt to get these women to both tone down their place on it or simply to not cooperate.” One alleged sufferer, he mentioned, had dropped out weeks earlier than trial.

Chamberlin and her sister have retained the identical lawyer who represented a few of the victims within the Jeffrey Epstein case. He has filed lawsuits on their behalf towards Massie, their church in South Dakota and the Previous Apostolic Lutheran Church of America.

In a letter written from jail that was filed in court docket, Massie denied each sisters’ allegations. The OALC, in a movement to dismiss each lawsuits, wrote that “whereas OALC-America is conscious and sympathetic to Plaintiff for the abuse Plaintiff alleges occurred by Massie, such empathy doesn’t take away from the plain indisputable fact that this Court docket doesn’t have private jurisdiction over OALC-America.”

Chamberlin and Bertolotto’s household has left the church. They’re now navigating a fragile reconciliation, which Chamberlin credit to the abuse lastly coming to gentle.

Chamberlin mentioned she hoped to have a task encouraging different victims to come back ahead earlier than the secrecy consumes their lives the best way it had consumed hers.

“There’s much more to be executed,” she mentioned. “There’s loads of Clints on the market.”