Minnesota Outdated Apostolic Lutheran Church Group Protected a Youngster Abuser — ProPublica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 college.

Within the workplace, two males had been ready. One in all them was Clint Massie, who the lady had lately instructed 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 The opposite was Daryl Bruckelmyer, a preacher and chief of the Outdated Apostolic Lutheran Church down the street, the place the lady’s household worshipped.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 accordance with 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 instructed 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 could be responsible of getting an unforgiving coronary heart and the sins would turn into hers.

However she might always remember. And neither might the opposite kids.

Over the course of about 20 years in two states, Massie had, in accordance with courtroom paperwork and by his personal admission, sexually abused kids inside the Outdated Apostolic Lutheran Church, or OALC, neighborhood. He touched women below blankets when their dad and mom had 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 accomplished to them. Church leaders instructed Massie to steer clear of the congregation’s kids, 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 regulation. As an alternative, Bruckelmyer and different leaders within the church inspired the victims to participate in forgiveness periods — which allowed Massie, now 50, to proceed abusing kids, in accordance with an investigation by the Minnesota Star Tribune and ProPublica.

Massie didn’t reply to requests for remark however has denied abuse allegations referring to some particular person victims in pending lawsuits. In December 2024, he pleaded responsible to 4 counts of felony legal 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 accomplished extra to cease him.

“It provides the looks of a bunch of people who find themselves not simply attempting 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.”

Regulation enforcement there first turned conscious of the allegations in opposition to Massie in 2017. They mentioned that the church’s lack of cooperation — together with pressuring potential witnesses and victims to remain quiet in regards to the abuse and preachers failing to report it to authorities — was a significant factor 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 periods 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 regulation for mandated reporters — medical doctors, academics and others who’re required to report crimes in opposition to kids.

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

Bruckelmyer additionally instructed police his actions adopted church protocol. An inner 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 consultants 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 provides 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 won’t be legally required to report sexual abuse of kids. Requested if she believes the preachers are mandated reporters below Minnesota regulation, 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 stay 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 response to church literature, members are to stay easy, modest lives like Jesus did; tv, music and dancing are seen as sinful, in accordance with former members.

On a latest Sunday, the trendy, unadorned sanctuary of the Woodland Park church, which seats 1,000, was filled with households, dad and mom soothing babbling and crying infants, older kids 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, continuously 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 isn’t affiliated with any mainstream Lutheran denominations. There isn’t any official rely, however one tutorial research estimated 31,000 members worldwide as of 2016, with most in the US. The church is quickly rising, consultants say, and the member rely immediately 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, in contrast to sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic Church or Southern Baptist Conference, there’s no central authority to carry accountable. Nonetheless, information of the legal case in opposition to 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 had been victims of sexual abuse that was by no means reported to regulation 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 scenario 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 accomplished 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 battling debilitating nervousness 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 instances in my life I wished to die.”

When she was 16 and in counseling, she instructed 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 discovered about Massie in summer season 2017.

Sgt. Jessica LaBore was the investigator assigned to the case. In a recorded interview, the lady reluctantly instructed 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 house of her dad and mom’ buddies, she mentioned, Massie instructed her to get a blanket and started touching her beneath it, together with her mother and pa close by.

She instructed LaBore that she’d reported the abuse to a preacher, Calvin Raisanen, and that her mom had spoken to Bruckelmyer about it, in accordance with police paperwork and a recording of the interview obtained via 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 identify victims of intercourse crimes with out their consent.

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

When LaBore interviewed Massie, he confirmed some essential particulars in regards to 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 experiences present that the lady’s household stopped cooperating with the investigation. The mom instructed her that preachers on the church had spoken to Massie and that he’d “discovered his lesson,” although the mom believed that Massie had “continued to sexually assault kids after this level,” in accordance with LaBore’s notes.

LaBore referred the case for prices to Deputy St. Louis County Legal professional Jon Holets. In a press release 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 had been good’” and that her daughter didn’t need something extra to be accomplished. With out the lady’s cooperation, Holets mentioned he determined he couldn’t carry prices in opposition to Massie, an final result he mentioned provides him “heartache” to today.

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 response to her notes, Bruckelmyer mentioned the church encourages abuse victims to go to police, however he instructed her he believed it was “on them to try this.”

LaBore defined the state’s mandated reporting regulation to Bruckelmyer and instructed him that he and others on the church may very well be charged criminally if “someone that they already find out about” had been to maintain abusing kids 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 an alternative, these incidents are being handled inside the church,” she wrote in a departmental memo to replace different detectives. “Typically the preachers are facilitating within the asking for forgiveness.”

For the second time, Holets determined to not carry prices, although this time it was about church preachers fairly than Massie. In a press release to reporters, Holets mentioned regulation 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 current management to affect practices and attitudes relating to youngster abuse reporting, fairly than to pursue legal enforcement at that stage,” Holets wrote. “That mentioned, legal prices for failure to report stay a chance in such instances.”

When LaBore spoke to Bruckelmyer, she learn him the whole mandated reporter regulation 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 lady instructed 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 alternative 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 toddler, she instructed Kleffman. On the time, the preacher promised to deal with it, she mentioned, and instructed her mom by no means to talk of it once more, not even to her husband. Later, she went via a session with Bruckelmyer, just 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 kids 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 capable of maintain youngsters and no matter?’” she recalled to Kleffman in a recorded interview. “And he’s like: ‘I don’t know. Like, we’ve instructed him that he’s not imagined 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 instructed Kleffman that the trauma — and particularly, 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 instructed her that the abuse was no large deal and she or he wanted to neglect about what occurred. The dialog, the girl mentioned, was “horrible.”

Sarah Massie declined to remark for this story.

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

“I can let you know,” Kleffman mentioned, “you need to have plenty 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 had been reluctant to cooperate. One lady instructed 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 ceaselessly,” she instructed Kleffman.

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

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

“There Might 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, certain,” he mentioned, however he denied he touched women on objective. “Strike me useless proper now if I’m mendacity to you. I used to be not attempting to the touch her sexually.”

“I name bullshit on that,” Kleffman mentioned.

Massie instructed Kleffman and McTavish that Bruckelmyer had spoken to him “not less than” 3 times about inappropriate conduct with kids. The investigators requested what number of extra women may come ahead with tales about him touching or kissing them.

“I imply, there may very well be lots 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 form however domineering pressure within the church, a father of not less than 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 an alternative, in accordance with a church spokesperson, they’re chosen by the congregation.

Their recommendation is seen as coming instantly from God, in accordance with 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, however it’s onerous for us to interpret every part,” Bruckelmyer replied.

“Have you ever ever been instructed 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 had 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 instantly from the victims, from dad and mom of victims or about abuse allegations in a bunch setting was one other matter completely.

Bruckelmyer and Raisanen claimed ignorance of the authorized distinction and thanked the officers for the “clarification.” Bruckelmyer requested what turned of the 2017 investigation into Massie. “I imply, it ought to have been taken care of then, you already know?” 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 instructed to forgive Massie.

“Nothing was accomplished by you,” Kleffman mentioned. “So in that meantime, she is just not 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 in regards to the lady from the 2017 report, and Bruckelmyer mentioned he knew of two others as effectively. He expressed his eagerness to cooperate with regulation 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 Outdated Apostolic Lutheran Church, mentioned that the church “has absolutely complied with the regulation within the referenced case, and it’s a matter of authorized file.” Hiivala declined to remark additional.

By the point prosecutors introduced the case in opposition to 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 facet of the courtroom rapidly crammed with not less than 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, significantly at Sarah Massie, whom she’d adored as a toddler. She mentioned she might 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 Nineties. Clint and Sarah Massie lived close by and opened their house 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 previous, she instructed police. In interviews with Kleffman, she described a remarkably comparable 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 quite a lot of friendships, quite a lot 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 features, a painful and customary expertise described by a number of former church members.

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

After St. Louis County introduced prices in opposition to Massie, Kleffman started receiving calls from alleged victims everywhere in 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.

Courtroom 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 regulation 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 regulation, 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 end in prices had been nonetheless a part of the case, and among 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 appeared pale and paunchy in an orange jumpsuit, his arms and ft shackled. His legal professional, citing Massie’s lack of a legal file, requested that he obtain no jail time and be allowed to hunt therapy and obtain probation that he might serve at house. Massie apologized to his victims and their households.

“I urge for his or her forgiveness, for the harm and damage that I’ve brought about them over time,” he mentioned in a quavering voice. “I really feel answerable for the horrible acts to those kids.”

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 imagine he’d accomplished something unsuitable: “I want you discover ones which have really accomplished this stuff and get them put away fairly than placing your vitality into mendacity and looking for 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 ground 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 fully 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 referred to as “a relentless 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 among the victims within the Jeffrey Epstein case. He has filed lawsuits on their behalf in opposition to Massie, their church in South Dakota and the Outdated Apostolic Lutheran Church of America.

In a letter written from jail that was filed in courtroom, Massie denied each sisters’ allegations. The OALC, in a movement to dismiss each lawsuits, wrote that “whereas OALC-America is aware and sympathetic to Plaintiff for the abuse Plaintiff alleges occurred by Massie, such empathy doesn’t take away from the plain undeniable fact that this Courtroom 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 mild.

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 accomplished,” she mentioned. “There’s quite a lot of Clints on the market.”