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Vol 3, Issue 10 May 15, 2012
This Machine Bears Witness
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Losing Grace
How power,
Greed & Denial
Corroded a
Megachurch
By
Kiera
Feldman
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IN THIS ISSUE
Vol 3, Issue 10 MAy 15, 2012
Together
Chris Fellure and Sara BowersockFellure. By Rebekah Greiman
pg. 3
So Long, Betty Voie
She was a trained vocalist whose voice graced Tulsa churches.
By Shawna Lewis
pg. 3
The Shadow Box
A father and son moment built on the mementoes of war.
By Bradford A. Hill
pg. 7
Moving Thunder
How Oklahoma City impressed the NBA and got its big league team.
By David Holt
pg. 8
FEATURING
CONTRIBUTIONS
FROM
Crispin and I and the 4th of July
Glover’s never ending theater of the absurd. By Jeff Martin
pg. 10
Losing Grace
In the aftermath of a sex abuse scandal, Grace Church battles for its very
soul. By Kiera Feldman
pg. 12
Conduct Unbecoming
A police suspension amid the Good Friday Shootings. A special report.
By Joshua Kline
pg.21
Sent Back
The conviction, redemption, and deportation of Jorge Aguilar.
By Jimmy Carter
pg. 23
Kiera Feldman is a Brooklyn-based journalist
whose work has appeared in Mother Jones, n+1,
PRI’s The World, Alter Net, and The Nation. This is
her first article for This Land.
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INTERNS
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3
Chris Fellure and Sar a BowersockFellure
by Rebekah Greiman
C
hris and Sara began a 13-year
“on again, off again” relationship as teenagers. They’d break
up, get back together, even date others in
the down time.
“I was an asshole, basically,” said Sara. “He
said, ‘There’s no reason I should take you back. I
should be bitter and resentful and spend my life
being pissed off at you.’ ”
Sara got back in touch with Chris in the late summer of 2010. She was asking for personal advice on
a matter, but Chris wanted an explanation behind
the email.
“I asked her what her intentions were. I told her, ‘I
don’t hate you, I still love you. But, I don’t trust you.’
I didn’t have anything to lose, so I just laid it all on
the table. I said it’s going to be all or none.”
This would be the fourth try for them, and Sara
decided she was finally all in. For a year and a half,
the two dated long distance—Chris had moved to
Colorado after attempt number three, while Sara
remained behind in Tulsa.
“I decided I could keep running around the same
mountain or take a step and commit,” she said.
“Chris was always in my heart. I always wondered,
‘What if?’ ”
Months into their fourth go, they began planning a wedding. Sitting across from each other at
Taco Bueno, munching on bean burritos and nibbling on a veggie platter, they punched a prospective date into their phone calendars.
The couple hoped to avoid any hometown baggage
and opted for a destination wedding in St. Lucia.
“Sure, we have to deal with issues from the past,”
Chis said. “But I’m not wondering if there’s another
woman for me. Sara has always been my soul mate.”
Sara and Chris were the only two in attendance
at their wedding, save the minister. A reception followed a week and half later for family and friends at
the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame.
“Is this forever?” Sara emphatically asks of herself. “It better fuckin’ be.”
So Long
Betty Voie
(1924-2011)
By Shawna Lewis
I
n the early chapters of an
unfinished memoir, Betty
Voie wrote that growing
up in Kentucky was like
“living in a fairyland.” Then,
when she was 10, the Depression hit, driving the family west to Kansas. While the
move was traumatic for young
Voie, it opened up a new world
of passion and opportunity.
“My mother was very much from Dixie and
never let anyone forget it,” daughter Martha Sharp
said. “I don’t think there was anything about Kentucky she didn’t just love. Living in Great Bend,
Kansas … The children would make fun of her in
school, because she talked ‘funny’ and they couldn’t
understand her strong southern accent.”
Voie’s voice wouldn’t be a subject of ridicule for
long. Over the next few years, she developed what
Sharp called an “obsession with the human singing voice and its functions.” Her voice coach was so
proud that she made arrangements for Voie to have
her own radio program, where she would sing anything she wanted for a solid hour each day, opera
being her favorite.
“Her teacher, Miss Opie, was not an opera
singer, so my mother made friends with a couple
of older girls in town who were attending the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, and majoring in voice performance. My mother told me
that she would visit these girls when they were
home for spring break or Christmas vacation, and
they would discuss vocal technique. Mom would
take all this information to heart, experimenting
on her own and reading everything she could get
her hands on. Basically, with this information she
became a very skilled and successful singer.”
At 16, she married a local football hero with
a scholarship to the University of Tulsa. Voie
continued singing, attending workshops with
teachers like Dr. John Finley Williamson, famous for founding the prestigious Westminster
Choir. She showed off her skills as soprano soloist at Boston Avenue Methodist Church, and
later at Southminster Presbyterian Church in
Brookside. When she won the Metropolitan
Opera Regional competition, Voie and her hus-
band decided that she should stay in the Midwest with family rather than travel to NYC to
compete at the national level. It was not the
only disappointment to hit their family—Voie’s
husband also lost his football scholarship, due
to a flu bug that kept him out of practice. The
couple refocused their efforts on a construction
business, building homes on Turkey Mountain,
while raising children that would delight them
with family talent.
“I remember standing in the kitchen when I was
about 13, helping my mom with the dishes, and she
was vocalizing while she worked. I began to repeat
the scales and arpeggios.”
Wowed by her daughter’s talent, Voie began tutoring her—but only when Sharp wanted it.
“I was told that I certainly didn’t have to sing if
I didn’t want to. I wouldn’t sing a note for six months
and then one day I would ask my mom if we could
sing. She always stopped what she was doing. Soon
I was being asked to sing solos at school and to sing
for weddings.
“At every singing obligation I had, I would become physically ill before the performance and
would beg my mother to let me die rather than
appear in public. She always answered, ‘You will
sing tonight no matter how you feel because you
made the promise and are obligated. If you are that
frightened then just say no the next time someone
asks you to sing.’ I never did.”
Sharp sang her way into the Cleveland Opera,
New York City Opera, and Boston Lyric Opera
before becoming a member of the Zurich Opera
House in 1979. These days she lives in Salzburg,
Austria and makes her living teaching voice.
“What she taught me about singing was invaluable, and I was one lucky girl to get all that private
instruction. What other kid gets to grow up with
that? It put me way ahead in my profession … Now
many of these students are teaching and they are
passing on the same information. That’s just the
way it works. A wonderful legacy.”
After her first husband passed away, Voie married a minister and sang in the choir of the churches
he served in New Jersey, Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Michigan, and Oklahoma. They wound back
in Tulsa, where Voie spent the final year of her life
in Cypress Springs Memory Support Residence,
still singing when she could.
“She could still sing it at age 86 and not miss a
beat,” Sharp said. “I once sang in the choir with her
in Muskogee. It was a performance of the Messiah
with orchestra. I tell you, this lady was hard to keep
up with. She didn’t miss a thing!”
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5
OKLAHOMA
Illustration by Leslie Herman
Imaginary Oklahoma is an ongoing project in which
some of today’s most important and influential writers
combine with artists to provide a fictional take on this
place we call home. Through a wide variety of voices,
styles, and literary devices, these works prove that
“Oklahoma” is much more than a place, it’s an idea.
OKLAHOMAN MIDRASH
by Gina Ochsner
I
n the beginning there was dust: an ocean
of it. The dust lacked form, lacked life.
This grieved God, who then cried amidst
the dust until there was mud below, and mud
above: a wobbling firmament of mud. God
brooded over that mud, breathed over it, and
then mud became man.
Some time passed. Men-from-mud began to misbehave.
Egregiously. Feeling the pain of his hands’ work, God grieved.
It was a larger grief than that first one, the one that poured form
into dust. This grief was shaped by the recollection of specific
evils, harm that his creation had worked upon each other and
the terrible knowledge that it would continue. This grief was
not of the nutritive sort. And God knew it. God cried for his
creation that would not be able to withstand his sorrow. The lives
that those lives might have engendered, if given more time—he
lamented for them, too. He cried because sorrow was so often a
lop-sided engagement: people rarely grieve together for the same
reasons at the same time and with the exact same measure of
sorrow. Sorrow is unique, and therefore, misunderstood.
Which is why God had sent a series of preemptive rescues:
flotation device experts offering in-home inspections at absolutely
no charge to all who said yes. Samples large and small: butterfly
wings, life jackets, neon colored foam noodles. Then came the
flotilla of canoes, life rafts, inflatable porpoises, and plastic
crocodiles—also free.
But it had been hotter than blazes, the heat searing the color
out of grass, wood, air. The heat turned streets to rivers of tar.
It had been so hot that no one could take seriously these gifts
of air corralled in tensile materials approved for water sports
and nautical adventures everywhere. These offerings seemed
like jokes in poor taste: especially the admonition, repent! How
insulting—the implication that a sudden climactic change might
have anything, anything at all do to with them. This is what
provoked homeowners and renters young and old to draw their
blinds, bolt their doors, roll plugs of cotton into their ears.
At the sound of such unified refusal, such willed rejection,
God’s sorrow increased exponentially. Neither casements of sky
nor wellsprings of deep could contain it. From above and below
water rose and fell. God, as he had in the beginning, hovered and
brooded over the dark and roiling waters. Days passed. Near Day
27 God brooded his way toward regret. The floodwaters receded.
On Day 33 God remembered something—another incidence of
human harm done purely for recreational purposes, and then he
felt sorrow. The floodwaters rose. That’s how Godly sorrow works:
it ebbs and flows. It’s like the breath of the breath of life. There.
And then, at times, less there. It’s enough to fool the uninitiated.
Which is the reason for the rainbow: a reminder for those who
would doubt the potency of sorrow. A promise that should God
become grieved in the heart at some later date, he’d not resort to
tears. Other reminders: in low places, flats and sinks, places like
Uzbekistan or, say, Oklahoma, God’s tears dried to salt. Thirst.
Dust. From time to time people dig in such places and find
evidence of life before the big sorrow: elongated fishes and fronds
of plants stretched by the pressure of so much water. They hold
these items in their hands, speak of them with wonder and awe.
Gina Ochsner lives in Keizer, Oregon and divides her time between
writing and teaching with the Seattle Pacific Low-Residency MFA
program. Ochsner has been awarded a John L. Simon Guggenheim
grant and a grant from the National Endowment of Arts. Her stories
have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Glimmertrain, and the
Kenyon Review. She is the author of the short story collection The
Necessary Grace to Fall, which received the Flannery O’Connor
Award for Short Fiction, and the story collection People I Wanted to
Be. Both books received the Oregon Book Award A novel entitled
The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight is forthcoming from
Portobello Press and from Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt in 2009.
6
A
by Laurence J. Yadon and Robert Barr Smith
dark-eyed beauty named Anna Lowe
stepped off the train in late January
1920 at Henryetta, just south of Tulsa,
but she wasn’t there for the scenery.
Within hours, she was discussing marriage with
a stranger named Jackson Barnett. He was a shy,
somewhat passive man who had become the richest
Indian in the world. There was one complication.
Since he was a restricted Creek Indian, Barnett needed
permission from his legal guardian to marry Anna or
anyone else. Although no court clerk in Oklahoma would
issue the couple a marriage license, Anna was persistent.
Later, Anna and several friends enticed Jackson into
a car “to see his oil wells,” but they were soon speeding
north to Kansas. When Anna mentioned marriage,
Barnett only grunted. On the other hand, he didn’t jump
out of the car. They were married eight days later by a
justice of the peace in Coffeyville, some 124 miles away
from the modest Oklahoma cabin which belied Barnett’s
fabulous wealth.
When the press discovered this, Mr. and Mrs. Jackson
Barnett became front-page news all over the country.
Of course, Barnett’s legal guardians had no intention of
giving Barnett up to an “adventuress” who had had a past
even darker than her eyes. Private detective reports those
guardians acquired hinted about swindles perpetrated by
Anna Lowe and even prostitution. Yet this was lost on
Jackson Barnett.
Barnett’s fame dated back to 1917, when his personal
income from oil in the Cushing Oil Field rocketed to $47,000
a month, an annual income of $9.4 million today. Ironically,
Barnett was one of the Creeks led by militant Chitto “Crazy
Snake” Harjo who unsuccessfully opposed partitioning
Creek Nation land among its individual members. Naturally,
after Harjo lost, his followers were allotted some of the
worst, rockiest farmland in the Creek Nation. Funny then
that when the Cushing Oil Field fifty miles west of Tulsa
roared into life during World War I, half of the oil leases
were on allotments owned by Harjo’s followers.
Many considered Barnett a simpleton—until he made
fools of two senators in Congressional hearings. And
almost from the beginning of his new life as a wealthy
oilman, Barnett had been besieged with requests for gifts.
His white guardian and the county judge who had final say
over Barnett’s affairs were tight fisted, as were many legal
guardians of Oklahoma Indians who cynics say plotted
and planned to obtain large probate fees. Whatever the
real reason might have been, Barnett’s requests for his
own funds were often rejected. And during the early years
Naturally, after Harjo lost, his followers
were allotted some of the worst, rockiest
farmland in the Creek Nation.
of their marriage, Anna had dozens of arguments with
her husband’s court appointed guardian in Henryetta.
Little wonder that after several years together, the
couple shook off the Oklahoma dust and left for a tony
Los Angeles neighborhood within a stone’s throw of
Hollywood on Wilshire Boulevard. Of course, back in
Oklahoma, the looting continued. While the Barnetts
were married, state and federal officials gave away about
one million dollars of Jackson Barnett’s money, some of
which went to Anna.
Finally, in March 1934, federal Judge William P. James
annulled the Jackson’s marriage, citing the “kidnapping”
to Kansas, questions about Anna’s moral character and
evidence of her collusion with others to pilfer Barnett’s
estate. The judge cancelled a $200,000 gift from Barnett
to Anna. Although he allowed Anna to continue as
Barnett’s “caretaker,” she was briefly jailed in Los Angeles
for contempt of court at the conclusion of one lawsuit.
Jackson Barnett died peacefully in his Wilshire
Boulevard mansion, on May 29, 1934, six days after
Bonnie and Clyde met their destiny on a Louisiana back
road. Despite suspicions that Anna had poisoned him, the
autopsy revealed that Barnett died of natural causes. That
didn’t stop the authorities from evicting the widow.
Yet Anna garnered wide public support for her efforts
to avoid eviction. Prestigious Los Angeles civic clubs and
the wife of District Attorney Burton Fitts stood beside
her, despite Anna’s occasional irrational rants against
those who championed her cause. Finally, some four years
after Jackson Barnett died, Anna was given thirty days to
vacate the mansion.
Although the governor of California supported her, the
eviction began early on the morning of Sunday, October
30, 1938. Anna was tear-gassed even as she threw a
hatchet at the invaders from the grand stairway as she was
being dragged away. She spent the rest of her life fighting
for a share of the Barnett property that never arrived.
The estimated value of Barnett’s estate at the time of
his death was about $3.5 million, some $55.4 million in
modern money. Despite all her efforts, Anna had only
helped Barnett spend about fifteen percent of his assets.
Another twenty-five percent was paid to his heirs, thirty
percent to lawyers and the rest went for taxes, court costs
and administrative fees. Anna received no inheritance at
all. She lived with an unmarried daughter in a small Los
Angeles bungalow until her death.
And the Hollywood mansion where Jackson Barnett
spent his dotage happily directing Wilshire Boulevard
traffic from the front lawn was eventually scraped away
for a commercial building.
Excerpted from Old West Swindlers (Pelican Publishing,
2011), by Laurence J. Yadon and Robert Barr Smith.
Back
Roads
by Laura Brandenburg
The explosions are always real.
Small wheels turn tighter.
These stark prairie towns
keep the eyes and bones close to the grind.
Any eight-year-old knows
the back roads to the next county,
knows that things must bleed, that flies
frantic in an empty house
always mean something.
A girl with leftover bruises
sits on the dark steps, a gun in her lap.
The dog cocks one sad-eyed brow
and rests his anvil head at her feet.
Her pant legs are wet from long grass,
from dew and sweat, from every step
that whispered, “Someplace. Someplace. Someplace.”
Some work is serious in a small town.
Nobody falls down, nobody calls the cops.
Laura Brandenburg is a native of the rural backroads of Minnesota, currently
residing in Minneapolis. She co-hosts "The Riot Act Reading Series" and
is working on an MFA in creative writing at Hamline University in St.
Paul. Recently her poems have appeared in the on-line journals Sleet and
Midway Journal. Photo by Shane Brown
Four
Years
on the
M
y father built a shadow box for me and filled it with memories. I often
picture what he must have looked like while constructing it. Hunched
over his work desk in the early morning hours, round glasses positioned
tightly over a sternly drawn face. His burnt blonde hair tinged with gray, likely
wild and unrestrained, as was his way from time to time. He has always been a
very loving father. Always there to talk to and, more importantly, there to listen.
I grew up just by watching him. When I look at this box, it reminds me of all the
things he tried to teach to me. It reminds me of those beautiful moments, along
with all the horrific stories it also keeps inside.
Rack
by Bradford A. Hill
I never considered how I would
answer if he asked me about the
items inside the box. I guess I just
assumed that he would let it go.
He has always been a wonderful
father throughout everything, after
all. Why would he ever want to
impose? Then, the day he finished
constructing the box, it happened:
“How did you get these?” He asked
softly with a calm look on his face, one
of his long index fingers outstretched,
awkwardly pointing at the ribbon rack
that he had carefully mounted centermass of that damned box.
“What do they mean?” He pressed,
eager to learn about that time in my life,
but still addressing me with the same
loving tone he did when I was a boy.
I tried to speak, but my mind went
fully racing, my subconscious skipping through thoughts and images like a picture-flip book
for a child—save for, in
my picture book, the
pages ripped themselves out, rearranged each other,
and became filled with all the painful
thoughts that war creates.
I thought about how my friends
would want me to answer. I think
good ol’ Marky Maierson would have
wanted me to be honest. That was what
he always wanted to hear from people,
honesty. I remember the night he told
me why he decided to become a Green
Beret. We were sitting atop a mud hut
in a town called Jani-Kheyl, enjoying
the smell of dust mixing with diesel and
loaded for bear. He said:
“You know, I have just always
tried to live right by people. I felt lost
before the Army. Now we are out
here, handing out food and helping
people. Feels good.”
Marky was always the first to help. A
consummate professional with a heart
bigger than anyone I have ever met. Of
course, Marky is dead now.
I thought about the times in between
wars, sitting around the states for six to
seven months, just waiting to be sent
back to the big show. I remembered
the first time (I hate the fact I must
clarify it was the first time) someone
called me a “baby-killer.” I was at a
bar, and completely unaware that this
sort of derogatory comment was still
in use. Spoken at a veteran’s expense
nonetheless, so I beat the brakes off
that cat. I had no personal experience
with that sort of business, killing a kid
that is. My friend James Castle knows
about it though.
James was real loaded the night he
told me about accidentally blowing
up a house that had two little girls
in it. His team had been receiving
heavy fire from the house, so James
called in an airstrike and eliminated
the threat. He was only trying to
protect the lives of his teammates.
He did not know that those little
girls were inside, nobody did. Worst
part was, James had two little girls
back home.
“I went to do the battle damage
assessment after the strike hit, man,”
he spoke slowly, partially slurred
words with tears swelling in his eyes,
“and then I saw them two little girls,
all burned up and in pieces … I just
wanted to put them back together
and tell them everything was going
to be all right.”
My mind accelerated through
thousands of different thoughts and
memories from those four years. Not
all of which were unpleasant of course,
but it seems more often than not in
life, it is the most painful memories we
remember most thoroughly.
In an instant, I was back to reality.
I looked at my father, unsure of how
much time had elapsed since he
last spoke. I was desperately hoping
the small tear I felt forming in my
left eye would simply go unnoticed.
After what must have seemed like an
extraordinarily long pause, I finally
spoke to my father, plainly:
“Well Dad, I guess they just gave
them to me for doing my job.”
He looked back at me with the
kindly, knowing eyes that only someone
who truly cares can offer. He slung one
of his burly arms around my shoulder
and patted me on the back while we sat
there together in silence. Staring down
at that big shadowy box, filled with all
of the memories of those four years I
served, splayed out on the rack.
Bradford Hill is a Tulsa native and
a former Joint Terminal Attack
Controller for Special Operation Forces.
After serving in Iraq and Afghanistan,
he moved to Savannah, Georgia, where
he is currently a scholarship student
for creative writing at the Savannah
College of Art and Design.
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7
Moving
8
Thunder
HOW OKLAHOMA CITY IMPRESSED THE NBA AND GOT ITS BIG LEAGUE TEAM
by David Holt
David Holt is a state senator from Edmond who was instrumental in the relocation of the Thunder NBA basketball team to
Oklahoma. As staff to Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, David was a key player in the transaction and has written a new
book about the experience. He knows his way to Tulsa and has served all of Oklahoma well in the legislature.
Following Oklahoma City Mayor Mick’s Cornett’s successful positioning of Oklahoma City as the temporary home
of the New Orleans Hornets in 2005, a group of Oklahoma
City investors led by Clay Bennett purchased the Seattle SuperSonics. Following a year of failed negotiations to build a
new arena in the Seattle area to replace KeyArena, the Sonics filed in November 2007 to relocate to Oklahoma City. A
committee of NBA team owners was appointed to consider
the application and recommend a decision to the full NBA
Board of Governors before the league’s scheduled April 2008
vote. A key part of the committee’s process was a site visit to
Oklahoma City. The visit occurred on March 25, 2008, three
weeks after the voters of Oklahoma City had voted to approve a 15-month sales tax to renovate the Ford Center sports
arena and build the Sonics a practice facility. Meanwhile,
the City of Seattle was looking forward to a June trial to litigate its attempt to hold the Sonics to its lease through 2010.
E
•••
laborate preparations were
underway for the NBA relocation committee’s site visit
to Oklahoma City, scheduled
for March 25. The Ford Center was constructing examples
of the amenities that would
be included in the renovation. The Skirvin Hilton was turning one of its grandest rooms into a
virtual television studio. Ackerman McQueen,
a high-end advertising firm in Oklahoma City,
was creating special videos to go into a presentation worthy of an Olympics bid. Demonstrating
his attention to detail, Seattle Sonics Chairman
Clay Bennett was personally overseeing every
aspect of the visit.
Of the seven NBA teams that had been appointed to the
relocation committee, only three would come for the site visit.
Along with NBA Commissioner David Stern and all of his
deputies, Lewis Katz of the Nets, Herb Simon of the Pacers,
and Jeanie Buss of the Lakers (representing her father Jerry)
made the trip.
Simon was cofounder of the largest commercial real estate company
in America. Penn Square Mall in Oklahoma City was one of Simon’s
most profitable properties, but the opportunity to show the city to
Herb Simon himself was a priceless fringe benefit of big league status.
Though I was of no known relation to Peter Holt, I had a
surprising connection to Lewis Katz. My wife Rachel was
from Philadelphia, and, like many of the city’s residents,
figured he not only didn’t think he knew anyone in Oklahoma City,
he probably thought he didn’t know anyone that knew anyone in
Oklahoma City.
I said to him, “Mr. Katz, I’m David Holt, chief of staff to
the Mayor of Oklahoma City. More importantly, I’m married
to Rachel Canuso and she said to say ‘hi’ to Superman.” He
stood slack-jawed for a moment, and then said amazedly in his
New Jersey accent, “Rachel Canuso lives here?!” He got on the
elevator, repeating the question two or three times. After the
elevator door closed, Cornett turned to me and said, “I guess
you really do know Lew Katz.”
The group headed up to the top floor of the Skirvin, home to
the Venetian Room, the Continental Room and the Founders
Room. The restored Venetian Room was now unrecognizable.
The east side of the room had been turned into a presentation
space, with elaborate lighting and television screens, not unlike
an ESPN set. The participants were seated on elevated rows
surrounding the room.
Everything was first class. The nameplates were engraved,
not printed. The committee members were given laptops to
keep that were loaded with data about Oklahoma City. The
presentation even had its own logo, “On Our Game,” which
was stamped on everything, including lapel pins and regulation
NBA basketballs presented to everyone there.
The presentation had been highly choreographed, and
rehearsed by the participants for days. It was multimedia and
accented by the presence of an all-star Oklahoma cast. Oklahoma
City was large enough that it was courting the NBA, but it was
still small enough that you could gather virtually every decision
maker in one room. The unity that Oklahomans now consider
routine blew the NBA away.
Present in the room were the political leaders—the current
mayor and his two predecessors (Cornett, Kirk Humphreys
and Ron Norick), City Council members Pete White and Gary
Marrs, City Manager Jim Couch, Governor Brad Henry and his
wife Kim, former Governor Frank Keating, Tulsa Mayor Kathy
Taylor, Senate Co-President Pro Tempore Glenn Coffee, and
Speaker of the House Chris Benge.
Bennett had also invited the state’s largest universities to
demonstrate Oklahoma’s longtime passion for college sports.
This group included OSU President Burns Hargis, OSU
Athletic Director Mike Holder, OU Athletic Director Joe
Castiglione, and the Sooners’ football coach, Bob Stoops.
Stoops was one of the most famous residents of Oklahoma, but
it was rare to see him outside Norman.
Bennett had also invited a cross-section of the community to
illustrate Oklahoma City’s unified front in regards to the NBA. This
group included Oklahoma City Museum of Art director Carolyn
Hill, Greater Oklahoma City Chamber president Roy Williams,
Ford Center manager Gary Desjardins, Oklahoman publisher
David Thompson, local CBS affiliate owner David Griffin, Cox
Communications’ Oklahoma president Dave Bialis, and Devon
Energy CEO and Chamber Chairman Larry Nichols.
Also present, of course, was the Sonics ownership group, which
now included Oklahoma City businessmen Bob Howard, Jay
Scaramucci, Bill Cameron, and Everett Dobson, in addition to the
The move might have seemed novel to Oklahomans, who
often saw the two cities as a million miles apart, but it
was perfectly reasonable to the NBA.
her family had a house at the Jersey Shore, south of Atlantic
City. For almost four decades of summer weekends, the
Canuso family had lived down the block from Katz’s
oceanfront property. Katz used to come over and eat my
wife’s grandmother’s meatballs, and when my wife and her
siblings were children, he would tell them on the beach that
he was Superman.
I had met Katz on the beach but didn’t expect him to
remember me. However, I knew he knew my in-laws. Ever
since Katz had been named to the committee, I had told
both Mayor Mick Cornett and Bennett of my connection.
I assumed they probably thought I was crazy. (“Sure, David,
you happen to know the owner of the New Jersey Nets.”)
On Tuesday, March 25, the Oklahoma City Council met
at its customary time, 8:30 a.m. They promptly approved the
letter of intent with the Sonics that established a blueprint
for a formal lease. Mayor Cornett signed it and we headed
over to the Ford Center, where Stern, seven members of his
staff, and the relocation committee had just arrived.
The group toured the Ford Center, viewed the mock-ups of the
renovation, and then headed to the Skirvin. I was in the lobby of
the hotel and approached Katz. As he was a native of New Jersey, I
partners with the largest stakes: Bennett, Aubrey McClendon, Tom
Ward, and Jeff Records. When Bennett introduced Chesapeake
Energy co-founder McClendon to the room, Stern blurted out,
“I know him!”—a good-natured reference to the $250,000 Stern
had taken from McClendon’s pocket the previous August over his
remarks about the ownership group’s long-term intentions in Seattle.
The room burst into laughter.
With the producers from Ackerman McQueen, I watched
the presentation from the hotel suite below the Venetian Room,
which had been turned into a control room. Sitting near me were
Ackerman McQueen executives Ed Martin and Lee Allan Smith.
It had been two decades since then-Chamber Chairman Smith had
unsuccessfully tried to convince the people of Oklahoma City to
fund an NFL stadium.
The presenters told the story of Oklahoma City and also made
important pledges. Governor Henry pledged that the state would
approve the funding that the Sonics had requested. This part of the
package had evolved into a proposal to amend the state’s existing
income tax rebate program for the creation of quality jobs so that
it included the NBA. Mayor Taylor of Tulsa, who was a native of
Oklahoma City, pledged fans from Tulsa, and was able to point to
an editorial of support that morning in the Tulsa World.
To improve Oklahoma City’s demographics, the Sonics had made
the decision to present Oklahoma City and Tulsa as virtual twin cities.
Though Tulsa was 90 minutes away, that was probably the length of
many commutes to a New York Knicks game. The move might have
seemed novel to Oklahomans, who often saw the two cities as a million
miles apart, but it was perfectly reasonable to the NBA.
The presentation was an unqualified success. In retrospect, it was
apparent the NBA had never seen anything like it, both in terms of
its professionalism and its persuasiveness. Said Cornett afterwards,
“We had a great story to tell, and we told it.” Said Stern, “There’s
just something about being in the room with all of the people
who are in charge.” It was obvious the presentation had served its
purpose and then some. Bennett had spared no expense, and it
showed. He was leaving nothing to chance.
After the presentation, the participants milled around. Katz
came up to me and joked that he had “eaten so many of Maggie’s
meatballs” (Maggie was my wife’s grandmother) that he would
have to disclose it to Commissioner Stern. A few minutes later,
he waved me over from down the hall. I walked over to find him
standing with Stern. Katz said, “Commissioner, I want you to meet
David Holt.” Stern said, “Oh, this is the Superman guy?”
After awhile, the relocation committee of owners met with
the NBA staff.
Cornett and I waited in the hall. Bennett and his team were also
milling around. I met Sam Presti, the Sonics’ General Manager, for
the first time. He was in his early 30s, about my age. His potential
arrival in Oklahoma City was symbolic to me of the youth movement
that the NBA’s arrival would encourage. Bennett walked over to me
and said, “Lew won’t stop talking about your deal.”
I didn’t know what Bennett expected from the day, but from
the city’s perspective, we had no expectation of closure. We
presumed the city would make its presentation and then find out
the results later. That seemed even more likely when a majority of
the relocation committee stayed home. We were wrong.
After the meeting between the NBA staff and the committee,
Stern and his staff gathered with Bennett, Bennett’s spokesman
Dan Mahoney, Cornett, and me in the Founders Room. The
Founders Room was down the hall from the Venetian Room.
Unlike the Venetian Room, whose name was a holdover from the
Skirvin’s previous glory, the name of the Founders Room was new,
a nod to the people who had made Oklahoma City what it was.
Their ghosts were surely pulling up a chair as Stern took a seat
across from us and began to speak.
At approximately 4:35 p.m., he said matter-of-factly: “When
the Board of Governors meets in April to consider the Sonics’
relocation application, the committee will recommend to the full
Board that the team be allowed to move to Oklahoma City.”
Cornett, Bennett, Mahoney and I had just heard perhaps the
most historic single sentence in the city’s history.
Still leaving nothing to chance, Bennett immediately
asked if the vote could occur on a certain day during the
April Board of Governors meeting that he considered
more favorable. Stern, in characteristic humor, let out an
exasperated sigh and said the question reminded him of a
joke he would tell Bennett later.
We all then headed down to the second floor and the
Skirvin’s ballrooms. A press conference was set up for Stern,
Bennett and Cornett. They would sit at a table in front of a
backdrop of NBA logos. Waiting to be introduced, the three
of them stood off to the side. Stern must have sensed some
nervousness, so he used the moment to lighten the mood and
deliver his promised joke.
He said, “A woman was on the beach when her son was swept
away by the ocean. She fell to her knees and prayed to God that
he would return her son. Suddenly, a wave crashed over her, and
her son was in her arms again. She looked up and said, ‘Lord, he
was wearing a hat.’ ”
At the press conference, Stern repeated his historic pronouncement
for the benefit of the media. Stern added that Seattle’s current
proposal with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to renovate KeyArena
was a non-starter, even if somehow Washington State produced its
part of it. Bennett and Stern both asserted that if the NBA approved
the relocation, but Seattle won its court case and held the Sonics to
their lease, the Sonics and the NBA would simply wait out the last
two years, and then move to Oklahoma City.
Before he caught his private jet home, Katz held court in the
hallway outside the ballroom. With his New Jersey accent and
attitude, the local reporters loved him. His praise for the city was
exuberant. He said he had “never seen a better presentation in my
life.” When one local reporter referred to Oklahoma City as a
“small market,” Katz got serious, put a finger in his face and said,
“You keep talking about being a small market. You’re not a small
market.” He further said, “There’s no question in my mind that
they’re coming. It’s just a question of when.”
As I watched Katz defend Oklahoma City like he had been
born there, I couldn’t help but smile. Sure, the presentation was
a blockbuster, but maybe Maggie Canuso’s meatballs were still
paying dividends.
In Seattle, Mayor Greg Nickels reiterated to the media that the
events in Oklahoma City changed nothing—he was still going to hold
the Sonics to their lease.
From Big League City: Oklahoma City’s Rise to the NBA by
Oklahoma Senator David Holt (R-Oklahoma City), copyright
2012 Full Circle Press. Excerpted with permission.
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10
CRISPIN AND I AND THE
FOURTH OF JULY
BY JEFF MARTIN
arrive ten hours early, lining up on the baking concrete. There is no
shade to be found around this venue. The temperature was slated to
top out in the low 100s, with a heat index bordering on ridiculous. We
arrived for the run-through around 2 p.m. As we entered the venue, it
was apparent that the air conditioning, not the best to begin with, had
been off for at least a few days. In that moment, the sweat began and
would continue well into the morning.
The run-through took forever. There’s just no other way to put
it. Move the projector forward. Push it back. The slideshow looks
good. No it doesn’t. Let’s start all over. I remember that there
was one spot in the room where the air conditioning hit directly.
We all spent time rotating through this spot, rationing it out like
survivors of some tragedy, waiting for help to arrive. But the ones
who really needed help, perhaps even rescue, were the poor souls
waiting beyond the door, suffering in the July heat. Someone made
arrangements for an ice cream truck to make occasional stops. We
provided bottled water. We did what we could. And amazingly, no
one complained. In their minds, it was worth it.
By 5 o’clock, there was a line down the street. The building had
only cooled into the mid-80s when we began taking tickets and
letting people in. They had no idea what was in store.
SHOWTIME
Music provided by Crispin—a mix of mostly classical tunes and
pop songs that would fit well into any David Lynch film—played
overhead as guests entered and waited. In fact, the entire evening,
wild as it was, was tightly scripted and directed.
From the rider:
“One minute before the show begins, the walk-in music fades
down and an audio announcement is made by someone from
the theater: ‘Good evening, welcome to the _______ Theater!
We would like to remind you that no cameras, mobile phones,
or recording devices of any kind are to be used during the entire
show. If mobile texting or calling is necessary at any time, please
step out of the auditorium as use of electronic devices can interrupt
the show. There will be an opportunity for photographs during the
book signing. Thank you!’ ”
O
n June 1, 2011, I received
an email from occasional
actor and full-time eccentric, Crispin Glover. At the
time it appeared completely random, at least until I
scrolled down further and realized it was a reply. Honestly, I’d forgotten all about it. But who
wouldn’t? My original email was written nearly
six years earlier, on July 25, 2005. “I apologize for
the long delay in my response,” Crispin wrote.
Long delay? To put things in perspective, if I
had been in middle school at the time of the
original email, I would have been in college by
the time of the response. The purpose of my initial inquiry was a request that he bring his traveling one-man show to Tulsa. Little did I know
that this experience—more than half a decade
in the making—would lead to two of the most
interesting days of my life.
THE PLAN
Time was of the essence as Crispin and I began a feverish back
and forth email volley that would have made Roger Federer proud.
He wanted to do the event on the 4th of July. I cautioned against
this move for fear that we would be competing with too many
events. After much deliberation, a date and venue were selected;
Tuesday, July 5 at the Nightingale Theater. Tickets would be $20
each, with proceeds divided between Mr. Glover and the nonprofit Nightingale. A bargain if you ask me.
When word got out about the event, the media pounced. No
ads needed, no press releases written. Within an hour or so of the
initial Facebook announcement, phone calls were coming fast and
furious. “How can I get tickets?” “Are you going to sell out?” “Why
did you pick such a small venue?” For reasons of sheer logistics,
and to even the playing field for those interested, we elected to sell
tickets only at the door, on the day of the event. Cash only.
Located in an unassuming space in an industrial park not far
from downtown Tulsa, the Nightingale Theater is nothing if not
intimate. It might hold 100 people on a good day. It would have
been easy to host the event in a larger, more mainstream space,
WE JUST WANTED TO
BLOW THEIR MINDS.
but there was something to be said for creating a one-time-only
experience that those lucky few would be talking about for years
to come. And, as silly as it may sound, it wasn’t about taking their
money. We just wanted to blow their minds.
DAY 1: INDEPENDENCE DAY
Part of Crispin’s lengthy rider—the list of personal preferences
and event particulars that accompanies any artist’s appearance—
stated that he would not under any circumstances travel and
perform on the same day. So we booked two nights at a downtown
hotel. It was already well over 90 degrees when I headed to the
airport to perform my obligatory host duties. Apparently not the
kind of person to look ahead for weather updates, Crispin arrived
wearing an outfit that looked like a tribute to Johnny Cash. Black
shoes, black socks, black pants, black undershirt, and a black dress
shirt with the sleeves rolled down.
A slight problem arose before we’d even exited the terminal. His
luggage, which looked nice and expensive (an appraisal confirmed
moments later by Crispin himself), was incomplete. Something was
missing, a strap to be exact. “I need to talk to someone about replacing
this strap,” he said. I asked around and learned that we had to go to the
Delta counter and file a claim of some sort. The process took nearly 20
minutes even though we were the only ones in line. Frustration was
visible in his face and noticeable in his tone. I began to wonder if this
would be the moment I’d see Crispin Glover go crazy. It wasn’t. He
remained cordial and polite. No outbursts.
Before heading to the hotel, he wanted to make a stop. “Do you
have a Whole Foods in Tulsa?” he asked. The drive to midtown
was filled with fun facts and background from the Crispin file:
He lives part-time in the Czech Republic. He would soon be
appearing in a film based on an Elmore Leonard novel. One of the
only things he knows about Tulsa is that his good friend Nicolas
Cage (now there’s a pair) was in Rumble Fish back in the ’80s. I
assumed (always a bad idea) that we would simply swing by the
grocery store and pick up a few things that wouldn’t be available
via room service. The raw-food diet that he religiously maintains
keeps him looking much younger than a man in his late 40s.
As we walked into the store, already bustling with people planning
the perfect dinner, Crispin walked right past the hand baskets and
got behind the wheel of a full-sized shopping cart. “Why do we
need that?” I thought. What followed still boggles the mind. Crispin
Glover’s total time in Tulsa would be less than 48 hours, yet the
amount of food he piled into that cart and eventually purchased would
lead one to assume a stay of at least a week. Passion fruit seemed to
be a particular favorite. Minus the presence of an unseen travel juicer,
I had no idea what he was planning to do with what must have been
more than two dozen of the fruit.
I was surprised that no one approached him. Sporting virtually
the same waist size and haircut since the Reagan administration,
it’s not as if he’s unrecognizable in that post-op Kenny Rogers
sort of way. In fact, only a young man behind the butcher counter
seemed to know who he was, asking me when Crispin was out of
earshot, “Wasn’t he in that movie with Michael J. Fox?”
I’d been priming Crispin over the course of the preceding weeks
about the possibility of watching the 4th of July fireworks. He
seemed open to the idea and when I dropped him off at the hotel
around 5 p.m., I reminded him of the opportunity. He agreed.
One of my good friends lives in a downtown hotel. She has a
stunning view and it seemed like the perfect spot. “Would you mind
if I brought Crispin Glover over to watch the fireworks from your
balcony?” I asked. Of course she agreed, who wouldn’t? After hanging
at her place for a while, we all eventually made our way to the hotel
roof, where the vista was even better. With multiple fireworks venues,
I wanted to focus Crispin on the best show. “Focus your attention in
this direction,” I suggested, pointing toward the Arkansas River. He
planted himself at a spot on the railing, crossed his arms and rested
his chin in that general direction. For at least the next hour, as the
sky changed color with patriotic pyrotechnics, he didn’t move an
inch or say a word. “Did you enjoy that?” I asked, as the dark of night
returned. “Yes, thank you,” he replied.
It had been a long day. The heat was stifling, he’d been traveling,
and I’m certain he was quite tired. Crispin’s hotel wasn’t far away,
but the mass exodus from downtown post-fireworks clogged every
street and slowed cars to a snail’s pace. After a few minutes of
stuttered progress, Crispin made a decision. “How far are we from
the hotel?” he asked. “Not that far,” I said. “Maybe a quarter of a
mile.” I wasn’t entirely sure. Without hesitation, he opened the
door and began to the exit car. “See you tomorrow,” he said. In
terms of sheer time, it was a smart move. Unexpected, but smart.
As Crispin Glover walked swiftly down the street toward a
comfortable bed and a stockpile of raw food, I watched from the
stillness of gridlock with a permanent grin on my face.
DAY 2: HOT TIME IN THE CITY
Crispin’s rider dictates a technical run-through in the early
afternoon on performance day to make sure that everything is in
smooth, working order. Almost immediately we hit hurdles. He
prefers to show his films from the 35mm prints he travels with. At
the Nightingale Theater, we didn’t have the capabilities to show
actual film. He did have a backup DVD option, a nuclear option of
sorts. Due to restraints of finance and technology, that is the route
we chose to pursue.
Word had been spreading for nearly a month about Crispin’s visit
to Tulsa. With tickets only on sale at the door on the day of the event,
we assumed that people would come early. We didn’t expect them to
An hour or so before show time, Crispin informed me that he
wasn’t feeling well, stomach trouble of some sort. I began to worry.
“Please don’t cancel,” I thought. After making people wait in the
heat all day, I was likely to be murdered if we had to cancel. For the
love of God, don’t do this to me. In the end, he bucked up.
We arrived and entered through the back door. There is a bed,
most likely a prop from a previous show, just off to the side of the
stage. It’s dark and hidden from audience view. Crispin, still not
feeling 100 percent, decided to rest on the bed before the show.
The crowd was restless, but not too wild. The heat, an ever-present
weight on everyone, seemed to be adding some strange element to
the mix. The beers were selling well in the back of the house. There
were moments, as the thirsty masses tried to cool themselves, when
the sound of landing bottle caps began to take on a sort of rhythm.
The show was set to start. As I walked the crowd, making sure
everything was set and everyone was enjoying themselves, my
phone rang. It’s Crispin. He’s literally no more than 25 feet away,
tucked behind the curtain. “Did I hear someone talking about
selling something?” he asked. He has a strict rule that the only
items for sale will be his own books, which he provided via UPS
a few days prior. “No, no one is selling anything out here except
the books,” I said. “OK, thanks,” said Crispin. It was going to be
a long night.
The schedule for the evening was as follows:
8 p.m.—Hour-long dramatic presentation of “Crispin Hellion
Glover’s Big Slide Show”
9 p.m.—Screening of Crispin’s film, It is fine! EVERYTHING
IS FINE.
10:15 p.m.—Q&A
Following the Q&A, Crispin signs books and takes photos with guests.
The slideshow went smoothly, with Crispin showing no signs
of feeling under the weather. He looked great, actually, and in his
element. The show is made up of images from his eight books.
With titles like “Rat Catching” and “Oak-Mot,” they are basically
reworked and redacted pieces from the 19th century, twisted
and edited into … well, something else. Anyway, they are hard
to describe. As far as his films go, I honestly didn’t know much.
He’d directed the film we were screening, which was written by
and stars the late Steven C. Stewart. Stewart passed away from
complications related to cerebral palsy just a month after shooting
wrapped. That was basically all I knew. I could have done more
research. I could have inquired further, but I honestly didn’t really
think about it.
From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the film is quite impressive.
My praise ends there. It’s certainly not Steven Stewart’s fault that
his strained speech is nearly impossible to understand. A subtitle
or two could have helped. I expected a mass exodus. But after a
handful of people left during the slideshow, not a single person left
during the film. This is all the more impressive when you take into
consideration the denouement—a string of sexual fantasy scenes
with Stewart himself performing real (and assisted) sex acts. I’m
IT WAS WELL PAST 1 A.M. WHEN
WE FINALLY BEGAN SIGNING BOOKS.
no prude, but all I could think about was the time The Tin Drum
was banned in Oklahoma City in 1997. And that was for just one
questionable scene. The Tin Drum is like The Lawrence Welk Show
compared to this. When the credits rolled and the lights finally
returned, I think it’s safe to say that everyone in the room had just
emerged from an unforgettable experience.
But the Q&A that followed was perhaps the best part of the
night, certainly the most illuminating. Responding to questions
about his 1990 lawsuit against Universal Studios (look it up),
Crispin gave one of the most interesting and complex answers I
have ever heard. It included history, narrative, personal insight,
and a few moments I couldn’t even comprehend. The answer to
that single question lasted more than 15 minutes. It was well past 1
a.m. when we finally began signing books. The temperature outside
had climbed down into the mid-80s—a cool front by comparison.
More than 25 years after he played George McFly, Crispin Glover
still has a devoted fan–base, perhaps larger than ever. Through merely
being Crispin Glover, he has created something that goes far beyond a
single role or film. Some of the people in the audience that night drove
from hours away and waited in miserable conditions for this event.
Some, unable to afford a hotel room that night, got right back in the
car and took the long drive back. The smiles on their faces, as they
posed with him for a photo, were something refreshingly pure and
without a single shred of irony. I’m not sure I’ve ever been as happy as
these people seemed that night.
I was wrecked when I dropped Crispin off at the hotel. He was
due out on an early flight and the hotel shuttle would be taking
him to the airport. It was past 3 a.m. and I was due at work in just
a few hours. He looked the same as always. Not a yawn. Not a sigh.
“I hope we can do this again sometime,” he said. And with that, he
was gone. It took less than ten seconds before I realized I’d do it all
again. And people say he’s nuts.
On my lunch break that day I stopped by the hotel again to
thank them for donating the room. “Do you happen to know if
there was a lot of food left in the room?” I asked the clerk. “No,
not that I know of,” he said. Crispin simply couldn’t have eaten the
entire Whole Foods purchase in such a short time. And the idea of
him packing it up and taking it with him is even more absurd. But
who knows, perhaps sometime in the year 2016 I’ll get a petrified
Clif Bar in the mail along with a much-delayed thank-you note. I
wouldn’t be surprised.
11
Analysis
Misunderstanding
the Tulsa Riot of 1921
by Alfred Brophy
Photo courtesy G. Oscar Images.
I
n the wake of the recent tragic
murders in Tulsa, while the rest
of the nation was supporting the
African-American
community
in Tulsa and asking how could this
have happened, The Oklahoman ran a
provocatively titled editorial, “Circus
accompanying Revs. Jackson, Sharpton
is last thing Tulsa needs.” The Oklahoman
focused animosity towards people
who were rallying to protest a set of
tragic, racially motivated killings and
shootings. Rarely in recent years has a
major newspaper been so insensitive to
the cause of protesting racism.
However, the editorial also misrepresents the
1921 Tulsa riot. The editorial says the connection
between the recent shootings and the 1921 racial
violence in Tulsa is, “None. In the earlier case,
armed gangs divided along racial lines. It was
certainly not a mass murder like the bombing or
the Tulsa shootings. It was less a race riot than a
race war.”
It is one of the many continuing tragedies of
the Tulsa riot—which witnessed the destruction
May 15, 2012 – January 2, 2013
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of much of the African-American community
of Greenwood—that it is remembered as a clash
of white and black mobs. As people at the time
understood, the “riot” was a concerted action by
the Tulsa authorities. When, fearing a lynching,
some African-American veterans of the world
war appeared at the Tulsa County Courthouse
to protect a young African-American man
being held there on sensationalized charges,
a confrontation set off the riot. Over the next
few hours, the riot gathered steam and in the
morning of June 1, 1921, the police, local units
of the National Guard, and hastily deputized
special officers systematically disarmed and
arrested African Americans. Thence followed
looting and burning of Greenwood—often by
the special deputies and roving mobs of white
men. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people
were killed. This resulted in devastation of the
African-American community.
This was something in which the local officials—
not just some angry white mob—had responsibility.
Surely the people at The Oklahoman know the
accurate history of the riot—or ought to.
Alfred Brophy is the Judge John J. Parker
Distinguished Professor of Law at the University
of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, and author of
Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921
(Oxford University Press, 2002).
Many are the afflictions
of the righteous, but the
Lord delivereth him out
of them all. – Psalm 34
N
o more sleepovers. No more
babysitting, or car rides home.
No more being alone with
children or “lingering hugs
given to students (especially
using your hands to stroke or fondle).”
Aaron Thompson—Coach Thompson
to his PE students—sat in the principal’s
office at Grace Fellowship Christian
School as his bosses went through the
four-page Corrective Action Plan point
by point. It was October of 2001, the
same month Aaron added “Teacher of
the Week” to his resume.
Grace’s leader, Bob Yandian—“Pastor Bob” as everyone
calls him—wasn’t there: no need, he had people for this
kind of thing. Pastor Bob’s time was better spent sequestered
in his study, writing books and radio broadcasts. His
lieutenant, Associate Pastor Chip Olin, was a hardnosed
guy, “ornery as heck,” people said. Olin brought a USA
Today article on the characteristics of child molesters to
the meeting. At age 24, Olin explained, Aaron was acting
immature and unprofessional, and someone might get the
wrong idea.
The first two recommendations of what became known as the
“do not fondle” agreement were prayer and “building relationships
with young men and women of your age group in Sunday School
and Singles group activities” at Grace Church, which ran the
school. “Leaders in the kingdom are judged not so much by what
they accomplish as by the character they reveal—who they are
before what they do,” the document continued. Aaron was to
“live a lifestyle above reproach”—to act such that no one would
question his character.
Associate Pastor Olin let head administrator John Dunlavey,
Aaron’s other boss, do much of the talking. Olin had only just
read the Corrective Action Plan for the first time as he walked
down the hall en route to the meeting. He was mostly there as an
observer. It was Dunlavey’s brainchild, after all.
Dunlavey didn’t mean that kind of “fondle.” He’d tacked
it on, thinking it best described the overly affectionate hugplus-hand-stroking he’d seen Aaron give a boy one day at
lunch. With his big, square glasses and brow that furrowed in
concentration, Dunlavey was more the earnest science teacher
he once was than the administrator he’d become. He’d looked
up “fondle” in the dictionary, and it seemed the most precise.
Science guys love precision.
This is a cautionary tale. It is
about deference to authority,
and denial, and the human
cost of privileging an
institution above people.
Dunlavey didn’t think babysitting and all the rest were
problems, just symptoms: Aaron had become too close to Grace
families. Misplaced loyalties. That was the real issue.
Young boys were leaving Grace over the past few years, and no
one knew why. One boy moved a full 1200 miles away. He still
skateboarded with friends and did normal kid stuff, but he was
having horrible nightmares and failing classes, unable to contain
his inexplicable fury at teachers. At one point, he told his mother
he couldn’t stand how he felt and no longer wished to live. But
Grace’s leaders would not know or would not admit such things
about their flock until much later.
Grace Church sits atop a hill just south of Tulsa, off a two-lane
country road with a speed limit of fifty. The boxy, tan bunker of
a building has flagpoles at the entrance, making the church look
like a fortified post office. Eighty acres of grassy fields spread out
below. Houses in the area range from spacious to McMansion, and
new developments get names like Ridgewood or Shannondale.
In the incorporated suburb known as Broken Arrow, Oklahoma,
the ratio of car dealerships to churches is about 1:1. The nearest
strip mall to Grace has a drive-thru Starbucks, a Wal-Mart, and
a fast food chicken restaurant that pipes soft Christian rock over
speakers into the parking lot. Such is the way of Tulsa geography:
blacks to the north, Latinos and Asians to the east, miscellany in
midtown, and evangelicals and big box stores in the south.
Fall of 2001 was the grand opening for Grace’s new children’s
building, a real beauty, the pride and joy of the whole church.
“Grace is the place for kids” was the church’s slogan back
then. The new, 56,000-square-foot building had two stories of
classrooms, plus amenities like a Chuck-E-Cheese-style room
with tubing and a ball pit, “Bob and Loretta’s Soda Shoppe”
(an old-fashioned ice cream parlor named after Pastor Bob and
his wife), and the crowning glory: an antique carousel beneath a
vaulted glass pyramidal ceiling. Bejeweled with big amusement
park light bulbs, the carousel’s gold and aqua paneling positively
glowed: $125,000 well spent. Grace took out a $7.5 million loan
to finance construction of the children’s building, and when
all was said and done, the whole thing was worth nearly $10
million—over half the value of all their buildings combined. In
time, a new auditorium would be built, too, which would connect
the children’s building to Grace’s main wing. They’d begun a
fundraising campaign back in 1998: “Investing in Eternity.” That
was the year Pastor Bob published his book Righteousness: God’s
Gift to You. “You don’t need to crawl on your knees or do any ‘good
works’ to try to earn God’s approval,” Pastor Bob promised.
Aaron Thompson was the teacher all the girls had crushes
on and all the boys idolized. The younger kids mobbed him
around campus and clamored for hugs. His smile was radiant, his
Believer’s pedigree sterling. Aaron had grown up at Grace Church.
In high school, he was senior class president and a star basketball
player, before heading to nearby Oral Roberts University. Parents
frequently had Aaron over for dinner, asked him to babysit, or
hoped he could stay with the kids for a week while they went on
vacation. Aaron fielded invites for family outings big and small,
from camping trips to ice cream at Braum’s after church. Parents
were delighted to have a young man like Aaron in their children’s
lives. He was the golden boy of Grace Church.
And yet, in August of 2001, prior to the signing of the “do not
fondle” agreement, Grace received an unsigned letter. It read:
“This is a matter of life or death for a child or children.
People have been known to commit suicide for this very
reason … Everything you need to know will be revealed
if you will monitor the boy’s locker room and private
hallways or areas when no one is around, especially
before and after the PE classes. Watch your staff when
they are alone with young boys, even for two minutes.
Ask yourself, ‘Why have certain boys left Grace?’ and
‘Why are some boys tardy often?’ ”
Olin didn’t think the letter was about Aaron to begin with;
Dunlavey came to agree as the meeting with Aaron wore on.
Yet still, Dunlavey thought, perhaps Aaron’s behavior was being
misconstrued somehow, and so he read the letter aloud.
“Aaron, is this you?” Dunlavey asked. “Are you doing anything
that might cause somebody to write this kind of a letter?” Aaron
assured them he was doing no wrong. He was repentant, open
to correction. Olin had high hopes for Aaron. Everyone did.
For the remainder of the school year, Aaron was on probation.
Violation of the agreement would mean termination. Olin,
Dunlavey, and Pastor Bob would discuss Aaron’s progress
during their weekly meetings.
Aaron left Grace and headed to Cheddar’s, a nearby restaurant,
to meet with the teachers on his unit. They were the Specials
Teachers, the “Special Ts,” they called themselves, a tight-knit
crew that taught subjects like PE, music, and Spanish—all women
except for Aaron. Aaron plopped down in the booth, late and very
upset. “What’s wrong?” asked Laura Prochaska, the computers
teacher. “We’re your sisters. Talk to us.”
Aaron swore them to secrecy, then confided that Grace had
made him sign papers saying he could never take kids to the movies
or babysit or hug them. “I can’t be their big brother,” he lamented.
“Just don’t do anything questionable that they could get you for,”
Prochaska advised. “They must not think it’s such a big deal, but
they want to protect themselves by having you sign this contract.”
“Maybe you should think about quitting,” another teacher
added, encouraging him to take the protest route.
“No, no. I’m not a quitter,” Aaron told them. “I’m going to see
this through.”
The “Special Ts” didn’t know he’d already been molesting
children at Grace for years. From that day in October until his
arrest on March 25, 2002, Aaron Thompson would sexually abuse
four more boys. One of them was the son of a teacher sitting there
in the restaurant booth.
This is a cautionary tale. It is about deference to authority, and
denial, and the human cost of privileging an institution above
people. According to Oklahoma law, anyone having “reason to
believe” that a child is potentially being abused must make a report
to the Department of Human Services or the police. Child abuse
experts urge us to follow the law and not take it upon ourselves to
evaluate or investigate allegations or suspicions of abuse. But that is
exactly what Grace did. And they reaped what they sowed.
Grace Church was Oklahoma’s Penn State of 2002. After
such things come to light, we always wonder: how on earth did
that ever happen?
Here is how it happened.
The public record is suspect when it comes to what was going on
behind the scenes at Grace before Aaron’s arrest. For starters, don’t
trust what I just told you about the signing of the “do not fondle”
agreement on that day in October 2001. All that was reconstructed
from the testimonies and depositions that head administrator John
Dunlavey, Associate Pastor Chip Olin, Principal DeeAnn McKay,
and Pastor Bob later gave during the negligence lawsuits in which
Grace became mired. The only problem is that what they said
under oath doesn’t square with the recollections of two teachers
who were sitting in the restaurant booth with Aaron immediately
after he signed the agreement.
During the lawsuits, everyone at Grace said the Corrective Action Plan was Dunlavey’s idea—they simply followed his lead.
(Pastor Bob said he green lighted Dunlavey’s idea in advance, got
the executive summary of Dunlavey’s text afterward from Olin
verbally, and only read the actual document in the wake of Aaron’s
arrest.) And yet, Laura Prochaska and another Specials Teacher
who spoke on condition of anonymity distinctly remembered Aaron telling the group, “Chip [Olin] made me sign this thing.”
The second teacher had been a member of Grace Church for decades. “Knowing all the personalities as
well as I do, John [Dunlavey] would
not have come up with something
like that. That was a Chip
thing,” she assured me. “If
[Dunlavey] had had to write
an agreement, it would’ve
been dictated to him by Chip
Olin,” she added. “They liked
puppets around there.”
The Corrective Action Plan
was just one plot point in the
whole story. Who knows what
else didn’t quite happen as Grace
said it happened? Conveniently,
Grace’s version of the story protects
the man at the top.
Pastor Bob has long been a pillar of the
national charismatic Pentecostal community. Colleagues describe him as “a pastor’s
pastor,” a wingman for the mega pastors.
Decades ago, Pastor Bob was Dean of
Instructors at RHEMA Bible Training Center while founder Kenneth
Hagin Sr. pioneered the hugely
influential Word of Faith movement, which teaches that the
Lord blesses the faithful with
healing and financial rewards
(provided they tithe). Today
Pastor Bob is a board member
of Joyce Meyer Ministries, which
brings in about $100 million in donations annually, affording Meyer
the luxury of traveling by private jet.
At Grace, the stage is dark and bathed
in soft pastel lights when the elevenmember worship band leads the congregation in the gentle murmuring called talking
in tongues; but when Pastor Bob takes to the
pulpit, on come the harsh fluorescents: it’s business time. Pastor Bob, ruddy faced and paunchy,
preaches the prosperity gospel of health and wealth.
His eyes narrow as his nasally voice rises. He even incorporates
his love of fancy cars into sermons. He has owned several over the
years, including a pair of his-and-hers BMWs: Pastor Bob bought
his wife’s beemer, and Grace bought his. Pastor Bob is known for
his “practical wisdom.”
The first lawsuit, John Does 1–7 versus Grace, went to trial in
September 2004.
“I don’t really make ‘Chip’ decisions,” Associate Pastor Chip
Olin testified. “I’m an extension of Pastor Bob.”
Maybe it began with the tittytwisters. Or the tousled hair, the
hugs, the body slams.
Penn State is still reeling
scandal that emerged a yea
a similar scandal hit Grace
and the consequences are s
Relationships have been torn
scarred, and unhappiness ab
Did Grace handle
By Kiera F
from a child molestation
ar ago. But ten years before,
e Church in Broken Arrow
still being played out today.
n, many remain emotionally
bides. It all begs the question:
e it the right way?
Feldman
“Older brother-type stuff,” Josh1 remembers. “He would slowly
desensitize you.”
Josh was Aaron’s first victim, although of course he didn’t know
it back in 1996. Aaron would ask him to stay after gym class to help
put away PE equipment.
Josh and I are sitting in a Mexican restaurant in downtown
Tulsa, next to a mock-up boxing ring that has been incorporated
into the décor. His bicycle is locked up outside. Josh wears a
jean shirt with pearl buttons and rolled sleeves. He is quick to
smile and has a little stubble, a handsome twenty-something. An
autodidact since high school, Josh just sent off a round of outof-state college applications. We compare notes on the arduous
application process before hunkering down to talk about what we
came here to talk about.
It was the end of fifth grade, and Josh was 11 years old. A cute,
happy kid with a toothy grin and a center part in his hair, the 1990s
style that made little arches on either side above the forehead. Josh’s
father had died a few years earlier. Now Josh wonders if it made him
vulnerable, eager to latch onto a male figure, someone to connect
to, hoping to please the golden boy of Grace Church.
“We had played dodgeball, and he asked me to bring in all the
stuff with him,” Josh begins to tell me. “When I was in the closet
putting things away, he came up behind me and grabbed me and
slid his hand down and touched me.”
Afterward, Aaron told Josh to go to the nurse and get an Advil,
a cover for being late. He spent all of the next class staring silently
into space, trying to process what had happened. From there, it
escalated. During Josh’s fifth and sixth grade years, this became
just about a weekly occurrence. In the supply closet by the gym, in
the gym itself, in the coach’s office that locked from the inside, in
the boy’s locker room that connected straight into the coach’s office.
Aaron’s hand down Josh’s pants, Aaron’s hand putting Josh’s hand
down his own. Josh started to get used to it.
Josh became withdrawn, jumpy, moody. His parents didn’t know
what to make of his drastic personality change but assumed it was
just a phase. He couldn’t concentrate. That was the year he got
misdiagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder.
Like most abusers, Aaron was very skilled at coercing his victims
into cooperating with their abuse. Josh felt guilty: he’d gone along
with it. And Josh knew God knew.
For evangelicals, God is a personal God, there with you in every
moment. Josh worried and worried: what did He think of him? It
was a gut anxiety, ever-present. He hoped, desperately, that God
would help him or guide him somehow. Josh did what he had
been taught to do when he didn’t know what to do: he prayed. He
prayed constantly. But deliverance never came. He was 11, maybe
12. Josh found his mom’s handgun and placed the barrel into his
mouth. This way, he thought, he’d get to be with his dad again.
When he finally got up the nerve to pull the trigger, nothing
happened. It wasn’t loaded. Josh took it as a sign. He didn’t try
again 'til years later.
The escalation continued. Before long, Aaron was having Josh
perform oral sex on him and doing likewise to Josh. If it came
out that this was going on, Josh knew he would be the talk of the
school. Children are cruel, and Christian children no different.
He liked it, they’d taunt. Walking down the hall, it felt like kids
were staring at him. Surely they could tell, surely they knew that
Josh had brought this on himself. Aaron had convinced Josh that
Aaron was keeping Josh’s secret.
Throughout it all, of course, Josh was still being asked to help
put things away after gym class: he was needed and wanted and
chosen. Abuse binds the abused to their abuser, power and control
the engine driving all.
“He made you feel—” Josh pauses to find the word for the memory.
“Special.” Aaron treated him like the adult that he was not.
Sometime in seventh grade, Josh’s face, neck, and back became
covered with horrible, painful acne—in all likelihood a product of
stress. But also puberty: it was 1998, and Josh was thirteen. The
abuse tapered off.
Time passed. Josh drew into himself. Eventually, he started
noticing younger boys coming out of the gym, late for their next
class. Boys who seemed to have special friendships with Aaron.
And that’s when it hit him: there were others.
Aaron went way back with Grace’s youth pastor and basketball coach, Mike Goolsbay, a big teddy bear of a man with spiky
gelled hair who was always saying “bless you, kiddo” with gusto.
Goolsbay had known Aaron since he was a 13-year-old in Grace’s
youth group. Aaron knew he could call Goolsbay late at night
if he ever needed an ear, like the time his senior year of high
school when he had some teenage angst to hash out, or the time
in college when a girl broke his heart. Goolsbay was the one who
asked Aaron to start helping out during Grace’s summer camps.
During the 1995–1996 school year,
while Aaron was a freshman accounting student at Oral Roberts University, he volunteered as the assistant
basketball coach/assistant youth
pastor at Grace—Goolsbay’s
right-hand man.
By all accounts, the first
failure to report child abuse
at Grace came in early 1996,
around the time Josh’s molestation began. Dr. Mark Peterson
and his wife brought Goolsbay
a printout of emails Aaron had
sent to their seventh grade son,
who was on Goolsbay’s basketball
team. One email described the son’s
genitalia and called him a “stud.” The
emails were all signed “Love, Aaron”—not,
Peterson noted, “Love in Christ, Aaron.”
(Child abuse experts say that lewd emails
constitute abuse.) Peterson insisted that
the emails be made part of Aaron’s
permanent file. Goolsbay agreed to
do so, using the exact same logic
of denial and negligence that everyone at Grace would deploy
in the years to come: Aaron
is unprofessional, he’s immature, I’ll counsel him, and
all will be well. (Had Goolsbay
followed state law, he would have
called DHS or the police.) Goolsbay
says he didn’t tell any of his superiors
about the incident, and the emails were
never found in Grace’s files.
Meanwhile, Pastor Bob published One
Flesh: God’s Gift of Passion—Love, Sex & Romance in Marriage. “When you have a strong
relationship with your mate’s soul,” the soon-tobe popular book advised, “the relationship with
his or her body becomes something fantastic!”
Aaron became Grace’s part-time assistant athletic
director in 1997, and in late 1998, shortly before he graduated
from ORU in the spring of 1999, he was hired as a fulltime PE
teacher at Grace—on Goolsbay’s recommendation.
After Aaron’s arrest, Dr. Peterson called Goolsbay to remind
him of the emails. Goolsbay was defensive, and the conversation
grew heated, Peterson later testified. “CYA”—Cover Your Ass—
was “the feeling I was getting,” Peterson said.
Long before any sexual abuse came to light at Grace, Dr.
Gene Reynolds, a Tulsa psychologist, remembered trekking
out to the school on Garnett Road, asked by parents to evaluate
this or that kid for issues unrelated to the abuse. He was struck
1. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
that the administration and staff seemed totally unreceptive to
professional recommendations.
“They had their own ideas about what needed to be done,” Dr.
Reynolds noted.
He ended up examining seven of the Grace boys Aaron had
abused. In the boys’ pre-teen and teenage years, the early effects
of trauma were varied: the gamut ran from severe anger to
depression, suicidal feelings and attempts, insomnia, fear of men,
panic attacks, feeling like “damaged goods,” shame, guilt, early
sexual activity and promiscuity, incarceration, and drug abuse.
“There were some boys who said they never wanted to set foot in a
church again,” Dr. Reynolds added.
Late effects of abuse vary individually, but the numbers are
grim: victims of abuse are more likely to have trouble in school
(a 50 percent chance); more likely to develop substance abuse or
mental health problems (one study found 80 percent of 21-yearolds who’d been abused had one or more psychiatric disorders);
and 5-8 times more likely to experience major depression in their
lifetime. Both depression and substance abuse are associated
with poor treatment outcomes when patients have histories of
child abuse. Men who’ve been abused as children are 3.8 times
more likely to perpetrate intimate partner violence as adults.
Adults who’ve been abused as children are twice as likely to
attempt suicide—and twelve times more likely to commit suicide.
The sooner abuse is detected and treated, the better the child’s
prospects are in the long term.
The men who sexually abuse children—and they are mostly
men—are often the last people on earth you’d ever imagine.
About 90 percent of child sexual abusers are people the victim
knows. About 30 percent of abusers are relatives—a father, older
sibling, a favorite cousin or uncle, the people you trust most in
this world. About 60 percent are outside the family—coaches,
teachers, Scout leaders, ministers, neighbors, family friends,
teenage sons of family friends: the authority figures children look
up to. Abusers work their way into positions where they’ll have
access to children, so that they become the “not in a million years”
people. This is exactly why state laws do not allow individuals
or organizations to “handle” abuse complaints or suspicions on
their own: these bonds of trust make it impossible to respond to
potential abuse with anything but disbelief. Outside authorities,
by comparison, don’t have such preconceived notions.
Girls are victimized more often than boys, but boys are more
likely to be victimized by a non-family member. Underreporting
is common, making data hard to come by, but studies suggest 25
percent of women and 16 percent of men were sexually abused
before age 18 (including peer abuse). According to the American
Academy of Pediatrics, “The children most susceptible to these
assaults have obedient, compliant, and respectful personalities.”
At Penn State University, allegations of former assistant
football coach Jerry Sandusky’s sexual assault of a child traveled
from graduate assistant to head coach Joe Paterno to athletic
director and University vice president and president. Everyone, it
seemed, was willing to report a coach up the chain of command
and assume they’d done their due diligence.
For decades, Catholics moved their pedophile priests from one
community to another, dumping them on unsuspecting parishes.
The Catholic Church spent the ’90s doling out cash settlements
to sexual abuse victims, who were required to sign confidentiality
agreements. The eruption of scandal was to be avoided at all costs.
Defrocking was unheard of: priests had repented, and that was that.
Then, a 2002 Boston Globe investigation blew the lid off of
everything. Just as the Catholic clergy abuse scandal was breaking,
Tulsa became likewise embroiled. While the Catholics shuffled
their perpetrators from parish to parish, Grace harbored Aaron.
In this way, the evangelicals of South Tulsa were much like the
ultra-Orthodox Jews of Brooklyn, who have kept their abusers
within the tight-knit community.
In the experience of Roy Van Tassell, an abuse specialist at
Family and Children Services of Oklahoma, Grace was not all
that unique among some kinds of religious institutions locally.
“They tend to be more autocratic, more cloistered,” Tassell
told me, “and there is some anecdotal evidence to say that those
communities tend to be at somewhat greater risk.”
Fall of 2001 was the grand opening for
Grace’s new children’s building, a real
beauty, the pride and joy of the whole
church. “Grace is the place for kids”
was the church’s slogan back then.
“It happened because Aaron Thompson was a member
of our family,” the church’s lawyer told the jury during the
John Does 1–7 versus Grace trial. Family ties both bind and
blind, the lawyer seemed to be saying—a truism that f its
most all communities.
“The only assurance of our nation’s safety is to lay our foundation in
morality and religion [Christianity].”—Abraham Lincoln, as quoted
by the Grace elementary school handbook
At Grace Fellowship Christian School, everything from “the
World”—that is, the secular world beyond South Tulsa—was
suspect: Harry Potter, Tim Burton, whatever clothing happened
to be in style that year. But students were led in prayer for the
World: that the spiritual enemy known as Bill Clinton would
be replaced with a godly leader; that Senator Jim Inhofe would
be reelected; that George Bush would lead our great Christian
nation and glorify His kingdom.
Federal laws prohibit partisan political activity in churches
and other tax-exempt organizations. Yet, Grace encouraged
students to volunteer for Republican election campaigns,
sometimes offering extra credit. One year, Grace students
went on a field trip to hammer lawn signs for Representative
Steve Largent, an original member of the C Street house in
Washington, run by the powerful and secretive fundamentalist
Christian group known as the Family (perhaps best known as
the incubator for Uganda’s “kill the gays” bill). Former Grace
students and parishioners remembered that Largent and Senator
Don Nickles, another Family member, were frequent guests at
the school. Also a Family man, Inhofe has graced Grace’s pulpit
many times. For a number of years, Grace donated money to
Christian Embassy, one of the Family’s sister organizations that
ministers to Washington elites. It was a Christian Embassy
evangelist who led Inhofe to dedicate himself to Jesus in a
congressional dining room in 1988.
In an email, the office of Winters & King, Inc., Grace’s attorney,
said the church “has no relationship with Steve Largent, past or
present.” The email continued, “Grace has no relationship with
Senator Inhofe except to pray for him as mentioned in I Timothy
4:1-2”—the same answer they gave for District Attorney Tim
Harris. The verse from Timothy reads, “In the latter times some
shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and
doctrines of devils.” Stay the course, Grace apparently prays for
Christian conservative politicians.
“As we go we follow Jesus,” went the Grace school song. “His
Holy Spirit guides the way.” The way was one of structure and
discipline: wear pants the wrong color of blue, and you could end
up with in-house suspension, be given a pair of headphones, and
made to listen to tapes of Pastor Bob’s lectures. Chewing gum as
a repeat offense could mean a paddling in the principal’s office;
girls had to kneel in the entryway of the school to make sure their
skirts touched the floor; only one What Would Jesus Do bracelet
was allowed: excess was vanity.
15
At Grace, the bodies of the young were policed with the
utmost of vigilance. When a ninth grade girl kissed a seventh
grade boy on the cheek, he was suspended and banned from
sports tryouts. Shaming was a teaching tool. When a 15-yearold girl got pregnant, her expulsion was announced to the
whole school in chapel, with her younger sister sitting there
in the pews. The infractions of children—major, minor, and
everything in between—were punished swiftly and severely.
“It was definitely a dictatorship,” remembered one Grace
teacher who was a church member for over thirty years.
Grace had an application for volunteers to fill out, with
a part that asked if they’d experienced sexual abuse as a
child. An affirmative answer rendered a volunteer ineligible
to work with children. Way back in 1995, Aaron answered
“no.” But one day toward the end of the summer of 2000 or
2001—Goolsbay couldn’t remember which year—on a long
car ride to a campground in Tahlequah where Grace held
summer camp, Aaron confided in him. The real answer was
“yes.” Teenagers molested him when he was four. (Aaron
later testified that he was molested again at age 16 by a
the floor and don’t say anything except, ‘I’m OK, I’m OK,’ ”
Prochaska remembered telling Hood. (When I called Hood
in March 2012 and read her this quote, Hood paused a full
five seconds, cleared her throat, thanked me with a “bye now,”
and hung up.)
At the time, Prochaska said, Hood apparently never followed
up. This was all happening while rumors were circulating—
malicious rumors, or so it seemed at the time, that Aaron was
molesting boys. Without any formal complaints, Prochaska
and the other teachers dismissed it as “just talk,” she said. “We
blew it off, thinking, ‘Oh my gosh. What is this? A frustrated
kid that wants to get back at his coach? Or a frustrated parent
that wanted to attack the coach?’ Because he was a man of
integrity, as far as we knew.”
Prochaska was the unit leader for the Specials Teachers.
In retrospect, she marvels that the principal didn’t have her
monitor Aaron. “I guess Mrs. Hood gave Aaron the benefit
of the doubt and thought she could handle it on her own,”
Prochaska said.
Prochaska didn’t know reporting protocol because Grace
hadn’t trained her to know it: those rumors they’d been
hearing of child sex abuse—“smack talk” about Aaron—were
grounds enough for a call to outside authorities. Reports to
She started noticing that certain boys used to arrive late. Again
and again and again, the same boys. She’d ask them where they
were, and they’d answer that they had been helping Coach
Thompson put away equipment after PE—or at the nurse’s office.
youth pastor at a different church.)
The two talked the entire car ride, over an hour and a half.
Goolsbay was relieved when Aaron told him that his parents
had found out about the abuse sometime in middle school—
it hadn’t remained a festering secret. But, at the same time,
Goolsbay understood that victimization could be a cycle.
“Aaron, do you struggle with this in your life?” he asked.
“Is this ever something that you’ve duplicated or acted out
on?” Perhaps Goolsbay should have had thoughts along
these lines back in 1996, when Aaron sent lewd emails to a
seventh grade boy.
“No, no, I would never, ever do that to a child,” Aaron
assured him.
Goolsbay thought about Aaron teaching every single
child at Grace, preschool through eighth grade, including
his own children.
“Are my kids safe, as well as every other kid safe?” Goolsbay
wondered to himself.
“I felt like he gave me that assurance,” Goolsbay later
testified. He told Aaron he was there for him if he ever needed
to talk. Goolsbay says he didn’t bring up the lewd emails to the
Peterson boy, and he didn’t think to recommend professional
help. After that, whenever they’d see each other around
Grace, which was just about every day, Goolsbay would put
his arm around him and ask, “How is your heart?”
Around this period, Aaron, as a counselor, molested
two Grace students at Camp Dry Gulch, where many
Grace kids went.
Despite Aaron’s own history as a victim of sexual abuse,
Grace continued to let Aaron work with children. Goolsbay
claimed he never reported that conversation up the chain of
command. Grace purged Aaron’s volunteer file in 2001.
In 1998, Laura Prochaska became the computers teacher
at Grace. She started noticing that certain boys used to arrive
late. Again and again and again, the same boys. She’d ask
them where they were, and they’d answer that they had been
helping Coach Thompson put away equipment after PE—or
at the nurse’s office. Then they would sit the entire period,
staring blankly at their computer screens without even turning
the monitor on. After class, she’d pull them aside.
“What’s wrong?” she’d ask them. “Are your mommy and
daddy having trouble at home?” To no avail.
Prochaska went to Mary Ellen Hood, the elementary
principal at the time. Hood was gung-ho about Christian
education as a calling; Grace was her life. She wore a blue
blazer emblazoned with the school crest.
“I said, ‘I’ve got some kids who are coming late, they’re
sullen. I try to talk to them after class, they just stare down at
DHS can even be made anonymously. But it was a culture in
which the World was not to be trusted or called upon. One’s
responsibility was to the chain of command.
Under Oklahoma law, the Child Abuse Reporting and
Prevention Act, it is a misdemeanor for anyone “having reason
to believe” that a minor is potentially being abused to not
report it to the Department of Human Services (DHS). (In at
least three states, failure to report child abuse can result in a
felony.) In some states, the legal requirements to report abuse
are limited to certain professionals like health care workers
and school employees, but Oklahoma is one of 18 states in
which everyone is what’s called a “mandatory reporter.” The
reporting obligation is individual, meaning that it’s not
enough to simply alert one’s superiors and have them make
a decision about whether or not to call outside authorities.
DHS investigates abuse within the home and refers cases
like that of Grace to the Tulsa Police Department (TPD)
for investigation. When rumors were spreading at Grace,
anyone could’ve alerted DHS or TPD. Then, hypothetically,
TPD would’ve gone out to Grace to “turn over every stone,
ask every question,” said TPD spokesman Jason Willingham.
“We’re going to ask, ‘Hey did you ever see anything unusual?’
It’s the little things that just didn’t add up.”
District Attorney Tim Harris handled Aaron’s case. He
never returned my phone calls. I left messages asking him to
explain why he didn’t prosecute Grace for failing to report
child abuse. Harris once said, “As a criminal prosecutor, I
look at the Ten Commandments.” Harris and Mike King,
Grace’s lawyer, were classmates of Michele Bachmann’s in law
school at Oral Roberts University, which promotes a biblical
interpretation of secular law in an effort to undo the separation
of church and state.
Roy Van Tassell of Family and Children’s Services of
Oklahoma said failure to report prosecutions were “rare”
in his experience. Nationally, successful failure-to-report
prosecutions are few and far between. They typically result
in a fine of a few hundred dollars, if that. “If any good would
come out of any of this,” one father of an abused boy at Grace
told me, “it’d be that somehow, somewhere, laws would
be changed.” He suggested a fine of $10,000 for every day
someone fails to report child abuse.
There is a big shortcoming in Oklahoma’s current law:
“reason to believe” can be read subjectively. The statute states,
“Any person who knowingly and willfully fails to promptly
report any incident” may be charged with a misdemeanor. “As
a practical matter, unless someone made an admission … that
they knowingly and willfully failed to report as required by
law,” a DHS representative told me, “how would we know?”
According to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, all Grace had to do
to avoid prosecution was say they didn’t have any “reason
to believe” and didn’t “knowingly” fail to report that Aaron
was molesting boys. They didn’t have any reason to believe it,
because they chose not to believe it.
In a recent phone conversation, Grace’s lawyer, Mike King,
reiterated his interpretation of the law. When an organization
receives an abuse complaint, King said, “If they have reason
to believe that that report is true, they should report it [to
DHS].” Yet, credibility is beside the point. That’s for the
World to discern.
At the time, Prochaska didn’t know about all the
parental complaints Grace was receiving. Sometime
during the 1999–2000 school year, a father came to Mary
Ellen Hood to complain that Aaron had showed up at his
house one afternoon, wanting to treat his son to lunch.
The family had just moved, and he had no idea how Aaron
knew where they lived.
“I don’t want my son around Aaron Thompson,” he told
her, asking for the boy’s removal from Aaron’s PE class.
Hood refused, thinking his concerns irrational: teachers walk
students to and from gym class, she said, and there was no
way his son would be alone with Aaron. (Little did the father
realize, his son was regularly late to Prochaska’s Computers
class. Which is to say he was among the victims.) Hood told
the father not to worry: everyone at Grace had known Aaron
for years and years and years.
Privately, however, Hood met with head administrator
John Dunlavey—instead of going to the authorities. They told
Aaron that under no circumstances was he allowed to be alone
with children off-campus. None of the other teachers at Grace
were informed, and no paperwork to this effect was ever found
in Aaron’s file.
In September of 2000, a mother called Grace to talk with
Principal DeeAnn McKay, who had recently succeeded Mary
Ellen Hood. After her son freaked out when asked to undress
for a physical, a doctor wondered if there was sexual abuse
in the child’s past. McKay said she didn’t know of anything.
The boy was another one of Aaron’s victims; also late to
Prochaska’s class.
Then, in early October, another mother contacted McKay,
expressing concern that Aaron was giving her son special
attention: an extra birthday cupcake, a kiss on the cheek
during gym class to encourage him when he was struggling
to finish laps; she’d also seen Aaron playfully swatting kids
on the butt. Then, there was yet another mother who called
McKay in October to inform her that Aaron had removed
three boys from class, walked them toward the edge of Grace’s
property, told two of them to stay put, and led Jason Taylor
alone into the woods.
Jason’s father figure paid Principal McKay a visit in late
October 2000. He wanted her to know that Aaron was
planning to host a sleepover for a group of third grade
boys after Grace’s annual Hallelujah Party. Plus, earlier
that year, Aaron took Jason alone to the movies and back
to his house afterward. McKay then talked with Mary
Ellen Hood, the previous principal. Hood told her that
she’d instructed Aaron not to be alone with students offcampus. Hood was surprised to learn that Aaron was now
disobeying those orders.
After all this, on October 27, 2000, McKay and head
administrator John Dunlavey sat Aaron down for a marathon
two-and-a-half-hour long meeting. (This was a year before
the signing of the “do not fondle” agreement.) Dunlavey
explained that good Christians often get falsely accused of
things, giving examples of legal cases he’d learned about in
grad school for Christian school administration at ORU.
Dunlavey and McKay laid down the rules: no being alone
with children off-campus (maintain “two-deep leadership” as
they called it).
“What if I get invited to a swim party at someone’s house?”
Aaron asked. “Only where there would be numerous other
adults present,” Dunlavey answered. They instructed Aaron
to stop babysitting and inviting students to his house. McKay
would monitor Aaron’s compliance with the babysitting
stipulation by periodically asking him if he was babysitting.
Grace ran on the honor system.
There was yet another incident in October of 2000. Zach
Sweeney, a first grader, was on the merry-go-round one day
at lunch. Aaron helped him off. Zach made a beeline for his
teacher, telling her Aaron had touched his genitals. Aaron
assured the teacher it must have been an accident; Zach
insisted it was intentional. Later, the teacher called Zach’s
dad. He hung up the phone thinking it was an accident. The
teacher said she never reported the incident to anyone else—
not Grace, not the police.
CONTINUED on NEXT PAGE
Photo by Shane Brown
16
Zach had done well in kindergarten at Grace, but something
changed in first grade. He started getting in trouble at school,
especially for sexually acting out—one of the more common
indicators a child has been molested. (Yet, some victims don’t
have any noticeable behavior change.) Zach suddenly hated
school and refused to give his mom, Julie, a reason. “What
about PE? You get to run around and play,” Julie asked him.
“I hate going to PE,” Zach answered. Until then, Aaron had
been Zach’s favorite teacher. He’d been Julie’s favorite too.
Aaron seemed like the only teacher at Grace who didn’t look
down on them for not living in a $1 million home. In fact, the
Sweeneys could barely afford tuition, which was about $2,000
per year. Then, too, there were the monthly fundraisers
students were required to participate in.
Julie met with Principal McKay, telling her Zach
wasn’t doing well at Grace, and the financial burden was
overwhelming the family. “Have you thought about getting
a second job?” McKay asked. Julie explained they’d still be
short. “Well you and your husband could both get part-time
jobs,” McKay suggested. Both Julie and her husband were
working forty-hour weeks already. She told McKay they
had an eight-month-old baby at home, a boy they’d never
see if they followed her advice. As Julie saw it, McKay only
cared about Grace losing their tuition money. Colleagues say
McKay was a real go-getter, determined to climb all the way
from kindergarten teacher—where she began—to elementary
school principal. Like Mary Ellen Hood before her, Grace
was McKay’s life. Blonde, always ready with a fake smile,
she was one with the institution: “Grace personified,” as one
longtime teacher described McKay. To let a family leave the
school was to admit Grace was not perfection upon a hill in
your eyes, be discreet, and above all use wisdom. God will
reveal the truth!”
Second anonymous letter
By October 21, 2001, God had still not revealed the truth.
Two days after the “do not fondle” agreement was signed,
another anonymous letter arrived at Grace. It was addressed
to Ron Palmer, the chief of the Tulsa Police Department, and
CC-ed to Pastor Bob and Dunlavey.
“I am obligated by law and by integrity to inform you
that I know PERSONALLY that Mr. Aaron Thompson …
sexually molested a boy at school.” This, too, was written by
Josh’s parents. They were frustrated that nothing seemed to
change after their first letter.
Upon the second letter’s arrival, Dunlavey got called into
Pastor Bob’s office. Dunlavey asked Pastor Bob what they
should do. Pastor Bob said he and Associate Pastor Olin
would take care of it. Sometime after that, Pastor Bob and
Olin discussed the letter with Dan Beirute, their lawyer at
Winters & King, Inc.
Dunlavey and Olin called Aaron in for another meeting
and handed him the letter.
“I don’t know what to say,” Aaron told them.
“Some encouraging words would be really good right about
now,” said Olin. “Like, ‘I didn’t do this,’ or ‘I’ve never done
this before’ and—or ‘that is not me.’ ” Aaron simply nodded
in agreement.
It was a short meeting. Dunlavey and Olin reminded Aaron
about the guidelines of the Corrective Action Plan, and then
he was dismissed.
Broken Arrow. “You should think about what is important to
God,” Julie remembers McKay adding.
Julie left the principal’s office bawling. She withdrew Zach
from Grace shortly thereafter. It was then that Zach told her,
“There’s someone there who is touching kids in their private
area.” It was Aaron, and Zach was one of those kids. It is
painful for her to think back on it, but Julie didn’t believe her
son. Aaron? No way, not in a million years. It is a common
misconception that children lie about sexual abuse. In reality,
kids rarely ever do. But Julie consulted with her husband, who
told her about the teacher’s phone call, and they considered
the matter settled. They should have but did not make a report
to the authorities—like Grace, except without the whole body
of additional knowledge Grace had.
During the whole 2000–2001 school year, Aaron would
pop by Grace’s after-school program, help himself to cookies,
and ask to borrow a boy.
“May I borrow so and so?” he’d tell the after-school workers,
and they’d go with Aaron and then come back alone an hour
later with a piece of candy.
Head administrator Dunlavey and principal McKay hadn’t
told anyone else at Grace that Aaron was not to be alone with
boys. At the end of the school year, Aaron decided to have a
daycare in his house for Grace boys. This was after he’d been
ordered to stop babysitting. McKay knew about it in advance
and did nothing to stop it; Dunlavey found out after the fact.
Four boys were molested at Aaron’s home daycare during the
summer of 2001.
“I’m glad to hear it,” McKay gushed when another Grace
employee remarked that he’d asked Aaron to serve as a
counselor at Camp Dry Gulch, where Grace kids went . Two
boys were molested at summer camp the summer of 2001.
the school’s head administrator take it in. She was struck that
none of them seemed the least bit surprised.
At the end of the meeting, they prayed together.
Lorrie had mentioned Aaron’s ongoing babysitting of
Jason, which meant Aaron violated Grace’s Corrective
Action Plan. This required a firm response. But Jason’s
By October 21, 2001, God had
still not revealed the truth. Two
days after the “do not fondle”
agreement was signed, another
anonymous letter arrived at
Grace. It was addressed to Ron
Palmer, the chief of the Tulsa
Police Department, and CC-ed to
Pastor Bob and Dunlavey.
molestation allegation was a separate matter—and one
Dunlavey and Olin would later say they didn’t actually
believe. They decided to suspend Aaron. Olin then called
Pastor Bob, who was traveling.
Rather than contact DHS or the Tulsa Police Department,
Pastor Bob decided to confront Aaron upon his return. Olin
made some phone calls—to Grace’s attorneys at Winters &
King, Inc.: Dan Beirute and Mike King. The next day, Olin
announced that Grace employees were to bring him any and
all documents pertaining to Aaron. (Youth pastor Mike
Goolsbay, for his part, destroyed a photograph of Aaron.)
Olin handed the cache over to the attorneys.
A meeting with Aaron was scheduled for Wednesday, March
20—a full eight days after Lorrie Taylor’s confrontation—“in
order to allow [him] to hear the allegation,” Dunlavey later
wrote in a letter to the International Christian Accrediting
Association, detailing Grace’s extra-judicial proceedings.
During those intervening eight days, Dunlavey said, “All I
did was pray.”
Wednesday came around. Associate Pastor Chip Olin,
head administrator John Dunlavey, attorney Dan Beirute, and
Pastor Bob met with Aaron in the church’s conference room.
Olin told Aaron that they’d had a molestation report from
a parent. Olin asked if it was true. There was a long pause.
Finally, Aaron answered yes. They asked if there were others,
and Aaron named two additional boys. Olin beseeched Aaron
to report himself to the police. Aaron hesitated, so Olin called
a Grace congregant who was a police officer. Then, another
TPD child abuse detective called back.
At the end of the meeting, Olin, Dunlavey, and Beirute had
Aaron call DHS to report himself. Pastor Bob had already left
the room by this point.
“I think he had other responsibilities,” Olin testified.
TPD arrested Aaron on March 25, 2002. Five days later,
Pastor Bob wrote an open letter to the congregation and
parents at the school.
“That such behavior may have occurred and caused injury
to children is unthinkable,” he noted. “Pray for the children
and the families directly affected, especially for the children.”
Pastor Bob’s next letter to parents on April 5 began with
an apology. “The time required to focus on these events has
made it difficult to communicate with those who matter to me
most—you and your family.” Pastor Bob encouraged parents
to be in touch. By proxy. “I have directed Chip Olin, Associate
Pastor, with responding to you directly,” wrote Pastor Bob. He
assured the parents that Grace was “aggressively developing
community resources that will give us guidance to ensure that
this never again happens at our school.” But, when Dunlavey
and McKay testified nearly two years later, they said no
changes had been made to Grace’s child abuse reporting
policies since then.
It should be noted that Dunlavey, along with Principals
Hood and McKay, had certificates of completion from “Child
First anonymous letter
Josh made his parents promise not to tell a soul. They
promised. He was in tenth grade. At school, he could
not become The Kid Who Got Molested. Together, Josh
and his parents drafted the first anonymous letter. Josh
had a hunch he wasn’t the only one who’d attempted or
considered suicide. “This is a matter of life or death for a
child or children,” the letter urged. “We thank God every
day that this did not go unrevealed any longer in our son’s
life … [He] will not carry this experience and shame into
his adult life, as others may.” The letter was signed, “Your
Brother & Sister in Christ.”
Addressed to head administrator John Dunlavey, the
letter arrived on August 16, 2001 by certif ied mail.
Dunlavey opened it and prayed. “Lord, what do I do
with this?”
Dunlavey photocopied the letter and took it straight to
Pastor Bob and Associate Pastor Chip Olin. Instead of
contacting the authorities, Olin and Pastor Bob went to
their lawyers. That consultation did not lead Grace to go to
During the whole 2000–2001
school year, Aaron would
pop by Grace’s after-school
program, help himself to cookies, and ask to borrow a boy.
the authorities, either. Instead, they took the law into their
own hands, with Dunlavey as their detective.
Grace installed cameras in the hallways. Dunlavey and
Principal McKay walked by the gym a little more often
than usual, keeping an eye out. Every Tuesday afternoon,
during his weekly meeting with Pastor Bob, Dunlavey
would report back what he’d seen: a whole lot of nothing.
Grace would later testify that they interpreted the letter
as a generic warning: about what and about whom, they
weren’t sure, but they claimed nobody suspected sexual
abuse. They latched onto the ending: “Watch, pray, open
TPD says they never received the letter. Later, Grace’s
lawyer explained to the jury that Pastor Bob and Olin figured
they’d be hearing from the police if there was any reason to
be concerned.
Dunlavey testified that contacting the authorities on his
own prerogative was out of the question: Pastor Bob and
Olin called the shots. Dunlavey explained, “I don’t think I
would have done it without them okaying it and putting their
blessing on it.”
The Arrest
One Saturday, Lorrie Taylor was driving her son Jason, a
fourth grader, home from a basketball game. Her cell phone
rang. It was Aaron, and he asked to speak to Jason.
“I love you, too,” Jason said to Aaron as he hung up the
phone that day.
Lorrie spent the weekend grilling her son about those four
words. Jason was defensive and angry. She knew something was
not right. Recently, Jason had begged her not to have Aaron
babysit him. On Monday, they were in the car again, stopped at
a stoplight. She asked him flat out: “Has Aaron Thompson ever
touched you in your privates?”
Jason answered yes.
On March 12, 2002, Lorrie met with school administrators
in Jason’s fourth grade classroom. She told them what Jason
had told her: Aaron had rubbed his genitals in chapel at Grace.
Lorrie was beside herself: on the one hand, she didn’t think
Jason would lie about something like this; and on the other
hand, she—like everyone else—didn’t think Aaron could
possibly have done anything of the sort. Jason’s teacher told
the group she had interviewed Jason herself, and she believed
him. Lorrie watched the associate pastor, the principal, and
Lures,” a popular national sex abuse prevention program
offered in conjunction with their law firm, Winters & King,
Inc. At public schools in Oklahoma, staff are required to
undergo yearly training on recognizing and reporting child
abuse and neglect.
The months after the arrest (2002)
Over a lifetime, the monetary costs of caring for a sex-abuse
victim can be sky high. Clergy sex abuse victims generally
expect settlements of about a million dollars apiece. In lawsuits
against the Catholic Church, attorney fees ate up about 40
percent of the settlements. In 2003, Aaron pleaded guilty to
molesting nine boys between 1996 and 2002—sixteen counts
of lewd molestation and two counts of sexual abuse of a minor.
(Aaron’s 25 year sentence ends in 2027, but he’s up for parole
in 2023.) Long after Aaron’s plea agreement, a 10th and 11th
boy came forward and successfully sued Grace for negligence. If
Grace’s settlements approximated those of Catholic churches,
the Aaron Thompson ordeal could’ve cost them about $11
million, not including the defense’s attorney fees.
In the aftermath of Aaron’s arrest, faced with a spate of
costly negligence lawsuits, Pastor Bob circled the wagons. In
2002, on the advice of their law firm Winters & King, Inc.,
Grace moved all of their assets into a dummy corporation.
A $7.5 million mortgage, $1.2 million in cash, all of Grace’s
furniture and equipment—everything went into Grace
Fellowship Title Holding Corporation. In a letter to Bank of
the West, Grace board member and Financial Director John
Ransdell explained that the board approved the corporate
CONTINUED on page 18
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18
Faces of Grace (from left to right): Asst. Athletic Director Aaron Thompson,
Principal DeeAnn McKay, Administrator John Dunlavey, Pastor Bob Yandian.
restructuring in hopes of “protecting the assets of the church in
the event of a catastrophic event in the school that resulted in
a momentary award exceeding insurance coverage.” Ransdell
is currently the president of Grace’s Covenant Federal Credit
Union, a position he’s held since 1993.
In court filings, plaintiffs’ lawyers alleged Grace had
committed fraudulent conveyance, which is a civil offense.
All the Grace lawsuits were settled before reaching the stage
at which a court might have awarded damages for fraudulent
conveyance. Several plaintiffs’ lawyers told me Grace’s financial
maneuverings didn’t impact their settlements. But it’s the
thought that counts. As attorney Clark Phipps explained, it
“rubbed salt in the wounds” of the victims and their families.
Plaintiffs’ lawyer Laurie Phillips remembered it took forever
to assemble a jury for John Does 1–7 versus Grace. Potential
jurists kept getting disqualified. As Phillips put it dryly,
“Everybody in Tulsa has been molested in Tulsa County—
or has a sister or a brother or a child who was.” Each year,
Oklahoma DHS has about 1,700 confirmed cases of child sex
abuse, with underreporting a given.
After a grueling seven-week trial, in October 2004 the
jury found that Grace had acted in “reckless disregard”
and awarded the seven John Does a total of $845,000. The
individual amounts ranged from $75,000 to $250,000. It was
a pittance, given that each boy paid about $60,000 in lawyer
fees that came out of their settlements. The jury found that
Pastor Bob, associate pastor Chip Olin, head administrator
John Dunlavey, Principal Dee Ann McKay, and former
Principal Mary Ellen Hood had acted negligently. (According
to plaintiffs’ lawyers, Mike Goolsbay was not a defendant in
the trial because his role with the lewd emails didn’t come out
until late in the discovery process. Goolsbay was named in
two subsequent lawsuits.) “Reckless disregard” meant the jury
could have awarded punitive damages in the next stage of the
trial, but the lawyers settled out of court for an undisclosed
amount before then. The court had capped the possible
punitive damages amount at $870,000, so it’s a fair bet that
the plaintiffs settled for less than that.
Seven boys, less than $2 million in settlements. Grace got
filed an extension protecting his right to sue—just in case.
Sure enough, shortly thereafter, Grace stopped paying for his
therapy.
Josh wanted something that Grace—as a corporate entity
deeply vested in protecting its assets—would never give
him: an apology; a recognition that he’d been wronged and
hurt; an assurance that the people in charge were sorry for
failing him. A court could tell him what Grace would not: the
school hadn’t protected him when they could have and should
have. “If Bob had been kind and repentant and just a little
heartbroken,” Josh reflects, “I would have never sued Grace.”
In February 2005, during the discovery period of the suit,
Pastor Bob and his lawyer submitted a request for admission
that tried to get Josh to “admit that you touched Aaron
Thompson in a sexual manner before he first touched you in a
sexual manner.” Josh was 11 when the abuse started.
Grace also subpoenaed his therapist’s notes, apparently
trawling for material that would help make the case that Josh
had somehow seduced Aaron as a fifth grader. After that, Josh
could no longer trust the very person who was supposed to
help him heal. He was just starting to get to the place where
he didn’t think the abuse was his fault. But that set him back.
Way back.
While Pastor Bob engaged in victim blaming, surprisingly,
no one at Grace retroactively labeled Aaron a gay child
molester. This was remarkable for a deeply conservative mega
church that offered “Restoration by Grace,” an in-house prayaway-the-gay counseling program.
Josh’s entire middle school and teen years were taken up
with his abuse—first with the molestation itself, and then
with the criminal case against Aaron and the lawsuits and
the endless depositions and hearings. It all blended together.
The subpoenas were never-ending. He was forced to live it
again and again and again. He said what many sexual assault
survivors say: the protracted agony of the legal system was yet
another assault. During one deposition, as he talked he could
see his mom through a window in the door. She was sobbing.
After Aaron’s arrest, Josh defected from Grace and spent
the remainder of high school in homeschooling. Reading on
In the year after Aaron’s arrest, Grace saw an exodus
of students who headed for other Christian schools
attached to Tulsa area mega churches, like Victory
Christian Center or Church on the Move.
off cheap, especially considering that, as one boy’s mother
told the Tulsa World, the school had “turned and looked the
other way and protected their reputation and not my son.”
Grace’s new children’s building almost certainly cost far
more than the settlement.
On the Sunday after the settlement, Prochaska and the
anonymous “Special T” said Pastor Bob announced the news to
the congregation. Prochaska remembered punch and cookies
at the end of church services; the anonymous “Special T”
remembered a song with a pointed chorus: “freedom, freedom.”
Thinking back to that Sunday, Prochaska’s colleague reflected,
“Pastor Bob had the whole church rejoicing over them being
free of [the lawsuit]—not praying for the families.” Several
victims’ families confirmed that Pastor Bob never offered
them an apology.
Josh’s lawsuit
Josh and his family didn’t want to sue. (Josh testified in the
John Does 1–7 trial but wasn’t one of the 1–7.) But, with his
statute of limitations about to expire on his 19th birthday, Josh
his own, learning about things like evolution, he marveled at
the realization that Bible class, science class, and history class
had been pretty much interchangeable at Grace. Slowly, he
began to cast off his biblical worldview. The only direct Grace
contact Josh had was with John Dunlavey, who was always
apologetic and kind when they’d run into each other. So Josh
was surprised when Pastor Bob’s lawyers contacted him with
a message: Pastor Bob wanted to discuss a settlement with
him over lunch at Marie Callender’s, a home-style chain
restaurant.
Josh thought Pastor Bob wanted to say he was sorry for
what had happened. He also thought Pastor Bob was taking
him to lunch. But it soon became clear that Josh was paying
his own way, and Pastor Bob was not there to apologize. Josh
ordered a glass of water and watched Pastor Bob eat.
“He quoted scriptures about how I was sinning against God
for coming against his church, his ministry,” Josh remembered.
But Josh came prepared with scripture passages of his own,
about the responsibility of a shepherd to protect his flock. The
message fell on deaf ears. Josh drank his water. Pastor Bob ate
a big meal and ordered dessert.
The School closes
In the year after Aaron’s arrest, Grace saw an exodus of
students who headed for other Christian schools attached to
Tulsa area mega churches, like Victory Christian Center or
Church on the Move. But before long, enrollment stabilized,
more or less. Then the economy went bad. At the end of the
2008–2009 school year, Grace had 300 kids in grades K–12.
The previous year it’d been 400.
In May 2009, Pastor Bob announced he was closing the high
school. Nineteen employees lost their jobs. Everyone hoped it
would be temporary—as soon as the economy got back on
track. But in July 2010, Grace announced it was closing the
elementary school, too. After 32 years in operation, the church
was losing too much money on the school.
Josh’s mother broke the news.
“Good riddance,” he texted back.
The Long Arm of Grace
Jeff and Lynn wanted to send their son Gabe to a good
Christian school. Gabe had always been an easygoing kid. But
somewhere around first or second grade at Grace, he changed.
Lynn would pick him up in the afternoon, and Gabe would beat
on the dashboard, saying he hated school and didn’t want to go
back. He started acting out. Over the years, just about every
counselor or doctor who looked at Gabe would tell his parents
he had all the hallmarks of sexual abuse in his past. Jeff and
Lynn guessed Gabe was in denial. Of course, they didn’t realize
Gabe was one of the boys who were late to Laura Prochaska’s
computers class.
“My son just got out of jail again,” Jeff begins to tell me over the
phone, his voice weary. “He got home and lasted two days before
he was back on drugs.” Jeff and Lynn are the kind of people who
strive to keep their driving records spotless.
Once, Gabe threatened to slit his parents’ throats.
“That night I found a box blade under his mattress,” Jeff
remembers. “At that point in life it didn’t surprise me. We had
been down the path with him so much. We were living with 30
or 40 holes in our walls from him kicking them in.” To say Gabe
was angry was an understatement.
One year shortly before Christmas, Jeff and Lynn were on yet
another psych ward with Gabe. Something snapped, and Gabe
threw a chair at a plate glass window, aiming for his mother. On
Christmas Day, calling from another in-patient facility, Gabe
finally broke down and admitted it.
“Mom,” he said, “something did happen at Grace.”
The stipulations of the settlement don’t allow Jeff to name
dollar figures, but he says it doesn’t even begin to cover the cost
of rehabs and detoxes and psych wards and halfway houses. A
weekend on a psychiatric unit costs $12,000. Jeff and Lynn have
paid Gabe’s medical bills instead of putting away money for their
retirement. Besides Gabe, several of Aaron’s other victims have
required in-patient treatment of one kind or another.
A lifetime ago, Jeff and Lynn had an account in Grace’s
Covenant Federal Credit Union. That was just the culture.
“You’re one for all and all for one, and you’re trying to help each
other,” Jeff explains. “Why not keep it in the family?”
At some point in the phone call, Lynn comes home. She tells
Jeff she brought some groceries over to Gabe that day. Gabe’s
doing well, for now at least, which is all they can hope for.
During those times when she’s scared of their son, or if Gabe’s
lashing out and calling her names, or if he’s in one of his explosive
rages, Jeff tells Lynn not answer the phone: he’ll deal with Gabe.
But, Jeff explains, she always caves in, wanting to help. His voice
becomes soft. I get the feeling Lynn is standing nearby—that Jeff
is talking to her now. “She’s so tender, and so loving.”
In November, Jeff and Lynn renewed their wedding vows and
went on a second honeymoon to Hawaii. They love their son,
they will be there for him, but now the next chapter of their lives
is beginning. “He’s part of life, but he’s not all of life,” Jeff says,
determined to make this a reality.
Gabe met his girlfriend in rehab. Last year, Jeff and Lynn
helped the couple get set up in an apartment, assembled donated
furniture from friends, and paid for the first three months rent.
Two weeks after moving in, Gabe was in police custody again:
19
wanted, especially for himself—for “letting it happen to me,” as
Josh puts it.
“For a long time I had the mentality of ‘I am a child abuse
victim,’ ” Josh says. “Now I have other things. It’s not something
that defines me like it once did.”
At 27, Josh is ready to leave Tulsa. He has always felt years
behind everyone else his age. But he’s catching up. He was just
accepted to a prestigious art school. He’ll enroll in the fall.
Meanwhile, Josh works a dayjob and makes art. That’s what got
him through his teens and into his twenties, and that’s what will
take him to whatever comes next.
Dick Thompson, Aaron’s father, and I emailed back and
forth for some time. I wanted to visit Aaron at the Joseph Harp
Correctional Center, where he is said to have a thriving prison
ministry. The Thompsons were deciding as a family whether
they wanted to risk “going public” with their experiences.
Christmas 2011 turned into the New Year. There was a much
apologized for lull while the Thompsons remodeled their
house. Then, I got this email:
Aaron took a situation that could have destroyed
him, but with God’s help has received healing,
rehabilitated himself, and moved on accepting
responsibility and consequences for what he did.
Our prayer is that all of the alleged victims have
also received healing and moved on with their lives.
However, we know that may not be true for all of
them. Those who are stuck in the past and resisted
God’s healing and forgiveness will continue to blame
Aaron and others for whatever failures they have in
their lives. Being fondled or molested as a child, is
a very bad thing, but many, many people who have
gone through that have grown up to be very successful
individuals and even role models for others, so it is not
an experience that cannot be overcome. As with all
things that happen in our lives, it’s not what happens
to us but how we respond that makes or breaks us and/
or reveals our true character.
It turned out that Josh did not resent Dick Thompson’s
characterization of the long-term effects of abuse as personal
failings on the part of the victims.
“Parents always want to see the best in their children,” he
replied. He was calm. I was baffled.
“You’re not angry?” I asked.
“I guess I’m just all out of anger,” he said. Pastor Bob’s Practical Wisdom
a domestic assault against his girlfriend. They’re still together.
In March, she gave birth to their son. Then, Gabe returned to
jail, serving his sentence for last year’s assault charge; mother and
child just checked into court-ordered rehab and can’t see visitors
for a month. “Kinda takes the fun out of being a grandparent,”
Jeff wrote in an email shortly before this story went to press.
Julie Sweeney and her husband were not fated to have a
second honeymoon. Who is to say what ends a marriage, but
the life Julie and her husband had together for 14 years could
only withstand so much. The pressures of the aftermath of
Zach’s molestation were not among the things they could
bear—together, at least. Trusting one’s own had been a
basic fact of everyday life. Suddenly, everything they took
for granted in this world was upended. Abuse is experienced
by entire families, and it goes on long after the physical part
is over. In the wake of Aaron’s arrest, for the parents of the
victims, at least two other marriages broke up.
It took Julie nearly a decade to be among Christians again, to
conceive of church as a place where healing might be found. “I
lost faith in people,” Julie says. “I didn’t lose faith in God.”
If Gabe is one end of the sexual abuse spectrum, Josh is at the
other. Of the two paths, child abuse experts say Gabe’s is probably
more common. The deck is stacked against abuse victims.
In his teens, Josh was angry: at Grace, Christianity, his parents,
everything and everyone—but especially at Aaron and Pastor
Bob. “I used to dream of beating Aaron and Bob with baseball
bats,” Josh remembers.
After settling his lawsuit, around the time he turned 20,
a realization set in. All that bitterness wasn’t making him
the person he wanted to be. So he hit the road, crisscrossing
the country, ending up at the 2006 Austin City Limits music
festival. It was there that he got a tattoo across the underside
of his left forearm: Hebrew letters that spell out “mechilah”—
forgiveness. Forgiveness was what Josh wanted: not the
Christian concept of forgiveness, but more a state of mind—of
being at peace with the past.
Forgiveness was a goal, not an immediate reality. Josh
returned to Tulsa and made a second suicide attempt. He
swallowed two bottles of Tylenol PM and woke up in a
hospital bed. “All my family and friends were huddled around
me,” Josh says. “I was so embarrassed and disappointed that I
was still there.” He spent the next few weeks on the psychiatric
ward, wishing he’d been successful.
By the time he got the tattoo, life had settled down enough
for him to mourn just how much of it he’d missed. 1996 to 2006
was Josh’s lost decade. He was a little kid, and then, suddenly,
he was an adult. Growing up, growing into one’s own as a sexual
being—Josh had been denied these things. “I couldn’t imagine a
future without something terrible happening to me.”
In the years that followed, Josh worked at letting go. There
on his arm, he bore mechilah, a daily reminder. That’s what he
Photos of Corvettes are displayed on the bookshelf in Pastor
Bob’s office. One day shortly before Thanksgiving, Pastor Bob
welcomed me into his domain. He held forth behind his big
wooden desk, wearing jeans and a gray wool pullover that clung
to his belly.
“We trusted this kid,” Pastor Bob told me. “I’m not
omniscient—I’m not like God,” he noted. “The church is
just people.”
Up close, Pastor Bob’s skin had a purplish putty quality. His
bulbous pug nose was a few shades darker than the rest of his
face. Pastor Bob continued, “You never quit trusting people. You
just get wiser through the years.”
Soon, our conversation turned to Penn State, which had
recently been cast into the national spotlight over what appeared
to be a child sex abuse cover-up. Pastor Bob hoped there were
Believers on staff there to guide the university through the dark
times to come. He identified with the school’s predicament,
he said, for he too had once been accused of turning a blind
eye at Grace. He remembered the parents of the victims were
particularly accusatory. “When we found out, we fired [Aaron]
and called the police,” Pastor Bob said. “But it’s never early
enough with them.”
Every day during the seven-week John Does 1–7 versus Grace
trial, Pastor Bob’s wife, Loretta, made him a list of scripture to
read. He drew spiritual strength from the Psalms on deliverance
and protection, especially Psalm 91. “He’ll protect you from
arrow by day, the terror by night, the snare of the fowler,” Pastor
Bob recited, his own condensed version. When the jury came
back with the verdict, Pastor Bob marveled at the low amount
Grace had to pay the victims.
Before long, Grace got back to business as usual, as Pastor
Bob always knew they would. He leaned forward slightly and
bridged his hands. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
but the lord brings you through all of them,” Pastor Bob said.
“So we came through.”
Today, Pastor Bob estimated 50 or 60 percent of the
congregation was unaware of what took place at Grace a
decade ago. “The Lord moves on. He promises you that,”
Pastor Bob reflected, smiling broadly now. “The ability to
forgive and forget is—” Here he paused. “Divine.”
My time with Pastor Bob was up. On the way out, his secretary,
Gwen Olin—Associate Pastor Chip Olin’s widow—wished me
a blessed day.
Back when the lawsuits were underway, Principal DeeAnn
McKay was working toward her doctorate in Christian
educational administration at Oral Roberts University.
Associate Pastor Chip Olin died of cancer in 2007. Now
retired, former Principal Mary Ellen Hood lives in Jenks.
Since 2007, former head administrator John Dunlavey has
been the principal of a private Christian school in South Korea.
Dunlavey declined interview requests, saying he wanted others
to learn from Grace’s ordeal but was worried his words would
be “taken out of context.”
Mike Goolsbay, Grace’s former youth pastor, has his own
congregation now, Destiny, a massive stadium of a church with
the motto “Loving People.” By car, Destiny is about three miles
northeast of Grace, a stone’s throw as distances go in Broken
Arrow. Goolsbay still refers to Pastor Bob as “my pastor.”
For financial guidance, Destiny’s website recommends John
Ransdell, the one who was tasked with maneuvering Grace’s
assets into the dummy corporation. Like Grace, Destiny is
represented by Winters & King, Inc.
I asked Mike King how he’d hypothetically advise Destiny Church
if they were to receive an anonymous letter exactly like the first one
Josh’s parents sent to Grace. King gave a little chuckle, answering,
“Well, it would depend upon the facts and circumstances.”
If anything, the lesson of Grace should be that it never depends.
Just before Thanksgiving, I went to Destiny’s Saturday night
church service. On stage, Goolsbay sat comfortably on a stool,
against a backdrop of neon blue paneling and jumbotrons.
A far cry from Pastor Bob’s formal pulpit manner, Goolsbay
ran his service like a call-in radio show, his speech peppered
with “dude” and “sweet” and the occasional “ridonkulous.” He
videochatted a housebound congregant set to soft keyboard
music; played for laughs with a call to his wife to see if she’d
found his lost wallet; and gave a sermon in what he calls his
“Perils of Power” series. The message: Accountability begins
at home, top-down, from parents to children. King David
must hold his son Ammon accountable for raping his daughter
Tamar. Leaders went unmentioned.
Former parishioners say Grace’s heyday was over three
decades ago, at the old church building out on Memorial
Drive, a few miles west of the citadel on Garnett Road,
in the building that was later sold to Higher Dimensions
church (where its pastor, Carlton Pearson, stopped
believing in hell and all hell broke loose). It was standingroom only back then, with people crammed on a balcony
that was really just a half story. That was the heyday of
the Word movement, too, when a mega pastor could take
to the pulpit and bring the house down and that’s all
anybody expected from him.
“Now people want somebody a little more personable,”
explains a former Grace member who’d been deeply rooted
in the church for decades. Others were less charitable
in their assessments of Pastor Bob: “no emotion” and
“nothing behind the eyes.” Tulsa, of course, is a city with
ever-multiplying options.
On Sundays, Grace’s parking lot is typically half
full, if that. The church still offers a kids program,
but attendance has dwindled. Peek into the children’s
building on a Sunday, and you’ll find more building than
children. Grace’s membership appears to skew older, now,
toward the retiree set. In the sanctuary/former gym, the
big, padded seats are spread further apart, masking the
emptiness. Basketball hoops are folded against the ceiling.
The gym f loor is still emblazoned with a maroon and gray
decal of a basketball with the lettering “Grace Christian
Eagles,” a relic from another time.
Recently, Grace board members gave Pastor Bob a list
of thirty things he could do to be more “people friendly.”
“Why aren’t things like they used to be?” he asked them.
He was genuinely puzzled.
The Sunday before Rick Santorum won the Oklahoma
primary on Super Tuesday, the former Pennsylvania
Senator made a single campaign stop in Tulsa. Santorum
spoke from the pulpit of Grace’s gym/sanctuary, where he
denounced liberals for thinking “the elite should decide
what’s best for those in f lyover country.” The crowd
cheered and waved their Santorum placards, the word
“COURAGE” projected upon the jumbotrons that f lank
the stage. It was a packed house.
Back in the day, Pastor Bob would say he’d preach
’til he died. But those close to the church board say he’s
announced he wants to step down soon. His son, Pastor
Robb Yandian, will ascend the pulpit. Aaron has 15 more
years to serve on his sentence. The boys are now men.
Grace never built the auditorium they’d planned, the
one that would have connected the children’s building
with the main wing. They constructed what was to be the
connecting wall of the children’s building out of material
that wasn’t weatherproof, leaving it vulnerable to the
elements. There are leakage problems now. There is also
talk of perhaps selling the land in front of Garnett Road
just to make ends meet. Then again, maybe things aren’t
so bad: Grace had a budget of nearly $5 million last year
and ended 2011 in the black.
Heading toward the Mingo Valley Expressway on the
way out of Broken Arrow, you can see, rising from the
hillside, something that looks like a brand new airport
hotel. It’s stamped with rainbow-colored lettering large
enough for passing cars along East 91st Street to read
from across an immense grassy field: “Grace Kids.”
Inside, a gilded carousel awaits.
Editor’s note
21
Tulsa's north side was the center of the nation’s attention on April
6, 2012. A series of shootings occurred there, and they appeared
to be racially motivated. In the aftermath of the shootings, the
city’s racial climate became an ongoing topic of public and private
conversation. In the shadow of these terrible events, contributing
editor Joshua Kline approached us with a sordid story: a captain
in the Tulsa Police Department [TPD] was allegedly engaged in
a number of extreme sexual activities, and some of these activities
occurred in the workplace and others may have involved a minor.
On its surface, the story wouldn’t typically warrant
our attention—but because the captain in question also
happened to be in charge of protecting Tulsa’s north side,
we believed our readers would be concerned. So over the past
two weeks, This Land ’s online publication (thislandpress.
com) has covered the story. We reprint most of Mr. Kline’s
reporting in this edition to give our print readers access
to this important story, and include an editorial from our
publisher, Vincent LoVoi.
CONDUCT
The TPD acted swiftly and courageously when it was called upon
to capture the Good Friday killers, so Tulsans know just how good
our force can be. But when the matter of Captain King presented
itself to the public, new questions surfaced in the minds of our
community: Why has the TPD been so passive in investigating King
when the allegations are so serious? Why has the TPD been plagued
by so many scandals recently? And, perhaps most importantly, given
the grave responsibility of protecting one of our most crime-riddled
areas of town, is this the best we can do? —Michael Mason
Originally published online April 26, 2012
UNBECOMING
Tulsa Police Captain, Officer
Ensnared in Sex Scandal
AN INVESTIGATIVE REPORT
by Joshua Kline
F
ollowing the recent Good Friday shootings,
America now knows that Tulsa’s north side
is riddled with crime and violence. Now, the
police captain charged with keeping the area
safe is at the subject of a major sexual scandal.
Tulsa Police Department Captain Shawn King is a first-shift
captain in north Tulsa’s Gilcrease Division. He appears to have
engaged in lewd and deviant sexual behavior while on duty, and is
suspected of sexually related crimes.
Hundreds of explicit photographs and videos obtained by
This Land Press depict a man identified as King by his former
partner, Keena Roberts. It depicts an officer engaging in various
acts of extreme sexual behavior, at times while in uniform both
on- and off-duty.
The materials found on King’s laptop include videos of King
masturbating and then ejaculating onto his TPD-issued work shirt
and photographs of a uniformed King masturbating in his work
office. He then sent the videos to a subordinate Tulsa Police officer
with whom he was having a sexual relationship.
Earlier this month, King, 42, was disciplined by TPD Internal
Affairs for “engaging in inappropriate behavior while on duty,”
according to a Personnel Order dated April 3, 2012, and signed
by TPD Chief Chuck Jordan. The disciplinary action constituted a
five-day suspension without pay for King.
Keena Roberts, 39, who made the complaint that instigated the
investigation, is dissatisfied with the outcome and believes King
should be fired.
“I’m totally outraged on how this was handled,” Roberts said. “I
feel like I’ve been thrown to the wolves.”
In 2009, Roberts, a Skiatook real estate agent, met King through
Match.com. The two quickly began a romantic relationship and
King soon moved into Roberts’ home. Because of their opposing
work schedules, they slept in separate bedrooms.
Then, one evening last November while King was at work, Roberts
heard a text alert on King’s iPad. Roberts soon discovered a series
of sexually explicit text message exchanges between King and Tulsa
Police Officer Christy Kellerhals, a subordinate who works out of
east Tulsa’s Mingo Valley Division.
This led Roberts to search her home for more clues and signs
of impropriety. What she found was far more than she bargained
for: a laptop, locked in the closet of King’s personal bathroom.
Roberts opened it and discovered thousands of pornographic
images and videos involving King and Kellerhals, as well as
hundreds of images, likely pulled from the Internet, of young
girls who, to Roberts, are made to appear to be under the age
of 18 and engaged in a variety of lewd and degrading acts with
significantly older men.
Roberts, a mother of four, was horrified.
“Many of the girls in the pictures looked as young as my own
children,” Roberts said. “I have a 12 year-old daughter, I know what
they look like.”
That November, Roberts immediately confronted King about the
material and ended the relationship, encouraging King to seek help.
Eventually, Roberts learned that King had moved in with another
family—family with minor children. In February, out of concern
for the situation, Roberts submitted the laptop to TPD Internal
Affairs and filed a complaint. While making the complaint Roberts
admitted to IA personnel that she herself had engaged several times
in sexual activity with King while he was on duty.
“It was oral sex in his [patrol] car,” Roberts told This Land. “It was
early on in the relationship.”
Once the complaint was filed, King panicked. On February 24,
he sent Roberts a text message that read: “Please stop all of this.
You understand that you are going to destroy my career, get me
fired and I will lose my pension right? Please if you ever loved me
at all stop all of this.”
Days later, she received the computer back from IA.
“They said that there was a legal issue on opening it,” Roberts
said. According to her, Internal Affairs simply returned the laptop
unexamined and without additional explanation.
Roberts then contacted a therapist who specializes in child-abuse
cases, who advised Roberts to contact the FBI immediately.
“I called the FBI, and informed them of the laptop and its
contents. Somehow, they were already aware of it. I gave it to them
and didn’t hear back for several weeks.” The FBI eventually gave
Conduct Unbecoming, Part Two
Y
esterday, This Land Press revealed that Tulsa
Police Captain Shawn King had engaged in
sexual behavior while on duty. Videos and
photographs obtained by This Land Press showed a man
alleged to be King engaged in a wide array of extreme
sexual behavior. The content included documentation of
King’s personal sexual exploits, at times while on duty
and in uniform.
King’s ex-fiancee, Keena Roberts, found the material and
attempted to report it to Internal Affairs and the FBI, with little
results save for a 40 hour suspension without pay for King for an
on-duty sexual dalliance with Roberts.
Originally published online April 27, 2012
Now, after a private investigation and extended counseling
sessions with a forensic therapist, one of Roberts’ children has stated
that King repeatedly molested them over a period of two years. The
child was under the age of consent at the time of the molestations.
Earlier this afternoon, Roberts filed a petition for a protective
order against King in Osage County through her attorney, Keith
Bergman. Judge Gambill granted an emergency protective order on
behalf of Roberts and her minor children until a full hearing can be
conducted. The date of that hearing is May 22.
This Land Press obtained copies of both the petition and
the emergency protective order, which contain detailed
descriptions of King’s alleged crimes. He’s accused of groping,
kissing, and forcibly using his f ingers to rape one of Roberts’
children, a minor. According to the petition, these were not
isolated incidents, but repeated violations that occurred over
a period of years.
Joshua Kline is a contributing editor for This Land Press. He recently won awards from both the Society
of Professional Journalists and the Great Plains Journalism Awards for his June 2011 article “Misconduct
City,” which exposed Tulsa’s police department as one of the nation’s leaders in police misconduct.
the laptop back to Roberts, claiming it was impossible to verify the
ages of the “children” in the pictures.
Roberts later received a separate letter from Chief Jordan advising
her that her claims had been substantiated and that “corrective
action has been instituted.”
In the April 3 Personnel Order from Chief Jordan to Shawn King,
Jordan informed King that he would be suspended without pay for
40 hours for violating Rules and Regulation #8, which addresses
Conduct Unbecoming of an Officer. On April 6, a northside
shooting spree in Tulsa caught the attention of the nation. Shooters
Alvin Watts and Jake England were apprehended April 8, the same
day that King’s suspension became effective.
“In 2009, during first shift hours, you engaged in sexual activity
while on-duty, in your patrol unit, in an area near the Tulsa Zoo
(5200 E. 36 St. N.),” the Order read.
The incident for which King was disciplined turned out to be
the same on-duty dalliance involving Roberts that she’d previously
admitted to Internal Affairs. There was no reprimand for any of the
other lewd conduct while in uniform.
“I just feel like it’s a slap in the face, to ignore my concerns as a
mother and a citizen,” she said. “Then they give him a slap on the
wrist for something that involved me while completely ignoring the
contents of that laptop.”
Roberts is worried about how much time King spent with her children
over the last several years. She said that King had been close with the
children and would often take them shopping and buy them gifts.
“I don’t wanna be seen as an unaware or unfit mother,” Roberts
said. “But TPD had always led me to believe that Shawn King was
on the up and up. He was a police officer, for God’s sake. They’d put
him on TV as a department spokesperson!”
TPD Media Relations Officer Leland Ashley declined to comment
for this story, except to say, “If there are additional allegations, they
will be investigated. Any time there are any allegations brought
forth by a citizen to the police department it is investigated.”
When asked who determines the type and severity of disciplinary
action, Ashley said, “Recommendations may be made through the
chain of command, but ultimately that’s the Chief ’s decision.”
Roberts has since hired both a private investigator and a forensic
therapist to help determine the extent of King’s sexual habits.
The petition also states that King repeatedly threatened the
minor with violence. “He has threatened harm over and over. He
has told all the kids that I would be dead or [the child victim]
would be dead…”
Later in the petition it states, “We are scared of what will happen.”
The punishment for King breaking the court order is a fine of up
to $1,000 or imprisonment for up to one year in the county jail, or
“by both such fine and imprisonment.”
Finally, the order states “Possession of a firearm or ammunition by a
defendant while an order is in effect may subject the defendant to prosecution
for a violation of federal law even if the order does not specifically prohibit
the defendant from possession of a firearm or ammunition.
Roberts, along with family members and her attorney, are
meeting with the Osage County Sheriff to discuss the opening of
a criminal investigation.
King is expected to be served the emergency protective order today.
See next page for our publisher's response
The Best
Published online May 1, 2012
We Can Do
DONE THAT:
Breakfast of Champion
The force behind Big Truck Tacos gets out the griddle
by Vincent LoVoi
L
ast Friday, Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan issued a
statement addressing This Land Press and its coverage
of the unfolding scandal involving sexual misconduct
by a senior Tulsa police officer.
We respect Chief Jordan’s efforts to clarify matters. The story is sad and
insulting to him and the other professional men and women of the Tulsa
Police Department who protect us daily at constant personal risk. Their
uniform should be a symbol of pride to every citizen of this community.
But this story involves, among other things, the debasement of that
uniform by two officers engaging in various sexual activities. That is one
reason why this story is so important.
Here’s the background: Keena Roberts, with whom Capt. Shawn King
cohabitated, approached the TPD Internal Affairs team with alleged
evidence of inappropriate sexual conduct by Capt. King both on and off
duty. She claimed they were photos of King and a female officer on a
laptop. TPD declined to investigate that evidence and returned the laptop
to her, unopened. The materials were presented to This Land Press and we
reported it online last Thursday.
The statement released by Chief Jordan explains the TPD basis
for deciding not to investigate. It reports that the sexually explicit
photographs in question “were stored on a privately owned computer
and were password protected.” It also explains that when that laptop
was presented the City Legal Department advised that TPD was
“unable to legally access that information.”
The legal theory is not spelled out but it appears that ownership and the
password were the key barriers. We assume there is more to the decision
than the statement tells us, but it is all we know at this point.
This all seems very weak: It’s 2012. We can’t imagine that TPD
simply walks away from otherwise legally obtainable, potential evidence
just because a password is in the way, especially when it is brought to
investigators. According to Ms. Roberts, when she handed the evidence
to Internal Affairs, she wrote the password on a Post-It note and stuck it
to the laptop. The password was still there when the laptop was returned.
The ownership question seems to be a possible reason to delay an
investigation of evidence, but not to decline it. Ms. Roberts believed she
owned the laptop, viewing it as a family computer. If the lawyers had
questions about ownership, why didn’t they try to answer them? Why
just stop? Moreover, if they had such questions, why would they return
property to Ms. Roberts that might not belong to her?
The obvious question here is the level of zeal with which the lawyers
and Internal Affairs pursued the investigation. The internal affairs process
is essential to protecting the integrity and safety of every officer. And our
safety too. It should be aggressive and uncompromising.
TPD has now asked This Land Press for the laptop photos.
Originally, we declined to produce them but after some deliberation
and consultation with counsel, we will pass them onto the police. If
they were stolen, then they should be given to authorities; if the photos
contain evidence of wrongdoing, the police should also have them.
We don’t know exactly what Roberts told Internal Affairs when she
handed over the laptop and that conversation, of course, should remain
between those parties. Attorneys R. Thomas Seymour and Scott
Graham are now representing Roberts and will speak for her publicly,
hopefully clarifying some of these details.
The other reason this story is important is coincidental but heartbreaking.
Capt. King was disciplined, even without the evidence on the laptop, for
engaging in sexual acts with Ms. Roberts in the parking lot of Mohawk
Park while on duty. Punishment for that conduct was ultimately handed
down against the backdrop of the Good Friday shootings. Capt. King had
an important leadership role in north Tulsa as a first-shift captain over the
Gilcrease Division where the shootings occurred. On April 3rd, Chief
Jordan wrote Capt. King a letter notifying him of his suspension, which
would begin on April 8th. Between those two dates, on April 6th, the
shootings occurred.
Tulsa is a city with a long history of difficult racial relations. The men and
women responsible for law enforcement play an essential role in moving
our community forward. At a time when we needed a leader the most,
Capt. King was facing suspension for conduct unbecoming an officer.
Adding to the urgency of the matter, a court in Osage County Friday
issued an emergency protective order against Capt. King. Sadly, it includes
allegations of sexual acts by Capt. King involving a minor.
Again, This Land Press has the deepest respect for the many members
of the Tulsa Police Department who keep Tulsans safe. They acted with
tremendous bravery and skill in apprehending the suspects in the Good
Friday shootings so quickly. That is why we care so much about this story.
We know the TPD cares about it too and were heartened by the request
for the photos. We look forward to further action.
We all want the best for Tulsa and the men and women who keep our
city safe every day. We owe it to them.
W
By Natasha Ball
affle Champion surfaced on the
Oklahoma City corner of the
Facebook universe last summer,
posting a series of photos of waffle irons
that looked like they’d survived Napoleon’s
last stand. A post the following day from
co-operator Tara Taylor—“Look for us in
August!”—sent an outpouring of Oklahoma
Citians to the page. Someone wrote, “I Effing
love waffles!!!” to which Taylor responded,
“Word man!”
Oklahoma City is not the Food Truck Capitol of
the U.S. That’s Austin, where visitors have been heard
walking past their enclaves pointing and saying, “See,
this is why we’re not cool.” Last fall a f leet of regulators
from the health department, the ABLE Commission
One
Rachel said “It’s worth writing home for.”
Tara and Rachel materialize for a few days each
week at 23rd and Walker, in the vacant lot across from
Tower Theater. Behind their seats, packed tightly in
the back of the truck, are fixings for sammies both
sweet and savory. The ingredients lists read like
kitchen experiments scrawled on notebook paper by a
couple of kids, the ones who stumbled into Mom and
Dad’s fine-foods stash in the back of the fridge on
a long afternoon during summer break. One of their
early concoctions was the “Gary Busey,” a ham-andcheese waff le packed with bacon, fried eggs, country
gravy, and slaw; another, “The Beard,” combines
melted chocolate, fried plantains, peanutella mousse,
whipped cream, and pink salt.
Tara was that kid with the lemonade stand, a life
behind a desk looming like a date with the executioner.
Early on, she made it a point to befriend some chefs.
After circling each other for a couple of years in
the OKC food scene, Tara and Rachel realized they
"Gary Busey,"
a ham-and - cheese waffle packed with bacon, fried eggs,
country gravy, and slaw.
of their early concoctions was the
and the City of OKC descended on the first late-night
rally of food trucks there, reports said, armed with
clipboards and guns. A hoard had convened to witness
the giant leap for coolkind, and they furiously tapped
the blitzkrieg into their touch screens.
“I don’t know why they have such a hard-on for
messing with trucks,” Taylor said. “I get two different
answers … anytime I have a question. It’s a new thing
here. It just takes time to establish the relationship
with the city.” There was an outcry, and truck
operators were permitted to re-launch the event.
Tara and her sole coworker, chef Rachel Smith, spent
three solid months with some friends in her driveway,
retrofitting a 1988 Chevy Step Van. Inside, they
installed a stove, where Tara whisks country gravy and
scrambles Oklahoma brown eggs. They installed four
of the seven-inch Nemco waff le irons she showed off
in the Facebook photos, weighing in at $1,200 each—
worth it, she said, for that perfect waff le that’s a cross
between the sweeter, denser Liège and the deeppocketed Belgian. The formula for the batter includes
bags of Shawnee Mills f lour, local buttermilk, and
sugar, the exact source of which is a chef ’s secret.
What emerges from the window—handed down in
Tara’s freckled hands as a parcel wrapped in paper and
foil—isn’t just a waff le sandwich. “It’s an adventure,”
Vincent LoVoi is the publisher of This Land Press.
'
aspired to the same: To make good food, and make
people happy. A Waff le Champion is independent,
Tara said. “It’s whatever people feel like that makes
them a champion, makes us,” said Rachel.
A Waff le Champion is intrepid. Edmondite Aaron
Franklin drives to 23rd and Walker every week for his
Dub Champ fix. One Saturday afternoon he crashed
a lacrosse match at Cheyenne Middle School on a tip
from the Waff le Champion feed on Twitter, the truck ’s
homing beacon. He ordered the “Kenickie” from the
Grease-inspired menu, heaping with bourbon-maple
chicken and pepperoni, slapped together with red
sauce, ricotta, and basil mozzarella, and paired with
the name of the T-bird of equal amounts sweet and
spice. “I think they’re holding it down,” he said.
“They’re just really good Oklahomans.”
A Waff le Champion is free, and the road is its muse.
Tara and Rachel never sleep in, rising before 5 a.m. to
build batter. They depend on their truck, which slips
from F to E at a rate of 10 miles per gallon. Sometimes,
they don’t decide in which direction to point it until
after the sun first kisses the steering wheel. They test
the cake between the irons—it’s imperturbable, ready
for anything.
“It’s like the Swiss knife of all foods, you know?”
Rachel said. “You can do anything on a waff le.”
REDEMPTION DENIED
23
The Ballad of Jorge Aguilar
J
orge “George” Aguilar doesn’t
seem different than I remembered from a year ago. His tan
face is fuzzy on my computer
screen as we Skype 2,200 miles
apart. It’s at night and he’s sitting
in his mother’s pitch-black backyard in El Salvador with a white
hoodie partially covering his face.
He’s in an upbeat mood and tries
to keep the conversation light, asking, “How have you been?”
When I respond by asking how he’s been, he tells me he’s
unemployed. The job market in San Salvador is poor and he is
still dealing with culture shock while adjusting to a country he
hadn’t been in since he was 10. He’s also still adjusting to the
shock that he had to go back. He tries to stay upbeat about his
life. The reality is, it’s not that great.
He was supposed to call after his February 2011 court
hearing in Tulsa, an appearance he thought would result in
his finally becoming a free man again. I had been interviewing
him for a profile highlighting his redemption story, his life as a
changed man. I never got the call.
He was imprisoned at the hearing, a sentence stemming
from his conviction for an aggravated felony. Finally, after
spending almost nine months in prison, he was deported to El
Salvador on December 10.
Aguilar, 28, had reformed and was forgiven by the victims
of his crime. Nevertheless, he was one of the record 396,906
people deported in 2011 by Immigrations and Customs
Enforcement (ICE). One of the oft-overlooked aspects of the
immigration debate is what happens to legal immigrants who
commit a felony. Many of those stories, like Aguilar’s, end in
deportation. Multiple appeals couldn’t keep him here.
Some redemption stories do not work out.
In November 2004, Jorge Aguilar and two other men drove
around the back of a dimly lit church in their gray 1994 Dodge
Caravan. They had crowbars, but one of them picked up a rock
and hurled it through a window. Some churches had alarm
systems. They ran from those. This church didn’t. They were in.
They looked for laptops, desktop computers, guitars, amps,
and any money they could find. It was first-come, first-serve.
They argued over who got what, claiming items for themselves
as they dashed through the church. The arguments would
nearly turn violent, but the burglars eventually made a pile of
items to steal, pulled the van around and loaded the loot.
The threesome caused about $25,000 in damages to the
building and trashed what they didn’t take. The prize theft
would have been the new 12-by-20-foot projector screens in
the auditorium, but the men couldn’t detach them from their
overhead cases. They were able to steal cameras and a computer
modem, among other items.
It was the 11th and final church Aguilar and his coconspirators robbed during a four-month span in 2004.
They broke into churches in Tulsa, Broken Arrow, and
Owasso, stealing and damaging approximately $250,000
of church property.
In 2011, Aguilar attended the same 10:45 a.m. service each
week at a large Baptist church. The same church he robbed that
November night in 2004.
“George broke in and found Jesus,” jokes Rev. Nick Garland,
pastor of First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow.
Maybe that was God’s plan, but it sure wasn’t Aguilar’s. He
entered the U.S. as a legal immigrant to live in California with
his alcoholic father at age 10, but was living with a friend, Kary
Vincent, when he dropped out of high school in Oklahoma.
The guys were close and Vincent’s family gave him his own
bedroom in their home.
One night, he went into Vincent’s room and found items
he knew didn’t belong to his friend, including a laptop that
caught his eye. He was mesmerized. “What’s going on,” he
asked. “Where did you get these things from?”
“We stole it from the church right down the street,” Vincent
explained. “You aren’t going to tell anybody are you?” Aguilar
assured Vincent he wouldn’t. He went back to bed thinking
about having laptops. He couldn’t sleep. He got back out of bed
and went to Vincent’s room. Aguilar wanted in.
He would later steal the laptop from Vincent.
Months later, after robbing the 11 churches, Aguilar,
Vincent, and others were arrested.
Aguilar was released from jail in 2004 after filing a written
report and receiving a court date. He decided to try and garner
sympathy by writing an apology letter to the churches he
robbed. In the letter, he explained he was stealing because his
mother in El Salvador was poor and he was sending her money.
In reality, he hadn’t sent her anything.
“I know that there is no way that you could forgive me for all
of the sin I have done to the church,” Aguilar had written. “I
don’t think God could forgive me for what I have done. In fact,
I know that God would not forgive me.”
For a while, it looked like Aguilar might be right. Ten of
the pastors didn’t respond to the letter. Rev. Garland was the
only one to reply, setting up a one-on-one talk that resulted in
Aguilar accepting Christ. That was genuine. It made sense. He
needed direction.
Shortly after, Garland presented Aguilar to the church.
“George, you came into my office weeping and crying, asking
for forgiveness,” Garland said. “God has already forgiven you. I
will show you today, the people will forgive you, too.” He asked
the congregation to come tell Aguilar if they forgave him.
“Half the church stood up,” Aguilar recalled.
Church members poured into the aisles, rushing to meet
Aguilar, telling him they forgave him. They surrounded
him, hugged him and held his hand. He was crying.
They were crying. He looked up to the pulpit. Garland
stood there, arms crossed, looking at the scene with tears
streaming down his cheeks.
The church adopted Aguilar. Members wrote letters to the
judge on his behalf. Following the emotional service, he met
a family, the Poffens, who took him in. He worked for Roger
Poffen’s flooring business and stayed in the family’s house. He
became close with Amy, Roger’s wife. He bonded with the
family’s two children, Paige and Tristan.
He finally had a family.
First Baptist of Broken Arrow was one of five churches that
dropped charges against Aguilar. Six did not. He faced five
years in prison for the six felonies for second-degree burglary.
He cooperated with law enforcement and helped get back as
many of the stolen items as possible. He and his friends had
kept some, but sold others. He was sentenced to eight months
in prison and five years of probation.
Aguilar lived with the Poffens for the next two years, working
for Roger’s flooring company. He got to travel on frequent
family vacations, a luxury he had never before experienced.
Christmases were bigger and better than they had ever been.
He was still irresponsible, though. He acted like a kid. He
and Tristan were buds. They played video games together,
watched cartoons. Aguilar would blow his paychecks on
clothes and video games instead of saving money to move out.
Eventually, he started growing up. He moved out of the
Poffens’ house to live with his brother. He went on mission trips
and served as a church youth camp counselor. He fit in well in
both settings. His campers loved him. He began reading the
Bible often, genuinely curious and wanting to learn. He even
listened sermons on CD while driving the flooring company’s
truck in late 2008. Aguilar, at the age of 24, was growing
up. He met his future fiancée, Kara Culp, while volunteering
doing volunteer work.
Everyone knows that near-death feeling that comes when
you lose your balance while leaning the back two legs of a
four-legged chair. One moment you’re fine. The next you’re off
balance and realize you shouldn’t have been leaning back in
the first place.
Aguilar fell in late 2008.
It happened while he was driving home from work. He
remembered the letter full of lies he wrote to the churches.
He hadn’t thought about it since writing it. At the time it was
written, he hadn’t met Garland. Hadn’t met redemption. Once
he accepted Christ, he was caught in a whirlwind of change.
New friends. New family. New job. New way of thinking.
The independence he achieved by moving out of the Poffens’
house, the growth he felt when listening to audio sermons in
the car, the relationships he’d formed because of his faith—in
his eyes, they were part of the lie.
He couldn’t shake the guilt. He was viewed as a celebrity at
church. Members regularly approached him to tell him they
were proud of him for his life change. “You have no idea,” he
would think. It was all tainted.
Finally he broke down and told Amy Poffen. She forgave
him, but chastened him. “Brother Nick gives you the money
and then you go buy TVs and stuff? You need to pay him back
for that. You didn’t do anything but steal that money.”
So he told Garland and Culp. They forgave him. In time, he
forgave himself. He felt whole.
Aguilar met Culp while volunteering at Welcomers
International in Tulsa, where she served as director for of the
outreach program for international students and immigrants.
He helped teach English classes and assisted with Thanksgiving
and Christmas parties, while leading a weekly Bible study.
Whenever Aguilar passed a homeless person on the side of
the road while driving home from work, he would continue to
his house, make sandwiches and chips, then take them back,
providing a meal and conversation for a stranger.
“That’s just the kind of guy he is,” Culp said.
For a year, he enjoyed a clear conscience, clean heart, and no
legal issues. It didn’t last.
The first sign of trouble came in 2009 when ICE ordered his
appearance in immigration court. He was facing deportation.
In March 2010, the prosecutor terminated the case without
prejudice. Aguilar could still be deported at a moment’s notice,
but the prosecutor had decided against taking action.
I met him in late January 2011 to work on a profile story.
We developed a friendly relationship through interviews and,
as the story neared completion, he told me about an upcoming
court appearance. It was a formality and he was on the verge of
being a free man, he thought. Two weeks later, on Valentine’s
Day, a new prosecutor reversed the previous decision. By
pleading guilty in 2004, Aguilar had unwittingly given ICE
the freedom to take away his residency and deport him. He
was going back to El Salvador.
A new immigration attorney, David Sobel, filed appeals on
Aguilar’s behalf with the U.S. 10th Circuit and the Oklahoma
Court of Criminal Appeals. He argued that his client wouldn’t
have made the plea agreement if he had been made aware
of the consequences. Who would willingly open the door to
being barred from their adopted country? The basis of Sobel’s
argument is a May 2010 Supreme Court decision for the
case Padilla v. Kentucky, which ruled that criminal defense
attorneys were required to inform immigration clients of the
deportation risks accompanying a guilty plea. Mark Harper,
Aguilar’s defense attorney in 2004, had not done that.
The problem was, the ruling was six years too late for
Aguilar. The 10th Circuit Court ruled that Padilla v. Kentucky
could not be applied retroactively.
by Jimmy Carter
As the appeal process dragged on, Aguilar sat in prison,
where he received piles of mail from church members. He
started a Bible study for fellow inmates and preached almost
every day, leading more than 20 people to accept Christ.
He gave away his commissary food to other inmates. If an
inmate couldn’t afford a call home, Aguilar provided his
phone card. He voluntarily cleaned disgusting prison toilets
and spent hours translating legal paperwork for inmates
who couldn’t read English.
“I found myself a lot getting on my knees in the cell
and praying for the officers,” Aguilar said. “Praying for
the judge that judged me unrighteously. Praying for the
prosecuting attorney and the immigration officers who deal
very shrewdly with a lot of people, not only me.”
Nothing could help Aguilar. Not even the offices of
Oklahoma U.S. Senators Tom Coburn and James Inhofe
contacting ICE on his behalf. His actions and attitude went
unaccounted for. At least in the eyes of ICE.
“They don’t take that into account at all,” Sobel said.
“It’s shocking to me that they don’t, but that is the
law. Immigration law is extremely harsh. There is no
rehabilitation aspect to it, with a few minor exceptions. It is
very tough when you know the individuals and know what
is going on.”
Culp expressed her disgust during a phone conversation.
“It’s just the fact that he’s like a number on a piece of paper and
no one cares who he is. I lead that ministry and unfortunately,
George isn’t the only one. He isn’t the crazy exception. It
happens quite frequently.”
Despite keeping a positive attitude the night I spoke with
him on Skype, Aguilar admitted that, “As a human being, it
does hurt. I think about it sometimes and I’m just like, ‘Man,
I can’t believe what they did.’ It was just so unjust. You have no
idea how much backup I had. Even with that, there’s no mercy.
It just shows how much immigration couldn’t give a rip.”
Aguilar described to me how he was chained hand and
foot on the December plane ride back to El Salvador, a
country and culture he had last been a part of as a young
child. His mother and sister, Carolina, met him at the
San Salvador airport. He barely recognized Carolina. She
had been a child, like him, when he left. Everything was
different than what he remembered, what he had grown
accustomed to in the United States.
“I spent all my life in the U.S.,” Aguilar said when I spoke
to him via Skype two months after his deportation. “So now
I’m coming over here. The people are different. The culture is
different. The way people act, speak, handle themselves—it’s
different. I just still have an American mentality.”
Aguilar lives with his mother. The average annual salary in
El Salvador was $3,431 in 2010. A construction job similar to
his in the U.S. barely provides enough money to live off of in
El Salvador. Despite the low salaries, he says prices for food
and household items are similar as in the U.S. He doesn’t have
a car. He was offered an opportunity to field phone calls for a
Dell computers customer support call center, a job that paid
$700–800 per week—big money in his new old home. He
doesn’t want to take it.
“I’m not the type of person that sits in a cubicle taking phone
calls,” Aguilar said. “I’d be miserable.”
He wants to be a missionary and start a church in San
Salvador supported by First Baptist, something Garland told
him the church would try to help him accomplish down the
line. In the meantime, he found a new church in San Salvador
and went on a mission trip to the Honduras in March, trying
to get plugged in to make his ministry goals a reality. He still
has a soft spot for homeless people, stopping to provide them
with water and food whenever he can, buying trash bags from
homeless men for 25 cents even though he doesn’t need any.
In a way, Aguilar is homeless. Despite living with his
mother, he can’t help but feel alone at times. He’s a world away
from his friends, his pastor, and his fiancée. He and Culp got
engaged after he was detained, leading me to joke with him
that he must be a smooth talker. “She’s says that to me, too,”
he laughs. She visited him in mid-February, the first time they
hadn’t been separated by a phone line or glass in a prison since
his detainment. Her visit was bittersweet. They were reunited,
but only for a few days. She is unable to relocate to El Salvador
because of family obligations. They Skype more often than
they talk on the phone because while he can get 150 minutes of
phone time for $3, she has to pay $5 for 30 minutes.
Visiting her in the states is, of course, not an option. His
road to reentry into this country will be long and potentially
impossible. Sobel has to win both appeals for his case to even
be reopened. There’s no certainty either will be resolved in
2012, though Sobel is hopeful, especially after the 10th Circuit
Court granted a rare oral argument for May. Even if the appeals
are successful, the battle is far from finished. “None of those, if
you win, are automatically going to get him back,” Sobel said.
“He’s not close to coming back to the US. We would have to
prevail in all the cases and then move to try and re-open his
case and try to get him back. That’s going to be a long and
arduous task, assuming that it can even be done.”
From a legal standpoint, Aguilar’s conversion and
subsequent reform is meaningless. He might have found
Jesus when looking for laptops to steal, but, in the end, he
was reserving his one-way ticket away from the only place
he’s ever considered home.
DOUG RUCKER
ORIGINAL OKIE
PHOTO BY ALE XIS NEWTON
Doug Rucker teaches fourth grade at Eliot Elementary, where he’s been for 20 years. He paints murals under the moniker
of Lobster Ink. Traditionally a watercolorist, he’s currently at work on a painting of a Pan Am Flying Clipper.