This article is part of “Pastors and Prey,” a series investigating sex abuse allegations in the Assemblies of God.
TULSA, Okla. — The women kept their eyes fixed on the man seated three rows ahead of them as they waited for his case to be called in a Tulsa County courtroom.
It had been decades since they had seen pastor Joe Campbell, the Pentecostal preacher they say sexually abused them as children.
The hearing was procedural. But for the four women, it was anything but.
They’d come to send a message: “We’re not those little girls anymore,” Lisa Ball said.
Nearly a month after his arrest, Campbell, 68, appeared before an Oklahoma district court judge Monday on charges that he sexually abused two girls, including Ball, in the 1980s. The brief hearing focused on the terms of Campbell’s release while he awaits trial. For his accusers, the appearance marked a long-awaited reckoning.
“It’s exciting knowing that it’s here, what we’ve been waiting for all these decades,” said Kerri Jackson, now 53, who has said Campbell sexually abused her repeatedly in Tulsa in the early 1980s, beginning when she was about 9.
Campbell is charged with first-degree rape in connection with Jackson’s allegations and one count of lewd or indecent acts against Ball, 56, who says Campbell invited her to live with him after she became a teen mother and then sexually abused her repeatedly.
Campbell has not entered a plea. If he is convicted, he faces the possibility of life in prison. Neither he nor his lawyer responded when a reporter approached them for comment outside the courtroom.
Campbell’s appearance was the latest development in a case that grew out of an NBC News investigation last year documenting years of sexual abuse allegations against the longtime preacher. Jackson, Ball and three other women told NBC News that Campbell sexually abused them as children in the 1970s and ’80s when he was a young pastor in the Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination. Nine other people, including four men, said Campbell showed them pornography, made lewd comments or touched them inappropriately when they were children during the same period.
Beginning when they were still teenagers, some of Campbell’s accusers reported his behavior to pastors, law enforcement and child welfare officials. Time and again, they said, the complaints went nowhere and Campbell remained in ministry.
Oklahoma authorities opened their criminal investigation after NBC News published its reporting in May. Prosecutors later presented the case to a multicounty grand jury, which returned an indictment in December.
U.S. marshals arrested Campbell last month at Camp Bell, a Christian youth camp he founded in the Missouri Ozarks, and spent Christmas in a Missouri jail awaiting extradition to Oklahoma. He was transferred to Tulsa last week and released after he posted a $150,000 bond.
The original conditions of his release required Campbell to remain in Tulsa County and stay at least 1,000 feet away from schools, parks, day care facilities and community centers. On Monday, Judge Shannon Taylor approved a request from Campbell’s attorney to modify those terms, allowing him to return to his home in Blue Eye, Missouri, while the case proceeds. The judge added that Campbell may attend religious services in Missouri with permission of church leadership.
Campbell, dressed in a gray suit, sat quietly during the brief hearing Monday.
Kim Williams, who says Campbell sexually abused her while she was a teenager visiting his parsonage in Missouri the late 1980s, said his criminal charges stripped away the authority that once protected him.
“He can’t hide behind the pulpit or behind people who believe in him anymore,” she said.
Jackson was among the first of Campbell’s accusers to raise concerns with church leaders. In 1988, when she was 15, she traveled to Springfield, Missouri, to testify before an Assemblies of God disciplinary panel. Jackson said church officials questioned her in detail and then invited Campbell and his wife to challenge her account. The denomination ultimately allowed Campbell to remain in ministry in Missouri — freeing him to abuse again, his accusers say.
Campbell was expelled from the Assemblies of God the following year after another girl, Phaedra Creed, 14 at the time, reported that he had raped her repeatedly while she was living in his home.
In a statement following Campbell’s arrest last month, Assemblies of God leaders said they were grateful to the women who “bravely shared their stories” and “continue to pray that justice will be served.”
After his expulsion from the Assemblies of God, Campbell continued working with children. By the early 1990s, he had founded a nondenominational church and established his children’s camp in southern Missouri.
A decade ago, he joined the PTL Television Network, the Christian broadcaster founded by disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker, and became a regular presence on the network’s programming. PTL removed Campbell’s sermons from its website following inquiries from NBC News last year and later said he was placed on administrative leave and subsequently stepped down.
“PTL respects due process and the presumption of innocence and trusts that God and the justice system will prevail in doing what is right,” the network said in a statement after Campbell’s arrest.
In the days leading up to Monday’s hearing, Jackson said, her anxiety spiked.
“The last time I saw him, he was pointing his finger in my face with an evil look on his face, saying, ‘You’re a liar,’” Jackson said on the drive to the courthouse, recalling her 1988 encounter with Campbell and church leaders.
“Well,” Williams responded from the back seat, “now he’s got an ankle monitor on.”
After the hearing, Campbell’s accusers gathered outside the courthouse, embracing one another and speaking with reporters.
Seeing the man they say abused them sitting before a judge was both painful and affirming.
“This is something that we really have been praying for for 40 years, over 40 years for me,” said Cheryl Almond, 62, who has said Campbell sexually abused her when she was a teenager in the late 1970s.
The women said they plan to attend each future hearing. Jackson said she wants their presence to be a reminder to the man they say robbed them of their innocence.
“Your past,” she said, “can come back to haunt you.”
