Minnesota Old Apostolic Lutheran Church Community Protected a Child Abuser — ProPublica

The lady pleaded to not go.

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

Within the workplace, two males had been ready. One in all them was Clint Massie, who the lady had not too long ago advised her mother and father had touched her genitals and groped her beneath her shirt. The opposite was Daryl Bruckelmyer, a preacher and chief of the Outdated Apostolic Lutheran Church down the highway, the place the lady’s household worshipped. Massie was a revered member of the congregation. Bruckelmyer had requested all of them to the assembly, in accordance with the lady’s account to police years later.

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

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

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

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

Over the course of about 20 years in two states, Massie had, in accordance with courtroom paperwork and by his personal admission, sexually abused kids inside the Outdated Apostolic Lutheran Church, or OALC, neighborhood. He touched ladies beneath blankets when their mother and father had been current, within the backseat of a automotive with different passengers — even within the pews at church. His abuse was such an open secret among the many tight-knit congregation that moms warned their daughters to keep away from him.

Some former victims, as adults, confronted preachers, together with Bruckelmyer, about what Massie had carried out to them. Church leaders advised Massie to keep away from the congregation’s kids, and so they despatched him to a therapist who specialised in intercourse offender therapy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kimberly Lowe, a lawyer and disaster supervisor for the church, stated its preachers are unpaid and subsequently won’t be legally required to report sexual abuse of kids. Requested if she believes the preachers are mandated reporters beneath Minnesota legislation, Lowe would solely say that the language of the statute is unclear. 

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

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

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

OALC is a conservative Christian revival motion that got here to the U.S. with Nineteenth-century settlers from Norway, Finland and Sweden, and it’s not affiliated with any mainstream Lutheran denominations. There is no such thing as a official depend, however one tutorial research estimated 31,000 members worldwide as of 2016, with most in the US. The church is quickly rising, specialists say, and the member depend as we speak is probably going a lot greater. OALC’s emphasis on massive households has created booms in locations like Washington state and Duluth.

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

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

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

“He was so brazen about it — and there was so little carried out about it — that he thought it was permission,” Ryan stated.

“Church Is aware of”

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

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

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

Sgt. Jessica LaBore was the investigator assigned to the case. In a recorded interview, the lady reluctantly advised LaBore how she used to take a seat with Massie and his spouse, Sarah, at church, only a few rows from the entrance. Massie would snake his palms up her skirt and contact her thighs and genitals. One other time, at a gathering on the residence of her mother and father’ associates, she stated, Massie advised her to get a blanket and started touching her beneath it, together with her mother and pa close by.

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

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

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

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

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

LaBore referred the case for prices to Deputy St. Louis County Lawyer Jon Holets. In a press release to the Star Tribune and ProPublica, Holets stated he additionally spoke to the sufferer’s mom, who knowledgeable him “that there had been therapeutic intervention, that ‘they had been good’” and that her daughter didn’t need something extra to be carried out. With out the lady’s cooperation, Holets stated he determined he couldn’t carry prices towards Massie, an final result he stated offers him “heartache” to today.

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

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

LaBore defined the state’s mandated reporting legislation to Bruckelmyer and advised him that he and others on the church might be charged criminally if “any person that they already learn about” had been to maintain abusing kids and so they did not report it.

“We’re discovering out from our investigations that these Mandated Stories should not being made, and as an alternative, these incidents are being handled inside the church,” she wrote in a departmental memo to replace different detectives. “Typically the preachers are facilitating within the asking for forgiveness.”

For the second time, Holets determined to not carry prices, although this time it was about church preachers moderately than Massie. In a press release to reporters, Holets stated legislation enforcement determined to attempt to “educate” church leaders about their obligation to report the sexual abuse of kids.

“I believed it was more practical to work with present management to affect practices and attitudes relating to baby abuse reporting, moderately than to pursue felony enforcement at that stage,” Holets wrote. “That stated, felony prices for failure to report stay a risk in such instances.”

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

Haunted by Silence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sarah Massie declined to remark for this story.

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

“I can let you know,” Kleffman stated, “you need to have numerous religion in me.”

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

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

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

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

“There May Be A whole bunch”

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

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

“I name bullshit on that,” Kleffman stated.

Massie advised Kleffman and McTavish that Bruckelmyer had spoken to him “a minimum of” 3 times about inappropriate habits with kids. The investigators requested what number of extra ladies would possibly come ahead with tales about him touching or kissing them.

“I imply, there might be lots of,” Massie stated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We’ve checked out them some, nevertheless it’s exhausting for us to interpret every part,” Bruckelmyer replied.

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

“No,” Bruckelmyer stated.

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

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

Kleffman and Sathers defined that if somebody like Massie confessed to Bruckelmyer one-on-one, that will represent a protected dialog with clergy. However listening to immediately from the victims, from mother and father of victims or about abuse allegations in a gaggle setting was one other matter totally.

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

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

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

“I see,” Bruckelmyer stated quietly.

“You’re simply maintaining a pedophile in your church,” Kleffman stated.

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

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

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

Reckoning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However Decide Eric Hylden famous that since Massie had pleaded responsible, he’d by no means tried to enroll in sex-offender therapy or written apology letters to his victims. Hylden additionally quoted aloud from one among 17 letters of assist for Massie, many from OALC members, which he stated demonstrated that some in Massie’s neighborhood nonetheless didn’t consider he’d carried out something improper: “I want you discover ones which have truly carried out this stuff and get them put away moderately than placing your power into mendacity and looking for evil the place there’s none to be discovered.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chamberlin stated she hoped to have a job encouraging different victims to return ahead earlier than the secrecy consumes their lives the best way it had consumed hers.

“There’s much more to be carried out,” she stated. “There’s numerous Clints on the market.”