https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/childrens-pastor-joe-campbell-arrested-child-sex-abuse-charges-rcna210316
Joe Campbell, a Pentecostal preacher who for half a century ministered to thousands of children across four states, has been arrested on child sex abuse charges, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday.
Campbell was charged with one count of first degree rape and one count of lewd or indecent acts to a child under 16, according to the charging document. U.S. Marshals arrested him Wednesday morning at Camp Bell, his children's camp in Elkland, Missouri, and brought him to the Greene County jail in Springfield, where he was awaiting transfer to Oklahoma. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.
It wasn’t clear if Campbell, 68, had an attorney. He couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. His arrest represents a long-delayed breakthrough in a 40-year effort by some of his alleged victims to seek justice.
The charges come seven months after an NBC News investigation revealed a pattern of child sex abuse allegations against Campbell and repeated failures by pastors, police and prosecutors to intervene. Five women said he sexually abused them as children in the 1970s and ’80s when he was an Assemblies of God minister; nine others, including four men, said he showed them pornography, made lewd comments or touched them inappropriately during the same period.
Campbell’s rape charge appears to be tied to the alleged abuse of one of those women, Kerri Jackson. Jackson, now 53, says he molested her for years in Tulsa in the early 1980s, beginning when she was around 9. The attorney general’s office presented the case to a multicounty grand jury in Oklahoma City last week and the panel returned the indictment — a milestone Jackson and some of the other women had pursued for most of their lives.
Joe Campbell, a Pentecostal preacher who for half a century ministered to thousands of children across four states, has been arrested on child sex abuse charges, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday.
Campbell was charged with one count of first degree rape and one count of lewd or indecent acts to a child under 16, according to the charging document. U.S. Marshals arrested him Wednesday morning at Camp Bell, his children's camp in Elkland, Missouri, and brought him to the Greene County jail in Springfield, where he was awaiting transfer to Oklahoma. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.
It wasn’t clear if Campbell, 68, had an attorney. He couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. His arrest represents a long-delayed breakthrough in a 40-year effort by some of his alleged victims to seek justice.
The charges come seven months after an NBC News investigation revealed a pattern of child sex abuse allegations against Campbell and repeated failures by pastors, police and prosecutors to intervene. Five women said he sexually abused them as children in the 1970s and ’80s when he was an Assemblies of God minister; nine others, including four men, said he showed them pornography, made lewd comments or touched them inappropriately during the same period.
Campbell’s rape charge appears to be tied to the alleged abuse of one of those women, Kerri Jackson. Jackson, now 53, says he molested her for years in Tulsa in the early 1980s, beginning when she was around 9. The attorney general’s office presented the case to a multicounty grand jury in Oklahoma City last week and the panel returned the indictment — a milestone Jackson and some of the other women had pursued for most of their lives.
