U.S. Senate candidate in Kansas faults Democratic rival’s handling of reported sex abuse

TOPEKA — A Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate on Wednesday denigrated the race’s frontrunner, accusing him of covering up a child sex abuse scandal at the church he leads and demanding he withdraw his candidacy.

Patrick Schmidt, a state senator from Topeka, faulted pastor Adam Hamilton for his handling of reported child sex abuse at a church retreat two decades ago.

Court records show the church investigated the abuse and eventually reported it to law enforcement. Hamilton’s campaign said Schmidt was using the pain of families to engage in “false and defamatory attacks.”

Schmidt lobbed numerous accusations at Hamilton during a press conference at the Statehouse and offered reporters a digital repository of court documents from criminal cases against a former church retreat volunteer, Scott Preston Moore. Many of Schmidt’s accusations couldn’t be verified in court documents.

Moore was a serial child predator. He was repeatedly accused of sex crimes in the Kansas City area and Massachusetts, and he was convicted in 2013 in Kansas of a misdemeanor count of sexual battery.

The allegations Schmidt publicized date to youth camp retreats in the mid-2000s hosted by the Church of the Resurrection, of which Hamilton is co-founder and lead pastor. Hamilton wasn’t present at either camp session, a spokesperson for his campaign said.

Teenage boys in 2005 and 2006 said a man, who later turned out to be Moore, entered their rooms at night and touched them in their sleeping bags, according to court records.

The court documents Schmidt provided to reporters named the boys who suffered Moore’s sexual abuse and impropriety, along with 14 other teens. Kansas Reflector doesn’t identify survivors of sexual abuse without their consent.

The boys in 2005 reported the incidents to camp leaders, and church leaders conducted an internal investigation, but an appellate court decision said camp leaders “were dismissive of their claims.”

The investigation’s results were inconclusive because the boys couldn’t identify the man, according to court records.

“Neither boy was able to make out the facial features of the suspect or positively identify the defendant due to the darkness of the room and the blinding light that had been shined directly at their faces,” court records said.

Church leaders didn’t initially report the incident to law enforcement or social services, court records said.

A year later, Moore again volunteered as a youth camp leader and entered campers’ rooms at night, but court records don’t indicate allegations of sexual touching. At that point, church leaders alerted law enforcement and barred Moore from interacting with youths or vulnerable adults, according to court records. The court records also indicated that Church of the Resurrection reported both 2005 and 2006 incidents to law enforcement and handed over documents from their internal investigation.

The Linn County attorney at the time declined to prosecute Moore.

Following the incidents, the church reevaluated its policies to better screen and train staff and volunteers, implementing a Safe Gatherings program, which requires at least two adults to supervise unrelated children and mandates immediate reporting of law, policy or standards violations.

Nancy Brown, a former state legislator who served in the ’80s and ’90s and died in 2020, was one of the church leaders who investigated the boys’ 2005 reports. She developed a curriculum for the church to protect youths and vulnerable adults through a mandatory certification that eventually expanded, becoming the Safe Gatherings program, which is used in more than 10,000 organizations in 42 states.

Criminal charges against Moore didn’t come until 2010, when a man who had moved away from Kansas confided in Hamilton about another instance of Moore’s abuse when Moore was his babysitter in 1979. The man was around 5 years old when Moore, then 15, forced him to perform sexual acts, court records said.

The man “did not report the incident until he learned that the defendant (Moore) was suspected of abusing children at a church retreat. At that time, he spoke with the pastor of the church and chose to make a report so the information could be documented,” court records said.

While the statute of limitations had expired for the man who confided in Hamilton, police within a month were investigating Moore for touching a 16-year-old friend of his child’s when he was over for a sleepover. The 2005 and 2006 incidents were considered in the case that ultimately led to Moore’s conviction and one-year prison sentence.

In April 2015, Moore, then 46, was found unconscious in a family member’s home hours after he fled from police when they caught him half-naked in a car with a teenage boy, according to media reports. He later died at a hospital, and authorities didn’t confirm at the time whether he died by suicide.

Throughout the course of his 10-minute press conference in Topeka, Schmidt accused Hamilton and church leadership of failing to take action and ignoring victims.

In a statement, the Hamilton campaign said Schmidt lied and attacked the church for political gain.

“This is exactly the kind of politics of destruction and division that is wrong with our politics today, and that has driven Adam to run for Senate,” the statement said.

It added: “It is sad that Patrick Schmidt is trying to revive his failing political campaign by attacking the church and using the pain of these families to spread these false and defamatory attacks.”

Schmidt said he received an anonymous email in the first week of May detailing Moore’s actions at Church of the Resurrection camps. On May 15, a website, corcoverup.com, appeared online, highlighting media reports and court records related to Scott Moore and linking Hamilton to the cases.

By 1 p.m. Wednesday, the site had been taken down.

Schmidt told reporters he wasn’t affiliated with the site.

“I know that I suspect that many people received the same anonymous email that we received,” he said.

Schmidt and Hamilton are two of 10 candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate to challenge U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, the Republican incumbent. Marshall’s campaign manager did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Mike Phillips, a spokesperson for Hamilton’s campaign, said Hamilton withdrawing from the race was not on the table.