Dec. 17, 2025, 1:21 PM EST / Upgraded Dec. 17, 2025, 5:42 PM EST
. Joe Campbell, a Pentecostal preacher that for 50 years ministered to hundreds of kids throughout 4 states, has actually been apprehended on youngster sex misuse costs, the Oklahoma Attorney general of the United States’s Workplace claimed Wednesday.
Campbell was billed with one matter of first-degree rape and one matter of raunchy or indecent acts to a youngster under 16, according to the billing paper. United state marshals apprehended him Wednesday early morning at Camp Bell, his kids’s camp in Elkland, Missouri, and took him to the Greene Area prison in Springfield, where he was waiting for transfer to Oklahoma. If founded guilty, he confronts life behind bars.
It had not been clear whether Campbell, 68, had a lawyer. He could not promptly be grabbed remark. His apprehension is a long-delayed advancement in a 40-year initiative by several of his supposed sufferers to look for justice.
Joe Campbell was apprehended Wednesday. STIDZ Media for NBC Information; Greene Area Constable’s Workplace Joe Campbell was apprehended by united state marshals. United States Marshals Solution The costs come 7 months after an NBC Information examination exposed a pattern of youngster sex misuse claims versus Campbell and duplicated failings by priests, cops and district attorneys to step in. 5 females claimed he sexually abused them as kids in the 1970s and ’80s when he was an Assemblies of God preacher; 9 others, consisting of 4 males, claimed he revealed them porn, made raunchy remarks or touched them wrongly throughout the very same duration.
Campbell’s rape cost seems connected to the supposed misuse of among those females, Kerri Jackson. Jackson, currently 53, states he molested her for many years in Tulsa in the very early 1980s, starting when she was around 9. The attorney general of the United States’s workplace offered the situation to a multicounty grand court in Oklahoma City recently, and the panel returned the charge– a landmark Jackson and several of the various other females had actually gone after for the majority of their lives.
Kerri Jackson, imagined in her youth room, states Campbell molested her when to two times a week for 3 years beginning when she had to do with 9. At right, Jackson with her sibling and more youthful sibling. September Dawn Bottoms for NBC Information; Roberto Daza/ NBC Information “I do not also recognize just how to respond now,” Jackson informed NBC Information minutes after understanding of Campbell’s apprehension. “Besides these years, it’s a wonder.”.
Previous efforts to explore Campbell in Oklahoma and Missouri stopped working after cops and district attorneys claimed the law of restrictions had actually expired. However the Oklahoma Attorney general of the United States’s Workplace states that clock quit running when Campbell vacated the state in the 1980s. To bill him about a decades-old claims, they’re using a frontier-era law that stops briefly the law of restrictions for suspects that get away or stay in other places.
District attorneys just recently utilized the very same lawful concept to bill previous megachurch priest Robert Morris with sexually abusing a 12-year-old woman in Oklahoma in the 1980s. Morris, that established the nondenominational Entrance Church in Texas, begged guilty in October to 5 felony matters of raunchy or indecent show a youngster and was punished to one decade behind bars, with just about 6 months put on hold.
The entry to Camp Bell in Elkland, Mo., where Joe Campbell ran a summer season camp for years. STIDZ Media for NBC Information In a meeting, Oklahoma Attorney general of the United States Gentner Drummond called Campbell’s supposed criminal offenses “terrible” and claimed he prepares for extra sufferers might step forward.
” I can not also picture, neither might I try to picture, the weight on their hearts, their mind all these years,” claimed Drummond, that included that the costs need to work as an advising to belief leaders that manipulate their authority to hurt kids. “If you dedicate that criminal activity, we’re mosting likely to locate you. We’re mosting likely to prosecute you.”.
Campbell was collared Wednesday early morning by participants of the united state Marshals Western Area of Missouri’s Midwest Violent Fugitive Job Pressure Springfield Department. He did not withstand or attempt to get away, claimed Supervisory Replacement united state Marshal Felix Carrion.
” He gave up to us as quickly as we bordered his residence in Camp Bell,” Carrion claimed.
Oklahoma authorities opened their probe right into Campbell after NBC Information released its examination in Might, mapping claims of misuse to his earliest years in ministry. The accusers explained a magnetic preacher that grew rely on kids and their moms and dads, just to manipulate it behind shut doors.
Youngsters saw Campbell as a virtually legendary number, honored by the Holy Spirit with the power to talk in tongues, exiled satanic forces and recover the ill. He moved to ladies from damaged homes. They later on explained being molested in a church baby room, in Campbell’s cars and truck and at his home while his partner and kids rested upstairs.
Joe Campbell was the kids’s priest at Eastland Setting up of God in Tulsa in the very early 1980s when he satisfied Kerri Jackson. Gotten by NBC Information Starting when several of them were still teens, the females reported Campbell’s actions to priests, police and youngster well-being authorities, just to see him refute the claims and proceed teaching.
Jackson was amongst those that stepped forward to church leaders. In very early 1988, at age 15, she took a trip to Springfield, Missouri, to indicate prior to a panel of Assemblies of God authorities. Jackson claimed the males asked her to define the misuse in visuals information and welcomed Campbell and his partner right into the space to test her account. In spite of having actually gotten letters from various other affirmed sufferers, which had actually been gathered to include weight to Jackson’s tale, the priests permitted Campbell to continue to be in ministry in Missouri, removing the method for him to abuse an additional woman, according to meetings and cops documents.
The Assemblies of God ultimately removed Campbell the list below year after Phaedra Creed, at age 14, reported that Campbell had actually been abusing her for months while she dealt with him and his household.
Creed mosted likely to the cops in 1989, and Campbell was billed with physical sex with a small. However after being pestered by church participants, Creed claimed, her psychological wellness weakened, and she revoked indicating, bring about the costs’ being gone down.
Phaedra Creed was 14 when Campbell welcomed her to cope with him in 1988. The sexual assault started within weeks, she later on informed cops. Politeness Phaedra Creed; Roberto Daza/ NBC Information For years, as she saw Campbell proceed dealing with kids, Creed claimed, she lugged shame over her choice. She wept when she discovered of his apprehension Wednesday.
” I was talking the fact after that, and I’m talking the fact currently, however I’m no more mosting likely to be silenced,” Creed claimed. “I am so pleased justice will ultimately be offered.”.
In a declaration adhering to Campbell’s apprehension Wednesday, Assemblies of God leaders claimed that the religion’s nationwide workplace initially discovered of claims versus him in 1988 which “his noted activities were appropriately reported to the ideal lawful authorities.”.
” The Assemblies of God is happy for all that have actually fearlessly shared their tales,” the declaration claimed. “We remain to hope that justice will certainly be offered.”.
Campbell proceeded ministering to kids. Around 1990, he established a nondenominational church and opened up Camp Bell, a Christian young people camp in the Missouri Ozarks, where he ministered to hundreds of youngsters over the years. Campbell’s brand-new church ended up being a haven for numerous founded guilty sex culprits, NBC Information’ examination located.
In 2016, he signed up with the PTL Tv Network, a Christian terminal established by disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker, which relayed Campbell’s trainings country wide till this year, when the network silently got rid of years of his lectures from its web site adhering to NBC Information’ queries. PTL did not promptly react to an ask for remark.
Campbell’s nationwide impact and his years of deal with kids upset his accusers, that tracked his climb from afar.
Clockwise from left, Kerri Jackson, Kim Williams, Lisa Round and Cheryl Almond state priest Joe Campbell sexually abused them as kids. September Dawn Bottoms for NBC Information For the females, his apprehension lugged spiritual relevance– the gratification of a goal they think God left to them years earlier.
Jackson claimed she long birthed the weight of that obligation like a round and chain. The problem started to raise when she saw his cup shot.
” Lastly,” she claimed. “We simply required a person to think us.”.
Mike Hixenbaugh is an elderly investigatory press reporter for NBC Information, based in Maryland, and writer of “They Came for the Schools.”.
