“Pastors and Prey” exposed a 50-year pattern of sex abuse, silence and cover-ups in the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination — spurring an arrest, resignations and calls to better protect children.
NBC News’ investigation into the Assemblies of God revealed a decades long pattern of churches quietly shielding accused predators — transferring, rehabilitating or restoring them to ministry — allowing more children to be abused. Survivors recounted the places they were harmed by trusted leaders: a church nursery, a prayer room, a tent on a youth camping trip. These crimes often went unpunished for decades.
NBC News identified about 200 Assemblies of God ministers, employees and volunteer leaders accused of sexually abusing more than 475 people, mostly children, since the mid-1970s.
The yearlong investigation began with a tip in December 2024. Producer Roberto Daza learned that a group of women were preparing to meet with police in Tulsa to file reports accusing their former pastor, Joe Campbell, of sexually abusing them as children decades earlier.
Over the next five months, NBC News embedded with Campbell’s accusers as they pursued what they described as a divine mission: to finally hold him accountable. The team published an immersive written investigation and documentary, “The Children’s Pastor,” built on dozens of interviews and an extensive review of letters, police and court records, and contemporaneous diary entries. The pieces documented not only years of allegations against Campbell, but faith leaders’ repeated failures to intervene.
As reporters examined missed opportunities to stop Campbell, they confronted a broader question: Was his case an aberration or evidence of a systemic problem? To answer it, a team led by senior reporter Mike Hixenbaugh conducted a monthslong, nationwide review of lawsuits, criminal records and news reports spanning five decades and published a series of investigations.
Campbell, it turned out, was far from an outlier.
“Pastors and Prey” drew on interviews with more than 100 survivors, pastors, attorneys, church members and whistleblowers and was grounded in a monthslong, nationwide review of lawsuits, criminal records and news reports spanning five decades.
The team creatively unfolded this reporting across NBC News’ multimedia platforms, including written narrative investigations, moving interviews with survivors on NBC News NOW and engaging short-form videos on TikTok and Instagram, bringing these stories to millions of readers and viewers.
