Child sexual abuse in this church has gone unchecked for so long that it spans generations

They were pillars of their church, followers of a little-known denomination that stands apart from the world and teaches that even the most unconscionable acts can be erased – not just forgiven, but forgotten and never spoken of again.

That’s what happened at a rural Wyoming church, where a man was accused of sexually abusing young girls hundreds of times in the pews during Sunday services. Although the pastor knew about the abuse, he never reported it to police, local prosecutors said. Instead, he told the man to seek therapy.

In Minnesota, a man of the same faith admitted that he began entering his daughter and son’s bedrooms at night, around the time each of them was 12 years old. He and his siblings grew up in the church and were sexually abused themselves, then repeated the abuse with his own children.

And in Washington state, preachers knew that a member of their congregation had sexually abused several young boys. Instead of reporting him to the police, they allowed him to beg for forgiveness, according to a family member, and he continued to sexually abuse the children. He was later convicted of raping a church member’s 9-year-old son and sentenced to life in prison.

The attackers and victims all belonged to the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church, or OALC, a revivalist church of Scandinavian origin that teaches its followers that heaven is reserved for them. To get there, current and former members say, they must follow a strict doctrine, which emphasizes asking for forgiveness for their sins and says that being forgiven by another church member erases those sins.

Additionally, the Church teaches that once the perpetrator is forgiven, anyone who speaks out about the wrongdoing – including the victim – can be accused of having an unforgiving heart. Those who have left the Church, as well as some who are still in it, say this means the burden of sin shifts from the person who committed the act to the person who refuses to leave the matter alone.

Survivors of sexual abuse say these rituals have created a culture in which allegations of abuse are resolved outside the criminal justice system and victims must bear their pain alone or risk going to hell. In some families, sexual abuse spans generations, ensnaring a parent, a child and a grandchild.

“This is what I would call the institutionalism of the abuse of young women and children,” said DaNece Day, a prosecutor in Crook County, Wyoming, whose office has indicted two OALC members in the past two years.

Day and other prosecutors said one of the biggest obstacles to breaking the cycle is the way church members move between congregations spread across the United States and Canada, often hundreds of miles apart but closely linked by vast, multigenerational family networks.

Last fall, ProPublica and the Minnesota Star Tribune reported that Minnesota preachers had known about the allegations for years that one of its members, a man named Clint Massie, had sexually abused young girls in the congregation. But instead of reporting it to the police, church leaders urged some victims to participate in sessions in which they were confronted by Massie and encouraged to forgive the abuse.

Now, new reporting from both news organizations shows how child sexual abuse in OALC, and the failure of church leaders to report it to authorities, is a persistent and national problem.

Some current and former OALC members are calling on elders of what the church considers its parent congregation in Sweden – where the church originated – to intervene. In fact, these elders, who have no authority over the American Church but wield considerable influence, are coming to the United States and Canada this summer to meet with congregations. What they will find is a growing number of criminal prosecutions against church members and increasing legal scrutiny of leaders for failing to report sexual abuse allegations to police.

In a statement, Swedish Church officials said these were isolated incidents and that they had “not observed any trends” among the tens of thousands of members of OALC’s 34 congregations in the United States and Canada. They said sexual abuse should be reported to authorities and that it was possible that “some matters were handled inappropriately or without sufficient knowledge.” And they acknowledged that the Church’s guidelines “are being reviewed with American missionary pastors to ensure compliance.”

OALC representatives in the United States and Canada said in an email that they also “do not perceive the existence of a general pattern of behavior,” describing sexual abuse as a serious and persistent problem in society. They recognized that bringing a victim face to face with their abuser, as an OALC church pastor did with Massie, can be traumatic. But they defended the Church’s doctrine of forgiveness, saying it was not a way to cover up wrongdoing or protect offenders from legal consequences, and that no one is forced to forgive or ask for forgiveness. If those teachings were misapplied or misunderstood in some cases, they said, that “does not reflect an error in our doctrine.”

ProPublica and the Star Tribune interviewed 20 people who said they were sexually abused, almost all as children, in OALC communities, as well as parents of victims as young as 3 years old. Reporters also visited OALC churches across the country and reviewed court and police documents from at least eight cases, as well as victims’ statements to local authorities.

Their attackers were family members, other children, or men who were trusted to be alone with children because they are part of the same insular religious community. Some victims spoke anonymously for fear of reprisals from the Church or their own families. Others have publicly identified themselves and their attackers, without fear of repercussions.

Many of these victims said Church leaders pressured them to remain silent. In Minnesota, police records describe a woman telling a young girl that the abuse she suffered, which began around age 5 or 6, was not serious and that she “needed to get over it.” In Washington state, a police report says a woman told law enforcement that her pastor had, for “spiritual reasons,” discouraged her from contacting authorities after her daughter told him she had been raped by three men from the church.

“We are always told that what preachers tell us is from God,” said one woman, who said she was also asked not to talk about her abuse. “Who’s going to argue with that?” »

Sexual abuse within the OALC is sometimes a legacy passed down from one generation to the next – hidden, endured in silence, repeated. Lorie Peldo was sexually abused for eight years by her older brother when she was just 2 years old, she said in an interview. A quarter of a century later, after the memories began to resurface during therapy, Peldo’s mother told him she knew about the abuse. But on the advice of his pastor in Battle Ground, Washington, his parents did not report the crimes to police. Instead, they took her brother to a doctor, she said.

Peldo said she eventually confronted her brother, who said it had haunted him his whole life. She tried to forgive him, she said, but the weight of what he had done did not ease. She fell into such despair that she attempted suicide. She said she ended up in a psychiatric hospital. His brother later died; his parents also died.

It didn’t stop there. During a church road trip, Clint Massie — who was convicted of child abuse in Duluth, Minn., last year — sexually assaulted Peldo’s daughter, Tonya, when she was 11 and he was a teenager, according to Tonya Peldo’s statements to law enforcement. Peldo’s case was included in the police file involving Massie, but he was not criminally charged, according to a prosecutor, because the statute of limitations had expired. Massie did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Tonya Peldo told investigators at the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office in Duluth that she didn’t see Massie again until two decades later, after she moved to town and recognized him handing out candy to children at church.

She said she told the pastors what he did to her, but one of the preachers told her to ask Massie for forgiveness, as if She had done wrong him. “I was like, ‘No, no!’” she said in an interview. It would be more than a decade before Massie was charged with sexual abuse crimes.

In 2019, Tonya’s daughter was also sexually assaulted, making her the third generation of Peldo girls to be victims. The girl was 14 when a 25-year-old relative, Blake Nelson, bought her a pack of cigarettes and then invited her to his trailer in Clark County, Washington, so he could teach her how to give a massage, according to court records.

Nelson pleaded guilty to charges of communicating with a minor for immoral purposes and fourth-degree assault in the case involving Tonya Peldo’s daughter. At her sentencing, Tonya told the judge how church leaders tried to prevent her daughter from reporting the abuse to police. Nelson’s attorney, Michele Michalek, said Pastors repeatedly called her law firm to insist the matter should be handled in-house.

“They think law enforcement shouldn’t be involved,” Michalek said.

A Minnesota judge commented on the cyclical nature of abuse in 2023, when a man from an OALC family went to police after repeatedly abusing his son and daughter. In his sentencing, the judge took into account that the man and his siblings, who grew up in the church, had also been victims of child sexual abuse. She said she found it “almost incomprehensible” that the adults in his life were unaware of the abuse he and his siblings suffered as children.

“All I can see is the repercussions of the consequences for you and all your siblings, who were abused or abusive, and then for your children,” the judge said.

The OALC church is a branch of a broader faith called Laestadianism, a conservative Christian religion. rival movement that began in the mid-1800s in northern Scandinavia. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, as millions of Scandinavians emigrated to the United States, some followers of the Laestadian movement brought with them much more than language, traditions, and religious devotion.

Along with the faith emerged a deeply insular church culture, shaped by strict obedience and a doctrine of forgiveness that critics and former members say helped cover up wrongdoing.

One of them was Eija Marttinen. A newspaper photo in 1951 shows Marttinen as a little girl wearing a Finnish sailor’s suit and braids, alongside 14 family members and several large suitcases. His family had just arrived in Nova Scotia from Finland and would soon start the first Old Apostolic Lutheran Church in Canada. In the photo, Marttinen smiles brightly towards the horizon, as if fascinated by the infinite possibilities of a new world.

But even then, at the age of 9, Marttinen hid a secret that would be the source of a lifetime of emotional pain. Now 84 years old and living in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, said in an interview that her older brother sexually abused her starting when she was 5 years old. Another brother soon began abusing her as well, she said. Both brothers are now dead.

Years later, Marttinen said she learned there were other predators in the church. She kept silent about her abuse for most of her life, fearing she would be forced to forgive and still live with the stigma if it came forward. She only told her own daughter about the extent of the abuse in recent months, after reading the ProPublica and Star Tribune articles.

“They can do whatever they want and you have to forgive them. It’s not right. But you continue because you were raised in this environment.

“I wish I wasn’t,” she added.

The Laestadian churches of Scandinavia have had to face their own reckoning. From 2009 to 2011, Johanna Hurtig, a Finnish child protection specialist, documented numerous cases of sexual abuse among members of the Finnish Church and found that the concept of forgiveness of sins had been transformed into a tool to silence victims.

At first, Church leaders were defensive, according to media reports. But they then acknowledged “serious errors” in the way the Church has handled sexual abuse, including pressuring victims to forgive abusers instead of reporting them. They urged members to report abuse to police and child protection authorities.

Several men have been convicted by Finnish courts and sentenced to long prison terms.

In 2017, the Norwegian police documented 151 cases of rape and abusemany with child victims, in a remote northern village of around 2,000 inhabitants. Following a newspaper investigation, police said they blamed many cases on members of Laestadianism, with some incidents dating back to 1953. Police found that the practice of forgiving and forgetting often led to abuse being seen as “dealt with” internally, thereby silencing victims and protecting perpetrators.

The Church’s emphasis on large families has created a boom in places like Minnesota, Wyoming and southern Washington. Families rely heavily on each other socially, financially, and spiritually while maintaining their distance from what their members often call “the world”—outsiders and secular influences seen as dangerous or corrupting. Even ordinary activities like watching television and dancing are treated as transgressions that must be confessed. One abuse victim said she felt anxious every time she turned on the car radio, fearing that if she listened to a pop song and died in an accident before asking for forgiveness, she might go to hell.

Some Church members hope the Swedish elders will address sexual abuse during their visit, including the mother of a 15-year-old girl who revealed in May 2025 that her father had been abusing her for years. This happened both in Minnesota and after they moved to Washington, according to court records. The mother, according to Child Protective Services reports, said she told her pastor about the abuse.

Authorities did not learn of the allegations until August, when her daughter saw a therapist after weeks of her mother trying to get help through the church, according to reports. The visit sparked an investigation by child welfare authorities in Washington, who substantiated the complaint. Prosecutors in Minnesota have accused the father of criminal sexual conduct, but he has not been charged in Washington. The father asked the court for a public defender and has not yet entered a plea. He did not respond to voicemails and text messages seeking comment.

When asked why Church officials did not immediately contact law enforcement, a Church spokesperson declined to answer, saying the matter was “complex” and in the hands of authorities. However, he said that in general, spiritual advisors must seek help from counselors and other professionals “to determine whether there is reasonable cause to report, as dictated by law.”

But the mother said it was she – not the Church – who arranged the therapy session.

“Their job is to pick up the phone and say, ‘Hello, I have some confusing and conflicting information, but I’m concerned for this person’s safety,'” she said. “They don’t have to be investigators, they just need to tell someone.”

The mother said she plans to raise the church’s failure to notify police with elders when they visit this summer. Still, she plans to stay in the church. When asked why, she replied, “Because I want to go to heaven.” »

Last summer, in the rural expanse of eastern Wyoming, Moorcroft police drove the long dirt road to OALC Church, a large brick building on the outskirts of town with an ornate white cross under the eaves.

Investigators were seeking documents to verify the membership of a man who several children said mistreated them during services. His name was Charles Massie, the brother of Clint Massie, who had pleaded guilty to similar crimes in Minnesota a few months earlier.

Over ten years, according to authorities, Charles Massie had sexually assaulted at least seven girls. Some abuse took place at his home and others in his businesses, where young girls worked part-time. But the vast majority of the abuse took place at the church, according to court documents. Investigators documented 832 incidents in which Massie sat near the girls’ parents, allegedly fondling the girls’ genitals and breasts. One victim, who told police she was 5 or 6 years old when she was abused by Massie, said he “raped me with his fingers.”

Wyoming has charged Charles Massie with nine counts of sexual abuse and assault. He is being held in prison in Nebraska, where prosecutors have also charged him with sexual assault. He has pleaded not guilty in both states. He could not be reached for comment.

When Moorcroft investigators contacted the victims’ families, they learned that they already knew about the abuse. We learned about it three years earlier, according to the charges. But according to court records, none of them told police. Instead, according to the charges, the father of some of the victims told their preacher, David Lindberg, about the abuse in 2024. Charles Massie would later turn himself in, but not for a year.

Day, the top prosecutor in Crook County, Wyoming, said there was “no support” for the victims and that the Church had done nothing to punish Charles Massie. “There are no consequences for him,” she said. “He’s allowed to sit in church with them every Sunday, even after they come forward and say, ‘This man has hurt us.’ » » She said Charles Massie turned himself in to Moorcroft police after admitting to a mental health provider that he had abused children; the claimant told him that he would report Massie if he did not contact the police.

Lindberg disputed the q ualification that he did not act when Charles Massie confessed to him. “All I can say is when I first heard about it, he came to me and he had a problem, so I told him he needed to get therapy and go to the police,” Lindberg said. “And he did.”

He directed additional questions to a church spokesman, Troy Massie, who is a relative of Charles and Clint Massie. In his written responses, Troy Massie said the church asked Charles to stop attending services after he confessed to Lindberg, although he could listen to the services over the phone.

“We continue to improve our efforts as necessary to protect all children,” he wrote.

The Wyoming Church is not alone in being accused of failing to report the attackers. In southwest Washington in 2017, a jury found Church member Carsie Tikka guilty of raping a 9-year-old boy. But a woman, who was a member of the church at the time, said that years before he was charged, Tikka had molested his stepchildren and leaders did nothing to stop it. Instead, Tikka asked his family for forgiveness.

After Tikka was found guilty at trial, a court-appointed psychiatrist wrote in a report that Tikka had “a history of offending against 29 men”, an allegation Tikka denied in court. During his sentencing, Tikka said his conscience was clean. He said he had already “received the testimony of sins forgiven” by one of God’s disciples.

“By your statement here, you clearly have no remorse,” the judge remarked before sentencing him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. “You blame everyone else.”

Then Tikka illustrated the central problem facing prosecutors and victims – a powerful religious culture that prioritizes spiritual absolution over secular justice – with his final words of defiance:

“My sins have been forgiven,” Tikka told the judge. “Do you have yours?” »