Right-wing Christian worship leader now faces life in prison for child sex crimes
Zach Radcliff's alleged crimes stretch back to 2014
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A child sex predator with ties to both the evangelical Christian and MAGA worlds will now stand trial on nearly 60 charges—double the number he was initially charged with—after a preliminary hearing by a judge.
You may recall this story from last October because it made headlines for reasons that will soon be obvious.
Zach Radcliff was a 29-year-old graduate of Liberty University. A worship director at Oakwood Church in Michigan. A guy who performed original music at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2019. A supporter of Donald Trump.
And then he was arrested for sexually abusing children.
Zachary Joseph Radcliff, 29, was arraigned on two charges of aggravated “child sexually abusive activity,” two charges child sexually abusive activity and six charges of using the internet to communicate with another to commit a crime. He is facing up to 25 years in prison.
It was actually much worse when you read the details; Radcliff was accused of producing illicit content involving kids stretching all the way back to 2014.
Liberty University deleted the page touting his CPAC appearance and the church’s home page soon included a giant We Know Exactly Why You’re Visiting Our Website disclaimer:
We received some very disturbing news about our music and youth director, Zachary Radcliff who is also the son of our senior pastor, Frank Radcliff. We realized while talking to him that there was more to the situation than was being expressed. He was suspended with pay on October 3rd, pending further investigation. More information was given to us on Saturday, October 12th, at 4:00 in the afternoon. Pastoral staff met with our church that evening and Sunday morning. Zach was terminated from his job, without pay effective Saturday, October 12th.
The State Police were notified by families that were involved and our church staff. We are not aware of the full extent of his crimes, and we are doing everything we can to cooperate with the ongoing police investigation.
The information that we received was shocking. We were told that Zachary had been soliciting inappropriate photos and possibly videos from teens. We have also heard other stories. This information has ripped our hearts apart. The safety and protection of the individuals in our church is what is paramount to us. We are devoted to doing what we can for the care of the victims of these crimes.
Every one of our staff members and individuals working with our children, teens, and adults go through background checks. We do our level best to make sure all are protected.
The church added that anyone with more information should contact the Michigan State Police, which was the least they could do. Certainly the staffers at the church couldn’t be trusted. The kids would have been infinitely safer listening to drag queens read stories at libraries than attending youth group at this church.
The timeline here was also interesting. The website said the church learned about the allegations and suspended Zach (with pay) on October 3. On October 6, Frank Radcliff delivered a sermon—the series was ironically titled “Not Today, Satan!”—in which he said nothing about the allegations at all. He ended the sermon by telling the congregation, “We always finish a service with song. We're not gonna do that today. We always finish a song by hearing Zach tell us to go be the church. Go be the church. Give somebody a hug.”
The sermon dated October 20, given a week after Zach was “terminated from his job,” included no mention of him at all. (It’s not clear if they held a service on October 13. No video of it is on their YouTube channel, though a service was listed on the church’s calendar that day.)
This was a family, though, that delivered many messages trashing All Things Liberal. At the height of the pandemic, when people were literally avoiding going outdoors as much as possible, Zach Radcliff led church members in a downtown, maskless sing-along that marched to a local cemetery.
And in 2022, in an interview with Christian radio host Chris Ayotte, Zach’s father Frank Radcliff went off on the supposed immorality of the left:
AYOTTE: Then you have this gender identity ideology, which is from the pit of Hell, because it is confusing our children. These are children. And we're going to enable and reward gender dysphoria… which may be a real issue. I'm not saying that these things aren't legitimate issues that can be worked through, but I'm gonna affirm the child, male or female, or I'm going to try to help people in a constructive manner, Pastor Frank, win over whatever issue it is that they're dealing with. But I think, as Christians, we should be able to speak the truth in love, should we not?
FRANK RADCLIFF: I believe so. I believe that… that's where we get in trouble. We have become so afraid of what someone's gonna say about us, or we have become so tolerant, that somewhere in there we have forgotten our job is to help people grow and change. And sometimes that means sitting down and saying, “This lifestyle that you're choosing is immoral. It's wrong.”
Instead of sitting down and looking at little people that we won't allow them to have a drink, we won’t allow them to smoke a cigarette, we won't allow them to do all these other things, but we'll literally do child abuse on that kid…
Our whole church is looking at each other and saying, “It is my job to love on you, and it's my job also, every once in a while, to take you out to the woodshed and spank your butt.”
Even if you ignored the inadvertently awkward phrasing at the end, during that segment of the interview, Zach could be heard multiple times chiming in with words like “Right” and “Yep.” He was fully invested in treating trans people as immoral even though he knew he was the guy children needed to avoid.
The same people who condemned trans people in the name of denouncing immorality ignored the sex predator sitting right in front of them. And the sex predator may have gotten away with his alleged crimes for years largely because he was protected by the shield of Christianity, which gave him access to children along with unearned levels of trust.
Last month marked the beginning of his trial, and as the judge heard preliminary testimony from some of the alleged victims, the number of charges Zach faces just got higher and higher:
Supporters of the eight men and one boy who testified against Zachary Radcliff, 29, could be heard crying in the courtroom as 14A-1 District Court Judge J. Cedric Simpson read off the additional charges Tuesday, March 4. Simpson added nine counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and 21 counts of child sexually abusive activity to an already lengthy criminal complaint. He did not send three charges from an original 33 to trial court after victims did not appear for testimony.
Radcliff will stand trial on 17 charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, 28 counts of child sexually abusive activity, seven counts of aggravated child sexually abusive activity and seven counts of using a computer to commit a crime. If convicted, he is facing up to life in prison.
…
The witnesses, ranging in age from 17 to 24, told the court Radcliff solicited them for sexually explicit videos, sent them photos of himself naked or paid them in exchange for videos.
Truly vile stuff. And that’s just from the witnesses who testified. At least some victims did not do that—or could not do that—causing three of the original charges to be dropped.
And how did Zach pay the survivors for videos? According to the judge, that money may have come from the church.
One witness testified to Radcliff using a church credit card to purchase items later given to a different victim, Simpson said.
“Sad to say, but I think that’s what happened,” Simpson said.
So that’s where the tithes were going…
Whether a jury believes that will be another story, but that’s where this is heading. Instead of spending more time in church convincing Christians that transgender people are their enemies, or singing on another CPAC stage, Zach Radcliffe could spend the rest of his life behind bars. Even that feels too kind given the alleged trauma he inflicted upon his victims.
On a side note, Frank Radcliff apparently delivered a sermon last week that was Islamophobic, sexist, and homophobic. He argued that the higher birth rates of Muslim families would soon lead to “every person in our government [being] Islamic.” He also condemned “dumb women, stupid women, and gay people” for protesting against Israel’s genocide because they wouldn’t have equal rights in Palestine. (Spoiler: They don’t have equal rights in the United States, either, and yet they still have the moral courage to demand better.)
I say he “apparently” delivered that sermon because there’s no longer any record of it on the church’s YouTube page. (That video came from a Reddit user who saved the clip before it disappeared.)
The church seems to have a habit of hiding things they don’t want the public to know about. And yet the damning evidence keeps popping up against their will.
Meanwhile, the most clear evidence that this church is not a safe place goes ignored while the pastor makes up new enemies for everyone in the congregation to hate.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
Why, what a coincidence! Just last night, I was writing a letter to a newspaper that published an article about this. The past few weeks, I have engaged in a campaign to do just that every time I come across yet another article about a child molesting pastor. Gotta keep busy. And this keeps me busy just about every single goddam day.
For some reason.
Enjoy.
Dear Ms. Pair,
Your article on former Youth Pastor Zachary Radcliff— a former church leader, a son of a pastor, and a darling of the kind of religious right organization that regularly throws unfounded accusations about child molestation at LGBT people—showed up on my newsfeed today. I would like to note something. He is not a drag queen. He is not a transgender person. He is not a gay man. He is not a lesbian woman.
What he is, or was, is a Christian pastor. Nearly every day on my newsfeed, I get at least one story, if not more, about yet another professional Christian, usually either a Protestant pastor or Catholic priest arrested, OR convicted, OR sentenced for sex crimes, usually against children, occasionally against adults, mostly women, and occasionally men. Nearly every single day. In 2023, I believe there were close to 300 of these stories— arrested, or convicted, or sentenced, and thus, not all the same guy. And those are just the ones that showed up in my newsfeed.
One of my biggest questions is why mainstream journalism does not look at this phenomenon. Oh, yes indeed, the stories will show up individually, but no one is doing a story about the sheer number of Christian pastors or priests arrested, or convicted, or sentenced. There has been nothing major since the Spotlight series from Boston a generation ago.
This happens very single year. And this is also different than school teachers molesting their students, which is the usual go-to deflection from the religious right. No one claims that school teachers are chosen by God to be teachers, or represent morality. Nor are school teachers pointing at other people and claiming that entire groups of innocent people are the problem. No one is making excuses for school teachers. Rather, they are prosecuting them.
My newsfeed deals with eventsjust in this country alone. If you Google “Catholic priests sexual abuse”, you will also get literally hundreds of thousands of hits, if not millions. You’ll find that the problem is international in scope, with reports that are often horrific. You’ll find out that the problem is at least 1000 years old— google Saint Peter Damien. You will find out that the coverups have been going on for centuries— google Karen Liebreich. If you need something more recent than a 400 year-old scandal, you can learn all about the diocese of New Orleans and the owner of a local sportsball team, and what they did to obfuscate the issue. You will find that the Catholic Church has paid out literally billions to settle abuse cases.
If you Google “Protestant pastor sexual abuse”, rather than Catholics, you will also get literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of hits. You can Google Ted Haggard, Paul Pressler, or Matt Schlapp. You can also Google the reason why the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, recently resigned his position, and why the leadership of the Church of England is in turmoil right now. Apart from from a failure of leadership and institutionalized cronyism, what lies underneath is a series of sexual abuse scandals going back decades, and the usual cover-ups, don’t-look-at-me’s, and excuses.
If you Google “drag queen sexual abuse”, you will get a few names over the past few years of people in the drag community who have been associated with sexual abuse. A few names over a few years. If you Google “transgender people and sexual abuse”, you will also get a few names over a few years. Usually, the people that make the news are people with penises, who claimed to be transgender women, who are harassing women. Most people would call them heterosexual men, regardless of appearances.
If you Google “gay men sexual abuse”, you will also get a few hits over the years. Unfortunately, we gay men are not immune to this, but even so, the bulk of sexual abuse, even same-sex abuse, is committed by men who would be called either pedophiles outright, OR heterosexual in terms of their interests, experiences, and history. Google “Boy Scouts sexual abuse”. This went on for decades. And yet, gay men are blamed for the epidemic of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, as they were by the Boy Scouts, even though known gay people were not allowed in the Scouts. Even though the Catholic Church admitted, through the John Jay report, that gay men were not the problem.
Some of those priests may indeed be same-sex attracted. Some might even be termed homosexual: Cardinal McCarrick comes to mind. None would be termed gay. But without a doubt, every single one of these Catholic men was a priest.
And finally, if you Google “lesbian and sexual abuse“, you will get a very few hits over a few years. Still not a drag queen. Still not transgender.
And yet, the unending story in the mainstream media is all about drag queens and transgender people, occasionally about men who would be termed homosexual. This is one of the places where mainstream newspapers and mainstream journalism are failing.
Something to think about.
To summarize then, we have another serial sexual abuser of children who's NOT liberal, NOT atheist, NOT trans, NOT LGBT, and NOT a drag queen. Instead, per the usual pattern, it's one of the 'But, but, THEY'RE the immoral ones!!!' christian nationalists who got a pass because his daddy's the pastor, and nobody bothered to check his background. [Nor did they create an environment where victims felt safe coming forward to report him.]
Say hi to Josh Duggar for us, Zachy.