Church attendance plummets after pastor, wife arrested
On the Sunday after Samuel and Madelaine Emerson were arrested in May, attendance at the non-denominational Cloverdale Christian Fellowship Church plummeted.
Word of the arrests of a pastor and his wife in relation to allegations of sexual assault, sexual touching and threats had made its way through the congregation, and about three-quarters of the church’s 250 members had fled.
In the months that followed, Samuel’s father Randy — senior pastor at the church — held the pulpit and tried without success to contact and regain the trust of those who had left.
Then, after more than two dozen charges were laid against Samuel, 34, and Madelaine, 37, Randy and his wife Christine had to explain to their five grandchildren why they can’t go home.
“There are some legal charges that the police have laid against mommy and daddy and now it’s going to go through the court process and that may take some time. And so we have to be a family here,” Randy told Postmedia, recalling a difficult conversation that took place Tuesday night, after the charges went public.
“You can’t be with mommy and daddy until the court thing is settled one way or another. And even then you may get to live with us,” he told them.
On May 18, police came to interview Randy in relation to his son. When that interview was finished, they put Samuel in handcuffs, to the shock and dismay of his father, and took him away in a police car.
Samuel’s position at the church — which he had held for eight years — ended that day, Randy said.
Samuel now faces 25 charges — 13 counts of sexual assault, 11 counts of being in a position of authority and touching a person for a sexual purpose, and one count of sexual touching of a person under the age of 16.
Madelaine faces three charges — one count of sexual assault, one count of being in a position of authority and touching a person for a sexual purpose, and one count of threats to cause death or bodily harm.
Police have asked for any other potential victims to come forward.
Randy said he believed that none of the offences the pair are alleged to have committed were said to have happened at the church. He said safety protocols there would never have allowed offences like those alleged to happen.
But he believed all of the allegations did come from congregants.
“That’s what makes it so hard. These are all people that we loved and had as part of our lives and I would love to be able to talk to them and bring some health to their lives again, if I could,” he said.
After the May arrests, RCMP officers and social services workers pulled each of Samuel and Madelaine’s children from school and interviewed them, Randy said.
They were poised to be placed in foster homes, Randy recalled, but he and Christine “were blessed with the opportunity to keep them all together” and the pair took and still hold interim custody of the children.
The church first opened on Thanksgiving Sunday in 1992. Samuel was a member since Day 1 and had pursued his education to be part of the pastoral staff.
“He’s lost all of that now. Guilty or innocent, he will never pastor. He will never be able to use his education. He’s lost his social standing,” Randy said.
“I’m not saying that he’s guilty or innocent. I’ve been very careful not to say one way or another,” he said. “My position here is I want to be able to be available to everybody. As soon as I say guilty or innocent — it doesn’t matter which one — there’s a side. And I can’t take sides in this. I have to stay as neutral as I can in order to be available to anyone that wants to avail themselves of what I have to offer.”
Randy said he does not know whether the congregants who left his church now practise their faith elsewhere.
But he relayed a statistic that he had heard. It was that 40 per cent of congregants who leave a church as a result of sexual assault allegations will never practise their faith in a church again.
The Cloverdale Christian Fellowship Society is not in good standing for failure to file annual reports, according to B.C. Registries and Online Services.