Lawsuit: Church failed to protect student from sex abuse

The country’s largest Pentecostal church, along with its Texas and student ministry arms, was sued over accusations it abetted the sexual abuse of a legally blind college student.

The man, who filed the lawsuit under the name John Doe, accused the Assemblies

of God church of failing to monitor and protect him from the abuse of Daniel Savala, a convicted sex offender from Houston.

Doe, a legally blind man from Montgomery County, alleges he was sexually abused when he was a student at Sam Houston State University. The abuse started in 2017 and continued until 2022, according to the lawsuit filed last week in Harris County.

Doe said he joined Chi Alpha Campus Ministries, a student group affiliated with the church that has hundreds of chapters around the country. He was connected to Savala by the group’s pastoral leaders, Eli Stewart and Eli Gautreaux, according to the lawsuit.

The ministers touted Savala as a “prophet” and “angel,” according to the lawsuit, and college students were sent to his house to perform home repairs. Doe described the visits, along with Stewart’s and Gautreaux’s support of Savala, as grooming that eventually led to abuse, according to the lawsuit.

The Assemblies of God church has previously denied its connections to Savala, saying he was never a Chi Alpha staff member and didn’t hold credentials with the church. However, according to Doe’s lawsuit, Savala served as a counselor at an Assemblies of God church camp in Kerrville in the the 1980s and 1990s and was identified as a Chi Alpha staff member in the University of Lafayette’s 1989 yearbook.

As of Friday, the church had not yet responded to Doe’s lawsuit.

Savala is a convicted sex offender. In 2012, he was convicted of sexual abuse and served 90 days in prison following accusations he abused boys while serving as a youth pastor at a church in Ketchikan, Alaska, in the mid-1990s. Savala was required to register as a sex offender as a result of his conviction and is listed in the Texas sex offender registry, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims that Stewart, who was a member of Savala’s youth group in Alaska, and Gautreaux, along with other church leaders, were aware of Savala’s history of abuse and continued to send students to him.

In April 2023, Savala was arrested in Houston and charged with sexual abuse over allegations he assaulted two boys in Waco. The former leader of Baylor University’s Chi Alpha chapter, Christopher Hundl, also was arrested and accused of supplying the boys to Savala. Both men were charged with continuous trafficking of persons and sex abuse of a child in McLennan County, according to district court records.

The charges are still pending, and neither man has entered a plea as of Friday, according to the McLennan County District Clerk’s Office. The attorneys representing

Hundl and Savala could not immediately be reached for comment.

The same month of Savala’s arrest, lawyers representing a group of unnamed alleged victims of Savala sent a letter to college leaders at Texas A&M University, Rice University, Texas State University, the University of Texas and the University of Houston, outlining his connections to campus groups, contact with students and allegations of abuse. The letter called on the colleges to take action to address the allegations.

Days before Hundl’s arrest, Stewart was let go by Mountain Valley Fellowship Church in College Station because of his relationship with Savala, according to the Christian Post.

In a YouTube video showing Stewart’s last message to his congregation, he called Savala a “master manipulator” and “active predator,” and announced he was leaving the church so an investigation could be conducted.

“This could take quite some time, but for the Lord’s sake and the purity of this church’s sake, we believe this to be the best and necessary course of action,” Stewart said.

The church announced in May that Stewart “had fallen into sinful practices unbecoming of the office of a pastor and that he had neglected his duty to protect his flock from a known predator,” and said he had been fired from his post.

Savala was then charged with sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child in Harris County in August 2023. Last month, he was charged with a second count of indecency with a child. The charges stem from alleged assaults of teenage boys that happened in Houston in 2005 and in 2021. Savala’s appointed defense attorney for the Harris County charges did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The new lawsuit is the second one filed against the church in Harris County this year. In February, Stephen Holt, of Brazos County, sued the Assemblies of God, its North Texas district, the Texas A&M chapter of Chi Alpha and Mountain Valley Fellowship Church over their role in Savala’s alleged abuse of Holt’s underage son, who was one of the Houston victims.

The church has denied the claims made in Holt’s lawsuit.

Savala was being held in custody at the Harris County Jail as of Friday, according to jail records. His bond was denied, according to jail records.