Preachers Accused of Sins, and Crimes

April 13, 2007 — -- Sanctuaries are designed to make us feel safe. They provide us peace and a place to pray. Bells call the good to worship and warn the evil to stay away.

This is the kind of American church that a young Christa Brown was drawn to. As a teenager in the 1960s, Brown learned to love music and her God. She grew up in the church, sang in the choir and played the piano.

But as Brown would find out, churches don't always protect the innocent. Sometimes these sanctuaries shield the guilty and even lure predators to a place where young people gather.

The Catholic Church has been widely criticized for how it handled instances of priests sexually abusing young people. And a six-month investigation by "20/20" found Protestant ministers, supposed men of God from every denomination, sexually abusing the children who trusted them. The investigation uncovered "preacher predators" in every corner of the country.

The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant organization in the United States. And the organization is structured in a way that makes it difficult to police these preacher predators. The convention has 16.3 million members and 43,000 independent churches.

Shawn Davies was a youth minister at one of those Baptist churches in the suburbs of Kansas City, Mo. Davies was close to his teen followers, and the members of his church soon found out that he was a little too close. In January of this year, Davies began a 20-year sentence for multiple counts of sexual abuse in Missouri and Kentucky.

One member of the Missouri church, Lee Orth, said that "Nobody saw it coming. I think we felt betrayed, blindsided. You know, Shawn was a very charismatic person."

Davies seduced teenage boys by acting like one of the gang. He talked about girls and sex with the teenagers. He took them on trips, invited them into his office, and showed them pornography. And he took them downstairs or behind the sanctuary to sexually assault them.