I received a message from someone that had been in the youth group a few years after me at Prestonwood Baptist Church. I will refer to her as CM. We connected and spoke on the phone for a while. I remembered CM and her family from my time at Prestonwood. She has been trying for while to expose her personal experience with the circumstances surrounding former youth music minister John Langworthy at Prestonwood. Langworthy was convicted of child sex assault crimes in Mississippi in January 2013. I assisted the Hinds County District Attorney in the criminal case, and a Prestonwood victim assisted the prosecution as well. Langworthy died in 2019.
Prestonwood was named in the 2022 SBC Guidepost abuse report.
This is what CM shared with me:
What happened at Prestonwood Baptist Church (PBC) completely devastated our family. Our entire family of six were all members there and practically lived at the church during the John Langworthy scandal. My mom was the secretary for John and Kathy Langworthy during the time. When she got hired, John offered to take my oldest brother “under his wing” and “disciple” him. I have reason to believe my oldest brother was one of John’s victims. My brother spent more time with John than any other child from the youth group. He would spend the night at John’s apartment, sit in the car with him for hours in front of our house during the evenings in the dark many times “discipling” him and even had permission to take him out of school numerous times for lunch. I vividly remember having a picture of John sitting in bed with my brother, both under the covers, with his arm around him at Camp Lebanon. John spent almost every day with my brother and even helped him become a Wrangler at Pearce High School.
When news about John broke [in 1989], we had a family meeting because my mom no longer had a job. Neither John or Kathy ever contacted us to say anything, so we were all in the dark as to what had really happened. My mom requested to meet with Jack Graham desperate to find out more details and whether my brother was one of his victims. All she had heard was there were several. I am told by my mom that she met with Jack in his office in private. She was not provided with any details or confirmation on my brother. There was no consoling her, whatsoever. However, Jack did offer that PBC would pay for him to get counseling at Minirth Meier Clinic. My mom also asked Jack about whether he was going to warn others or report this to the new church John was going to. His words to her were, “Well, it’s in their ballcourt now”. She was so devastated at the cold nature of his response and lack of information that she left the meeting and went by herself to sit alone in the sanctuary to, what she tells me, “ball my eyes out and beg God for help”. My mom did take my brother to one counseling session at Minirth Meier Clinic. After that my brother refused to go back and my mom didn’t want to force it. This was also during a time when seeing a Psychiatrist was frowned upon in the church and my brother didn’t want people talking about him like there was something wrong with him. I know my parents did not report it to the police trusting that the church would handle it according to scripture. My brother also denied any abuse to us so they didn’t want to make any false accusations.
My brother has never been the same since and has slowly turned to alcohol and substances. As a Family Nurse Practitioner who has treated patients in Psychiatry, I believe this is a direct response to the trauma of abuse, betrayal and injustice he endured. He has told me he was completely betrayed by the church and has lost any desire to attend another one since. The fact that Jack Graham did not report this to police and did not warn others is unfathomable. It was required under the Family State Code at the time. He is fully responsible for enabling John to go on to harm more children as we later learned he did at the church in Mississippi. He also did not care for our family in any way following such a traumatic experience. No one from the church ever reached out to pray with us, console us or support us in any way. My family has never attended church together since.
My mom is still struggling decades later with the trauma of this and often cries about it at night after all these years. Seeing this man continue to pastor this mega church makes us sick. She has given me permission to seek justice on this for her and wants Jack to be held accountable.
“While abusers may claim to love God with their mouths, their actions tell a different story. Subsequently, we do not shelter or enable abusers in the name of Jesus. Rather, we reject their fruitless deeds of darkness and expose them to the light.” Ephesians 5:11
“But those elders who are sinning you are to reprove before everyone, so that the others may take warning” I Timothy 5:20
I can empathize with the hurt and betrayal as Prestonwood pastors have not been forthcoming with the truth about Langworthy and other alleged perpetrators. As a result of my advocacy, my parents want no further contact with me as they stated in 2013. As difficult as it is to discuss matters like this, it was also comforting to me to speak with CM who has been where I was and gets it.
When I heard that Jack Graham and Prestonwood had offered money to her mother for counseling for her brother, that tracked with another Langworthy victim’s experience. This victim’s mother shared how she discovered her son had been abused by Langworthy when Minirith-Meier Clinic called their home asking to speak with her son. Prestonwood had arranged counseling for this victim, still a minor, without notifying his parents.
Dallas Observer: Already angry at the church for how it let her find out about the abuse and the psychiatric appointments, she was even more distraught several months later when she got wind that Langworthy had a job at an elementary school in Clinton, Mississippi. (None of his admitted molestations took place there.) She says her husband called the school’s principal. “He said back to my husband, ‘Well you have put this in my lap and now I’ve got to do something about it.'”
But the family never reported Langworthy to the police. A phone call they got from a deacon named Allen Jordan convinced them it wouldn’t be a good idea. He wasn’t yelling, but he was emphatic the family not say anything, the mother recalls. “You better be careful about what you write, that’s all I’ve got to say,” Jordan said when reached for comment. “That’s a warning to you. You better be careful about what you write.”
Allen Jordan is my dad, a former Prestonwood Baptist Church deacon. In 2011, after my WFAA interview, my husband called my dad. We knew my parents were angry with me. My husband recorded the call which is legal to do so in Texas. My dad later transcribed the call and sent us the transcript.
My dad warned me and my husband on that call in 2011 that we would “pay a big price” for what I did in reporting and exposing Langworthy and Prestonwood.