Church wants full investigation into claims a member sexually assaulted children decades ago

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Evangel Temple said it wants a full police investigation into claims a church member sexually assaulted children decades ago in St. Louis.
 
Roy Bay, 56, made the claims publicly Tuesday during a Jacksonville City Council meeting on the human rights ordinance, which he was speaking out against.
 
The expansion of the HRO would offer protections for the LGBT community in housing, employment and public accommodations.
 
"At the age of 10 to 12 years old, I was in restrooms, businesses, and I was sexually assaulted by the homosexual community," Bay said to City Council.
Bay then spoke exclusively with Action News Jax about his claims.

"For about 20 years, yes I admit, the things I did was wrong," Bay said. "I sexually assaulted young kids 'cause I thought it was acceptable."

"To hear the statement that he made was complete news to us," Pastor Garry Wiggins said. "We were just totally taken aback last night by the statement that was made."

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Wiggins said Bay is a member of Evangel Temple and wants a full investigation into Bay's claims.
 
"If they are true, we're going to protect our church, protect our families and yet still try to reach out and help hurting people," Wiggins said.

Action News Jax looked into Bay's criminal history and did not find any records of violent crimes in Missouri or Florida.

Bay has been arrested in Jacksonville for nonviolent offenses including traffic violations.

Some people who knew Bay are questioning whether Bay is telling the truth.

Kevin Sapp used to work with Bay and said he questions whether Bay only claims to have assaulted children to make a point about his opposition to the HRO.

Critics have said the HRO would allow sex offenders access to bathrooms of the opposite gender.

 "I'm looking at it as like, Roy, what are you trying to do?" Sapp said. "What are you trying to prove? What are you trying to get attention to? Why would you wait after all those years just to bring this out now to say something?"

Wiggins said Bay will continue to live on church property but said they are taking precautions to protect the congregation.
 
"Part of that is going to be restricting any possible contact with children and young people," Wiggins said. "He will be allowed to come to the church services and be seated in an appropriate spot, which will be watched by our security."

Christopher M. Anderson, executive director of MaleSurvivor, said Bay's statements that homosexual activity is a root cause of child sexual abuse are categorically wrong.

"Research is clear that a significant proportion of serial child molesters self identify as heterosexual," Anderson said. "Many abusers hide their crimes behind veils of 'normality' oftentimes getting married and having children to better deflect attention away from themselves and gain the trust of others. The stories of Jared Fogle and Jerry Sandusky are perfect examples of this behavior."

Anderson sent a statement to Action News Jax saying the following:

"It is vital to stress that the vast majority of survivors of child sexual abuse never go on to perpetrate abuse themselves. A strong body of research backs demonstrates this, one of the most recent studies finding, "proportionally very few of these sexually abused boys (3%) went on to become sexual offenders; and, contrary to findings typically reported in retrospective clinical studies, proportionally few sexual offenders (4%) had a confirmed history of sexual abuse." - Testing the sexually abused-sexual abuser hypothesis: A prospective longitudinal birth cohort study. Ensuring the civil rights of LGBTQ persons does not put children at greater risk for sexual abuse, and suggesting that survivors will become perpetrators only creates more shame and stigma for survivors and more roadblocks to healing."

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