Reagan Gray, a 26-year-old teacher in Little Rock, Arkansas, has been arrested and charged with sexual assault of a teenager. The alleged victim was a 15-year-old student at the youth group of Immanuel Baptist Church.
At the time of the alleged abuse, which is said to have taken place in 2020 and 2021, Gray was teaching at Little Rock Christian Academy and worked as a volunteer for Immanuel Baptist’s student ministry.
The victim was not a student of Little Rock Christian Academy. Gray met the teen through Immanuel Baptist Church’s youth group and music ministry.
Gray’s arrest comes amid an ongoing scandal centered on Immanuel Baptist Church’s handling of sexual abuse allegations. In March, Dr. Steven Smith resigned as pastor of the church, roughly three months after he disclosed to the congregation that its former assistant children’s ministry director, Patrick Stephen Miller, had been criminally convicted after allegedly assaulting two young girls at the church.
According to THV11, an arrest affidavit said that the parents of Gray’s alleged victim first learned of Gray’s inappropriate relationship with their child when they discovered a text thread between the teen and Gray on the teen’s phone in 2020.
RELATED: SBC Pastor Discloses Years-Old Child Abuse Allegations Against a Former Church Staffer
The parents said that after telling Gray to stop communicating with their son, they reported Gray to Smith. Smith is said to have questioned Gray, who said that her relationship with the teen was not “physical.”
Gray was then reportedly removed as a volunteer from Immanuel Baptist’s student ministry and instructed to undergo counseling. She was subsequently reinstated as a volunteer for the student ministry. The police were not notified.
The arrest affidavit said that when Smith was interviewed in 2024, he said that Gray revealed during a counseling session in the fall of 2023 that her relationship with the teen had been sexual in nature and that she had continued communicating with the teen via Snapchat following her confrontation with the teen’s parents.
In an interview with FBI investigators, the teen said that Gray sent him nude photos of herself on a daily basis and expected him to send nude pictures of himself in return. He also said that Gray performed oral sex on him but did not have intercourse with him so that he could “stay pure,” according to Mirror.
