A former school teacher and volunteer church leader has pleaded no contest to one charge of second degree sexual assault. Reagan Gray was originally arrested in April 2024 for incidents that occurred between her and a 15-year-old youth group student in 2020 and 2021.
Editor’s note: This article refers to reports of child sex abuse that some readers might find triggering and/or disturbing.
As part of the plea agreement, Reagan will serve six years of probation, pay a $1,000 fine, and register as a sex offender, according to KATV. She will also be required to submit a DNA sample and has been ordered to have no contact with the victim.
The victim was a 15-year-old youth group student at Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. Gray was 23 years old at the time of the alleged abuse. She was teaching at Little Rock Christian Academy and worked as a volunteer for Immanuel Baptist’s student ministry.
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The victim was not a student at Little Rock Christian Academy. Gray made contact with him through Immanuel Baptist Church’s youth group and music ministry.
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.
The parents said that after telling Gray to stop communicating with their son, they reported Gray to Dr. Steven Smith, who was then pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church. Smith is said to have questioned Gray, who said that her relationship with the teen was not “physical.”
Gray was 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 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.
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Smith resigned as pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in March 2024, 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.
