On Sep. 29, a California woman identified as Jane Doe, along with her three minor children, filed a civil lawsuit in Sacramento County Superior Court against Grace Community Church (GCC) and her former husband, Clinton Jung.
Editor’s note: This article refers to reports of child sex abuse that some readers might find triggering and/or disturbing.
GCC has been historically known as the church that was pastored by John MacArthur, who died on July 14 at the age of 86 after contracting pneumonia.
The complaint alleges that church leaders—including elders and pastors—failed to report known or suspected child abuse, violated California’s mandated reporter laws, and actively pressured Doe to remain with her abusive husband despite extensive evidence of domestic violence, child endangerment, and child sexual abuse.
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According to the complaint, Doe reported in 2021 that her husband had sexually abused their toddler daughter beginning when the toddler was 2 years old. The complaint alleges:
When J.J. [daughter] was two, Clinton started taking series of sexually suggestive and naked photographs of her. He tongue-kissed her. He physically stopped Plaintiff from taking J.J. to visit family so he could share a bed with her. After Plaintiff and the children left Clinton for good, and Clinton was only allowed to see the children during supervised visitation under a family court order, Clinton took his child into the bathroom of an ice cream store and forced her to touch his penis. Several months later, during another visitation, Clinton did it again, forcing his child into the bathroom of a hotel room and forcing her to look at his penis—despite her protestations.
Doe alleges that after reporting her husband’s abuse to GCC, church leadership instructed her to “submit to her husband’s leadership” and “rebuked” her for alerting law enforcement following an incident. The suit continues:
Plaintiff reported to Grace Community Church that her husband Clinton Jung had sexually abused their toddler daughter. She also reported that Clinton had physically abused their kids and subjected her to domestic violence. Church leadership—mandated reporters under the law—purposefully concealed Clinton’s conduct, refusing to report the abuse and foreseeable future neglect to authorities. Instead, Church leadership spent many months coercing Plaintiff to “submit” to Clinton and his obviously wrongful conduct, and to keep the children in the same house as Clinton, even going so far as to rebuke Plaintiff when she called law enforcement after an incident in which Clinton put her life and the life of the kids at risk. Clinton, emboldened by the Church’s protection, abused their daughter again and again—something that could have been prevented many times over had Church leadership done its duty to report the abuse to authorities.
The lawsuit claims that GCC leaders even supported Jung in family court proceedings, minimizing an incident in which he admitted to kissing his young daughter with his tongue. “Church leadership defended Clinton’s behavior, submitting multiple declarations supporting Clinton and suggesting Plaintiff was not credible,” the complaint reads.
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During the incident inside the ice cream store’s public bathroom, the toddler alleged that her father persuaded her to touch his “private parts.” The toddler said that she rejected his offer until he told her, “You have to.” She proceeded to inform her mother that she had to wash her hands after because her father’s private parts “felt like slippery poop” and were “covered in clear pee.”
