North Country This Week

CANTON — A dozen members of CFCtoo asked the St. Lawrence County Legislature Monday to support the proposed Child Abuse Reporting Expansion Act (CARE) Act.

CFCtoo is an advocacy group that supports abuse survivors who have left Christian Fellowship Center. They work to educate the North Country community on how to prevent and respond to abuse. However, a more short-term goal for the group is ensuring that clergy be added to the mandated reporting list in New York State.

The CARE Act advocates have continued their push for passage of the legislation, which would make clergy mandated reporters. Critics argue the legislation would violate an individual’s First Amendment right.

Many members of CFCtoo spoke at the meeting, highlighting instances of abuse that went unreported to state authorities even after church elders were notified of the abuse.

Abbi Nye, who co-founded CFCtoo, made the most vocal push for legislators to support the CARE Act.

Nye told legislators that Albany has been keeping tabs on events in St. Lawrence County.

“My CFCtoo colleagues and I have spent the past two months meeting with dozens of legislators in Albany. We were introduced on the New York Assembly floor and commended for our work by the Speaker of the Assembly. Albany knows the names of Sean Ferguson and Rick Sinclair,” Nye told legislators.

Sean Ferguson, 43, was charged with first-degree sexual abuse and acting in a manner injurious to a child in May of 2022. Roughly a year later he was sentenced to six-months probation for the crime after he took a pled guilty to second-degree sexual abuse as part of a plea agreement.

As a member of Christian Fellowship Center, Ferguson’s case made waves locally after he was charged in 2022 with sexually abusing children in 2015 due the fact that church leaders had been made aware of abuse allegations but did not report them to authorities.

Sinclair is the church’s senior pastor.

“You have an opportunity to demonstrate to your community and to the state that St. Lawrence County values protecting children,” Nye said.

Nye said the CARE Act is simple “when you strip away the disinformation and the red herrings,” saying it is a tool to protect children.

Nye continued, telling legislators that officials in Albany are aware of the Christian Fellowship Center and some state legislative staffers watched the video of the county legislature’s operations committee meeting on June 12.

It was during that meeting that Legislator Ben Hull, a member of the CFC, asked County Attorney Steve Button for a legal opinion regarding the CARE Act.

Button said that while the goal of the bill, to protect children from sexual abuse, is laudable; it goes to “attack” certain aspects of “truths,” known as the penitent priest exception.

The exemption operates in a similar, but arguably stronger, fashion to attorney-client privilege granted to attorneys.

Button said the law would create difficult situations within churches as religious leaders would be at odds with their religious mandates and the law.

The bill however does include “carve out” exemptions for confessions made in confidence to clergy members.

He said that clergy leaders and members would have a difficult time determining the criteria for the exemptions.

Michele Wilbur, one of the most vocal members of CFCtoo, detailed the abuse she and her children suffered at the hands of her husband.

“I will never forget the day I discovered my ex-husband had molested our adopted daughters. I had stayed with my violently abusive husband for 10 years under pressure from my pastors but that was the day something snapped,” Wilbur said.

Wilbur detailed how she defied her pastors and reported the abuse, later leaving her husband.

“I lost everything, my community, my house and my financial stability,” she said.

When speaking about the Ferguson case, Wilbur said so much time had passed that District Attorney Gary Pasqua “could not muster enough evidence to put this child molester behind bars” because the case was so old and the children involved were so young.

Wilbur said by the time someone else had reported the crime, four years had already gone by, something that should not have happened.

“This act does not impede our free speech or our freedom of religion, it simply protects children,” she said.

Wilbur also read aloud from a letter from Ferguson’s mother, Bonnie Ogilvie,

Ogilvie wrote that the elders who were made aware of the abuse of her grandchildren refused to report the crime “even though they had been told this abuse was genital to genital touching and rubbing.”

According to Ogilvie, her son escaped justice that was “due him as a sexual predator because his abuse remained hidden within the confine of his church for six years.”

She said the pastors chose secrecy, allowing the abuse to happen.

CFCtoo member James Harmer, a Gouverneur resident, read a statement on behalf of Priscila Purcell-Helton.

Purcell-Helton wrote that clergy are not properly trained to spot abuse and lack knowledge of psychology, allowing perpetrators of abuse to slip through the cracks.

In her letter, Purcell-Helton detailed the years of abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband, saying she told Rick Sinclair what was happening to her and her children, only to be told her claims were “unfounded” by church elders.

According to Purcell-Helton, Sinclair told her he didn’t want to come down too hard on her husband “because he had a great mind.”

Purcell-Helton wrote that she felt alone and feared that she wouldn’t be believed by anyone.

For over two years, she and her children continued to suffer abuse, going as far as hiding from her husband as it became more severe, she wrote.

Purcell-Helton said she was told by Sinclair that she was delusional. In her letter, she acknowledged that the years of abuse, coupled with lack of money and a compromised psychological state allowed the abuse to continue.

It wasn’t until she went to Watertown to see a family counselor in 2003 that action was taken. In the letter, Purcell-Helton detailed how the mandated reporter told her she would either have to take action herself against her husband or risk losing her children when child protective services became involved.

Purcell-Helton eventually left her husband and the North Country but she continues to advocate for the passing of the CARE Act, saying it is not an infringement on religious freedoms but rather a necessity to protect women and children.