How a Christian college ministry glorified a sex offender and enabled him to keep abusing students
This article is part of "Pastors and Prey," a series investigating sex abuse allegations in the Assemblies of God. HOUSTON — Daniel Savala leans back in a cloth armchair, raises his right hand and swears before God that what he's about to say is the truth. Looking into the camera, the Pentecostal missionary speaks in slow, measured sentences, describing how, for decades, he gained the trust of college students who came to his ivy-draped bungalow in search of spiritual guidance. Using scripture, he convinced them they could open up about uncomfortable topics like pornography and masturbation. Then he would strike, touching their penises and pressuring them to touch his, all under the guise of bringing them closer to Jesus. "I knew that I was wrong," Savala says in the video, filmed by a lawyer in 2023. "But I did it anyway." Religion, he says, was the tool of his deception. "People can just see that spiritual part of your life without seeing the whole of who you are." And the person he truly was? "Manipulative," he says matter-of-factly. "Cunning." "Sinister." In the two years since Savala recorded that confession at his home in Houston, lawyers, activists and whistleblowers have worked to untangle how a convicted sex offender with an eighth-grade education managed to convince scores of pastors and young Christians to put their faith in him — and why church officials repeatedly failed to stop him. For more on this story, watch "NBC News Daily" at noon ET and "Hallie Jackson NOW" at 5 p.m. ET onNBC News Now. In police reports, lawsuits,online forumsand interviews with NBC News, dozens of boys and young men have described how Savala spun his own twisted version of the gospel. He taught them that seeing each other naked in his backyard sauna was essential to becoming true brothers in Christ — or, as he put it, "nudity is unity." For those struggling with lustful temptation, he offered a counterintuitive solution: group masturbation, sometimes while listening to Christian worship music. He pushed some of his disciples further; in lawsuits, signed statements and criminal filings, at least 10 have accused him of sexually abusing them. "He would say things like, 'Hey, you know it's OK to masturbate,'" said Joseph Cleveland, who says Savala groomed and sexually abused him for a decade beginning in 2004, when he was 15. "'Because we're brothers, we can do it together.'" The pastors who shepherded hundreds of high school and college students to Savala's home were part of Chi Alpha, a Christian ministry that evangelizes on university campuses. Students seek out Chi Alpha to connect with God and each other, through small Bible studies and rollicking worship services — and, for more than 30 years, through Savala. Generations of Chi Alpha leaders hailed him as a spiritual savant who could answer life's deepest mysteries. The boys and young men who devoted themselves to Savala called him "Papa Daniel," "God's vagabond" and "the holiest man alive." At his direction, teams of students built the backyard sauna that became the site of his alleged crimes. So wrapped up in his teachings, his followers often didn't see themselves as victims until years or decades later. At least one of the college students Savala sexually exploited later became a pastor and brought his own boys to learn from his master inside his darkened sauna. The reward for that minister's devotion: Like Savala, he now faces the possibility of life in prison. Savala's ministry collapsed in early 2023 when several men came forward, some anonymously, to accuse him and some of his protégés of sexual abuse and exploitation, triggering a wave of criminal charges, lawsuits and pastor dismissals. Savala was arrested, and at least six Chi Alpha pastors, leaders and students who studied under him were charged with sexual abuse. The revelations rocked Chi Alpha and the Pentecostal denomination that runs it, the Assemblies of God, which has nearly 3 million members at 13,000 churches across the U.S. As Savala, 69, awaits trial in Waco, Texas, Assemblies of God leaders have sought to distance themselves from the lay minister, repeatedly asserting that Savala was not employed by Chi Alpha and has never been credentialed to preach in the denomination. But an NBC News investigation, based on interviews and a review of emails, court records, photographs and social media posts, shows that Savala was deeply entrenched in Chi Alpha, with some leaders crediting him for the ministry's rapid growth in recent decades. The reporting reveals that Assemblies of God leaders — all the way up to the denomination's national superintendent — were warned repeatedly about Savala's troubling history but did not cut off his influence. These failures allowed more children and young men to be abused, the reporting shows. It wasn't the first time officials with the Assemblies of God, the world's largest Pentecostal denomination, have been accused of mishandling sex abuse allegations. In May,an NBC News investigationrevealed how church leaders dismissed repeated abuse allegations against a charismatic children's pastor named Joe Campbell in the 1980s, allowing him to remain in ministry for years as more alleged victims came forward. Do you have a story to share about the Assemblies of God's handling of sex abuse allegations?Email reporter Mike Hixenbaugh. Chi Alpha had a clear opportunity to break ties with Savala in 2012, when authorities in Alaska charged him with sexually abusing boys as a youth minister in the 1990s. Instead, ministry leaders in Texas rallied to his defense, sending a staff member to Alaska to pay his bail and — after Savala pleaded guilty to sexual abuse of a minor — organizing a letter-writing campaign to ask the judge for leniency. After a stint in jail, Savala went right back to hosting Chi Alpha students at his home in Houston. In the decade that followed, at least half a dozen people contacted Assemblies of God officials in Texas and at the denomination's national headquarters in Springfield, Missouri, alerting them that Chi Alpha was exposing students to a sex offender. These whistleblowers wrote emails, made phone calls and spoke up at internal meetings. Again and again, they were dismissed or ignored, NBC News found. "Hiddenness is the ally of abuse," said Anthony Scoma, a pastor whoresigned an Assemblies of God leadership positionin Texas after he said senior denomination officials failed to act on his warnings about Savala in 2023. "The Bible talks about shining light into dark places. But leadership in the Assemblies of God says, 'Oh, don't shine light into our dark places.'" Rather than reckon with how church leaders welcomed a sex offender into the fold, Savala's accusers say the Assemblies of God has taken a defensive stance, refusing to release an internal investigation andrelying on nondisclosure agreementsto keep the story from spreading. Critics, including several current andformer Assemblies of God pastors, say this response exposes a church leadership culture that's more concerned with avoiding legal liability than protecting the vulnerable. They're calling on the Assemblies of God to commission an independent review of its handling of sex abuse allegations nationwide to ensure nothing like this happens again. Assemblies of God church leadersallowed a children's pastor to continue preaching for yearsafter he was accused of sexually abusing girls. An NBC News documentarytraces the 40-year fight to stop a preacher accused of raping children. In a statement to NBC News, the Assemblies of God said it directed Chi Alpha leaders to stay away from Savala after receiving a report about him in 2018. Five years later, after receiving "reports of sexual abuse," the denomination said it "took appropriate actions," leading to the dismissal of more than a half dozen ministers with ties to Savala. "We have been heartbroken to hear allegations related to Daniel Savala and the pain his reported actions caused," the statement said. "The Assemblies of God stands in strong opposition to the teachings and practices he followed." Denomination leaders declined interview requests and did not answer detailed questions. Savala has not entered a plea on his charges in Texas, and he and his lawyers did not respond to requests for comment. But in April 2023, as the accusations mounted, he recorded the confession in his living room; it's unclear what led him to do so. The grainy homemade video later circulated among Savala's accusers and was shared with NBC News. Contemplating how he managed to conceal his misdeeds for so long, Savala's eyes shift momentarily, then his gaze returns to the camera. "I had them all very well under my spell." Joseph Cleveland wasstruggling with his parents' separation in 2004 when his youth pastor brought him to someone he said could help. The walls of Daniel Savala's home were lined with pictures from around the world and books on Christian theology. Sitting in his bedroom, Savala listened intently for two hours as Cleveland told him about his turbulent home life and kids at school who bullied him over his faith. Cleveland couldn't believe a revered, world-traveling missionary was taking an interest in him, a 15-year-old. As he and his youth pastor headed for the door, Cleveland says Savala pulled him aside with a final word of encouragement: "You know, if you ever want to come back here just by yourself, you're more than welcome." Cleveland's mother was elated. "This is the Lord," she told her son. "The Lord gave you a father figure." An evangelical hippie with a mop of wavy black hair, Savala had preached across Europe, Africa, Asia and the U.S. before settling in Houston in the 1990s to care for his parents. About an hour north was Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, home to a fledgling Chi Alpha chapter. Savala, having worked with a Chi Alpha group in Louisiana, set his sights on Sam Houston as his new mission field. Chi Alpha, or XA, is the Greek abbreviation for christou apostoloi, or "Christ's ambassador." With 268 chapters across the U.S., the coed ministry combines the emotional intensity of an Assemblies of God church service — clapping, jumping, speaking in tongues — with the closeness of a fraternity or sorority. Separated by gender into small groups, students find their spiritual brothers and sisters, the friends who will later be groomsmen and bridesmaids at their weddings. Savala quickly dazzled the young pastors in charge of Chi Alpha at Sam Houston, regaling them with stories that sounded ripped out of the New Testament. He was virtually illiterate as a young man — until he picked up a Bible and began to read. He once prayed over a disabled man in Malta, then watched the man's clubbed foot grow to full strength before his eyes. After meeting him, one senior Chi Alpha pastordescribed Savalaas "magnetic," an "absolute enigma" and "the wisest man I'd ever met in all of my life." With that endorsement, Savala became the ministry's unofficial figurehead at Sam Houston. He taught his new followers never to question their spiritual leaders, and under his influence Chi Alpha pushed students who had planned to become teachers or police officers to instead go into ministry. Huntsville became a training ground for new Assemblies of God pastors and missionaries, and as those young ministers fanned out across Texas and the nation, many brought Savala's teachings with them. They called his home the Lion's Den; traveling to it was a rite of passage for the men of Chi Alpha and the younger teens from local church groups they sometimes brought with them. Pastors who sent students for spiritual guidance encouraged them to perform free work or discreetly leave cash inside one of the books on Savala's shelves. Chi Alpha volunteers had not yet built the small wooden sauna in Savala's backyard when Cleveland, then 16, began driving 45 minutes to see him every other weekend in 2005. Instead, Savala took him to a sauna at the YMCA, where they got naked and discussed Scripture. The first time the conversation turned to sex, Savala spoke in the tone of a father counseling a teen struggling with lust and pornography, Cleveland said. In an evangelical culture that encouraged young people to remain pure even in their thoughts, Savala's openness felt like a revelation. The conversations quickly turned more explicit, with Savala commenting on Cleveland's penis and asking the teen what he thought of his: "You know, you could touch it if you ever wanted to," Cleveland remembers him saying. Back at his home, Savala insisted he give it a try. Cleveland says he didn't recognize what Savala did to him over the next decade as sexual abuse. Performing oral sex on an older man initially seemed wrong, but Savala was a brilliant theologian and prophet; this must have been part of what made him holy. He was dispensing secret wisdom, with an emphasis on secret. Savala told him no one else would understand, Cleveland said. After high school, Cleveland enrolled in community college and joined Chi Alpha at Sam Houston State. He became a small group leader and later took a job on the staff. Before long, he, too, was leading cars full of young men to Houston to learn from his mentor. In the summerof 2012, Eli Stewart, one of the top Chi Alpha pastors at Sam Houston State,wrote an urgent pleato ministry leaders and alumni: "Our dear friend Daniel needs you." Savala had recently beenindicted in Alaskaafter he was accused of sexually abusing several boys at a church in the 1990s. Two of the boys, now men, had filed police reports, and Savala traveled there to face charges. Chi Alpha leaders had already dispatched a junior staff member to Alaska to pay Savala's $10,000 bail and hired a lawyer to defend him. Now Stewart was calling for collective action. Describing the allegations as "an absolute attack of the devil," Stewart wrote that Savala was preparing to take a plea deal — not to reduce his sentence, but to protect the families of the men falsely accusing him. He called on his Chi Alpha brothers to write letters to the judge: "If you have children and would be comfortable having Daniel stay in your home or having your children at Daniel's house, the judge needs to know that." At a Chi Alpha staff meeting later that year, Stewart insisted that Savala, who served 90 days in jail and was now a registered sex offender, was innocent. Stewart said he knew firsthand that the allegations were a lie because he grew up in Alaska and had been a teenager in Savala's youth group when the abuse allegedly took place, said Krystopher Scroggins, a Chi Alpha pastor who attended the meeting. Scroggins, who now leads a Chi Alpha chapter in San Angelo, Texas, said he didn't send small groups to visit Savala after that, but he and others believed Stewart at the time. "We all bought it, hook, line and sinker," he said. "Because you're supposed to be able to trust your pastors." Stewart didn't respond to messages from NBC News. Savala's victims have come to view his 2012 conviction as a line of demarcation. With his abuses out in the open, it was the moment when ministry leaders should have broken free from Savala's influence, but instead chose the opposite path. Eight months later, in March 2013, Kieran Salgado, a freshman Chi Alpha member at San Antonio State University, was selected for a mission trip to Houston. He and several other students spent a week with Savala to do restoration work on his house. Each night before bed, Salgado — unaware of his host's criminal record — said Savala told the students to undress and join him in his cramped, cedar-planked sauna. Sitting leg-to-leg, they prayed, sang worship songs and spoke in tongues. The nudity was meant to create an atmosphere of intimacy and openness, Salgado believed, ushering them closer to Jesus. The next time Salgado visited Houston, he came alone. And what Savala did in the sauna — forcefully grabbing Salgado's penis while masturbating himself — no longer felt like a spiritual awakening, he said, but a vulgar act of abuse. In the fall of 2013, he built the courage to tell a young Chi Alpha staff member, Todd Jackson, who was training to become a minister. Salgado said Jackson cut him off. "Instantly he said, 'I don't believe you.'"Traumatized, Salgado quit Chi Alpha and transferred to another college. In an interview with NBC News, Jackson confirmed Salgado's account. He attributed his mishandling of the encounter, in part, to the ministry's culture of discouraging young men from questioning spiritual leaders. And in Chi Alpha, there was no leader more revered than Savala. Jackson knew Savala used nudity to push students out of their comfort zones. He figured Salgado had simply misunderstood. "I defended Daniel to my shame," Jackson said, "because I thought I knew Daniel better." Over the nextdecade, the pattern repeated again and again. People came to church leaders with concerns about Savala, and those warnings went unheeded. Ron Bloomingkemper Jr. had quit Chi Alpha at Sam Houston State in the late 1990s after he says Savala asked him to masturbate together. He was outraged years later, in 2013, when he learned of Savala's child sex abuse conviction and continued connection to the ministry. Bloomingkemper said he called Tim Barker, a pastor and the superintendent of the Assemblies of God regional council that oversees the denomination in south Texas. Barker seemed concerned, Bloomingkemper said, and he promised to investigate. After a few months, Bloomingkemper called again. "I said, 'I'm following up about the Daniel thing.' And he goes, 'I completely forgot about that.'" That's when Bloomingkemper said he realized: "They're not going to do anything about this." Frustrated, he said he dropped the issue and tried to move on. Barker, who was later accused in a lawsuit of failing to act on warnings about Savala, didn't respond to questions from NBC News. A lawyer representing the Assemblies of God's South Texas district councilsaid in a letterthat Barker could not comment due to pending litigation. Although Savala never served on staff with Chi Alpha, the lawyer said that "we understand the profound seriousness of these accusations and are committed to ensuring that justice is served." Over the next several years, Chi Alpha saw explosive growth at Sam Houston State and across Texas, catching the attention of state and national Assemblies of God leaders. Chapters led by Eli Stewart and other Savala disciples were churning out dozens of new ministers every year. Those pastors went on to start new Chi Alpha chapters, plant churches and become missionaries, winning new believers — and new revenue — for the denomination. All the while, Chi Alpha groups kept visiting Savala's sauna. In 2016, a former Sam Houston State student filed a Title IX complaint with the university alleging that Savala had been sexually abusing him for about two years, according to a copy of the university's investigative report and a later lawsuit. The university closed the investigation after failing to find evidence that Savala was abusing current Sam Houston State students. But it did recommend that Chi Alpha notify leaders of its small groups about Savala's criminal record, according to the university's report. Nevertheless, the pilgrimages continued. In the fall of 2017, Savala began sexually abusing a blind Sam Houston State student, according toa lawsuit filed last year. Unable to drive himself, the student, identified as John Doe, said he relied on Chi Alpha members to bring him to Houston — where Savala used language from the Bible to pressure him to have oral and anal sex. Afraid of losing the elevated status within Chi Alpha that came with being one of Savala's favorites, the student told no one, his lawyer said. A year later, a former Chi Alpha member named Monica Roeger gave Assemblies of God leaders another opportunity to investigate and intervene. Roeger, who lives in Oregon, knew some of the boys who had accused Savala of abusing them in Alaska and had closely followed the 2012 criminal case. So, she was stunned when, in March 2018, a Chi Alpha missionary from Oregon posted a picture of himself on Facebook with Savala. Roeger did some research and discovered several social media posts that suggested Savala was still closely connected to the college ministry. Over the next year and a half, Roeger sent 11 emails to national Assemblies of God leaders warning of Savala's influence. After one official responded saying he had spoken to Chi Alpha leaders in Texas and found "no indication of anything but positive interactions" with Savala, Roeger elevated the matter to Doug Clay, the denomination's general superintendent, or top national leader. Clay never responded directly, the emails show, but in June 2018, Donna L. Barrett, the denomination's general secretary, wrote to Roeger on Clay's behalf. Barrett said that Savala wasn't a credentialed Assemblies of God minister and that the national office didn't have authority to intervene in local church matters. She copied the leaders of the denomination's district offices in north and south Texas and assured Roeger they would address her concerns. Clay and Barrett didn't respond to messages from NBC News. In a statement, the Assemblies of God said that, after receiving a report about Savala in 2018, it warned Chi Alpha leaders "to cease contact and not permit students or leaders to be around him." But his connection to the ministry continued. Roeger sent a final message to Clay in December 2019, after finding a photo online that appeared to show Savala at a recent Chi Alpha leadership event in Colorado. "Let it be noted," she wrote, "that the national offices of the Assemblies of God and Chi Alpha have been notified of the continued presence of a convicted sexual predator in their leadership events." She received no response. Nobody warned Stephenand Jessica Holt when the man their pastor called Papa Daniel took a personal interest in their 13-year-old son in 2021. Quite the opposite, the leaders of Mountain Valley Fellowship Church told them that Savala was a prophet and that they should be honored. Savala protégé Eli Stewart had started the Assemblies of God-affiliated church a few years earlier after leaving Sam Houston State to launch a Chi Alpha chapter at Texas A&M University in College Station. Congregants referred to Savala as "father to none, father to all" because of his role as a church patriarch despite having no children of his own. Unaware of Savala's criminal record, the Holts allowed a Chi Alpha staff member to bring their son to Savala's house for mentorship in the fall of 2021. Two years passed before their son broke down in tears and revealed what happened at Savala's sauna. The fear he felt getting undressed in front of grown men. The way Savala looked at his naked body. The invitation to touch him. This wasn't the only betrayal. Four Chi Alpha members, young men who had taken an interest in mentoring the Holts' son, had also sexually exploited the boy, the Holts said, exposing their genitals and pressuring him to do the same. (Savala and the four others were later charged with indecency with a child; all but Savala have pleaded not guilty). The Holts were furious when they learned that Assemblies of God officials had been warned repeatedly. They sued for negligence and settled in June for an undisclosed sum. "People were hurt because they just didn't care," Stephen Holt said. In 2021, nine years after Savala's conviction in Alaska, the youngest of his alleged Texas victims began visiting his sauna. The two boys were bought there by a Chi Alpha pastor they trusted implicitly: their own father. The allegations would later be spelled outin arrest warrants. Christopher Hundl, a Chi Alpha pastor at Baylor University in Waco, told police that Savala became his spiritual mentor back when he was a college student. They masturbated each other because Savala "described this as a spiritual activity," the warrants said. After Hundl became a pastor and a father, he began taking his own boys — ages 11 and 12 — to learn the ways of his mentor. They thought of him as their spiritual grandfather. Hundl, so invested in Savala's teachings that he set up a sauna at his home, later confessed to police. He declined an NBC News interview request. His boys told an officer that their dad instructed them to strip and masturbate in front of Savala on multiple occasions. And with their father present, they said, Savala touched their genitals and told them to never tell anyone. Both men, mentor and protégé, were indicted on trafficking charges and now face up to life in prison without parole if convicted. The secrets beganspilling out in April 2023 when Bloomingkemper, Roeger and other whistleblowers launched a website and forum dedicated to exposing spiritual and sexual abuse in Chi Alpha. The site, "XA and the Lion's Den," became a public repository for allegations. The Texas A&M student newspaper, The Battalion,broke the storyof Savala's abuses and his enablers, followed by articles in theChristian press. A decade after insisting Savala was innocent of abuse in Alaska, Eli Stewart told his Texas congregation that "a major influence" in his life had "turned out to be a master manipulator." After launching an investigation, the Assemblies of God revoked Stewart's credentials and dismissed several other Chi Alpha ministers, including Jackson, who had disbelieved Salgado. Baylor and Texas A&M suspended the ministry from their campuses. As the fallout radiated through the ranks of former Chi Alphas, some who had placed their faith in Savala began to question everything he had taught them. A cascade of lawsuits and criminal charges followed. Joseph Cleveland, now 36, was among those who started seeing their sexual encounters with Savala differently, he said. He met with a friend who recounted being manipulated and abused by Savala — each turn of his story echoing Cleveland's own memories. The full weight of the conversation hit afterward, while he was driving home. He thought of his baby boy, then felt God asking him, "Hey, what if somebody from the church wanted to do this with your son?" Overwhelmed, Cleveland pulled over and sobbed. It was the first time he saw himself as a survivor of child sex abuse. He told a Chi Alpha pastor, whofiled a police reportin Houston. Savala was charged with sexual assault of a child; the case is pending. In the years since, like many of his Chi Alpha brothers, Cleveland has grappled with his role in perpetuating a system that also victimized him. Although he never saw or took part in the abuse of others, Cleveland said, he heard from men in his former small group who say Savala abused them. "I didn't take them down there with the thought of them getting abused," Cleveland said. "But at the end of the day, that's on me. I'm the one that drove them there, and I have to live with that." Now Cleveland and other accusers say they want Assemblies of God leaders to take responsibility. Scoma, the Assemblies of God pastor who resigned his leadership post in protest, said the Chi Alpha disaster has created an opportunity for the denomination to look inward and root out the indifference that he says allowed Savala to abuse for decades. Instead, Scoma said, the Assemblies of God has acted more like a corporation trying to appease shareholders and limit fallout. As a Pentecostal movement, the denomination teaches that God speaks through modern spiritual leaders to call out hypocrisy and injustice, much like the prophets of the Old Testament. "My prophetic word to the church," Scoma said, "is that we listen to lawyers more than we listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit." To regain trust, he and others say the Assemblies of God must give a full accounting of how national leaders responded to warnings about Savala and how far his depraved teachings spread. And they say the church needs to learn from its mistakes. That's why Stephen and Jessica Holt are speaking out. Silence, they say, is what allowed Savala to remain in ministry long enough to abuse their son. The ordeal shook their faith in the church, but they still believe God can use tragedy to make something beautiful — if Assemblies of God leaders are willing to listen. "Every victim deserves justice," Jessica Holt said. "And every victim deserves to share their story when they're ready."
How a Christian college ministry glorified a sex offender and enabled him to keep abusing students This article is part of "Pastors and...
