Izzy Davis was only 12 when she says Pastor Bobby Hawk touched her inappropriately. She's not alone.

Jun 25, 2024

Just over a decade ago, when Isabelle Davis, who goes by Izzy, was only 12, she was invited to a sleepover at her pastor’s house.

Her family had started attending EPIC Church in Independence, Missouri a couple of years earlier and they felt close to Pastor Bobby Hawk. “He would go out of his way to spend time with me, finding me after church to talk and inviting me out to eat with his family,” Izzy wrote online last week. Hawk also taught her how he did the magic tricks that he performed for the congregation. “I thought I was special,” she said.

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She soon became a student leader of the church’s youth group, and that group was “rewarded” for their work with sleepovers at the pastors’ houses. Some of them were perfectly innocuous and with supervision. But one night, at Hawk’s house, Izzy ended up watching a movie—three girls sat between the two male pastors, with Izzy on one end next to Hawk.

Twenty minutes into the movie, Bobby grabs my hand, interlocks our fingers, and places our hands underneath his thigh. I immediately begin to feel sick. My heart races and I feel nauseous. I want to run, to scream, to cry. But I freeze, I can’t do anything. 

After excusing herself for a fake visit to the bathroom, she returned to the couch.

It must be over, I told myself. Without hesitation, as I sat down, he grabbed my hand and put it right back under his thigh. My heart dropped. I couldn’t use the bathroom excuse again, so I was stuck. We stayed like that for the rest of the movie. It felt never ending- I could feel every heartbeat and every choked breath. When it finally ended, I got up immediately. He pulled me to the side, told me that “we weren’t doing anything wrong” but the reason he was hiding it was because people would “think things”. I shook my head, did anything to get out of the conversation so that it would finally all be over. I do not remember the rest of that night.

For 10 years, Izzy writes, she didn’t tell anyone that story. But in 2019, Bobby Hawk ran for and won a seat on the Blue Springs R-IV Board of Education. In 2022, he won his second term on the board. He soon became the president of the board and will be up for another term next year. (Separate from this story, the school board has recently been embroiled in a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by a trans student who says the district wouldn’t allow him to use the proper restrooms and locker rooms. The board said it was “disappointed” when an appellate court sided with the student. That gives you a flavor of the kind of people we’re talking about.)

While Izzy doesn’t mention any further inappropriate incidents with Hawk, she says he “pulled strings” in order to be the person handing her a diploma at graduation. It was only in 2022, when her parents put up a lawn sign for Hawk’s school board campaign, that she finally told them what he had done.

They believed her.

They removed the sign.

They stopped going to his church.

She began seeing a therapist.

When Izzy’s younger brother graduated last month, Hawk came up to the family afterwards (perhaps to just greet them), but no one in the family was eager to reciprocate. Izzy says that incident was very “upsetting” for everyone, especially her mother.

And now that he’s the board president and running for another term, she has decided to go public with her story, courageously using her name in the process.

I cannot stand the idea of him being an integral factor in the futures of children just like me. He is up for re-election in April 2025, and I urge you to consider my story when it comes time if you are a Blue Springs voter.

The website she created to share her story is called “Bobby Hawk Groomed Me.”

Since she posted her story last week, reaction has been swift and local police say they have already launched an investigation.

Hawk resigned from the school board the next day.

24 hours later, EPIC Church placed him on leave, saying in a letter to members that “You can expect further communication from our board as we navigate through this, but we ask for your patience and your prayers…”

Hawk resigned shortly after that, leading the church to issue another statement. This time, they called for members to “be in prayer for Pastor Bobby” as well as the staff “as we navigate this difficult time.” As if they are the real victims in all this.

The church didn’t give any comment to a reporter from the Kansas City Star, canceled all services on Sunday, and, as of this writing, has taken down its entire website.

Not exactly a great way to show transparency. It also doesn’t help that the church removed a June 16 sermon from its Facebook page that included this lesson from Pastor Hawk:

It’s never good when a pastor accused of sexually inappropriate behavior says “we can't always be the victim in our own story. Sometimes we just have to take responsibility.”

That clip ends with Hawk saying “the best ways to start overcoming temptation is just to admit and take responsibility for the areas of your weakness.”

Yikes.

But wait! There’s more. Because Izzy’s revelations led to more young women speaking out about their own experiences with Hawk. Including one with a very similar story:

Ali Terwilliger said she was a 22-year-old church volunteer in 2011. Terwilliger said on one occasion, Hawk intentionally touched her rear end, and he frequently talked about wanting a sexual relationship with her. Terwilliger said she knew Davis, and her testimony inspired her to speak out.

Terwilliger said she complained to Epic Church leadership, but eventually, she chose to leave the church. Terwilliger said she doesn’t believe Hawk should remain as church pastor there.

“It definitely is not an environment, at least it was not at that time, an environment where they were helping victims,” Terwilliger said.

“It was more of trying to cover up what was going on with the pastor.” 

The church knew about this?!

Terwilliger said on Facebook that Hawk “was obsessed with the idea of being swingers with me and was constantly using manipulation to try to get me alone.” When she reported him to Assemblies of God officials, they didn’t punish Hawk at all but gave Terwilliger her last tithe check back.

She’s not the only one. Kari Jo Crandall says she worked for Hawk starting in 2015 and he touched her inappropriately and tried to control here even into adulthood:

… On NUMEROUS occasions I told him that I was uncomfortable and asked him to stop touching me to which he would say, "we aren't doing anything wrong”…

…

…He still wanted hugs, asking me for them out of range of the cameras. I noticed it. I was uncomfortable but I was afraid of losing my job and I was afraid of what he would say about me. How HE would control the narrative. My family went there. My sister in law was the childrens pastor. My family was plugged in. My children had a place that they loved to go. He started hugging me and his hand would get lower and lower. Now his hands were always on the small of my back. I would move. I would get mad. I would call him out privately to which he would apologize and then the next day I would have little gifts on my desk. Gift cards or cash mostly. "Blessings". Take the blessing and shut up. That's what was expected of me. Over and over again.

Last year Bobby tried to control every aspect of my life. When I announced my divorce he told me not to:

dye my hair

get a tattoo

get my nails done

post about it on social media

He also wanted me to SIGN A CONTRACT stating that I wouldn't date anyone for 12 months after the divorce was finalized and he wanted to know who I was dating. (I did not sign this bullshit contract).

Just control and manipulation and unwanted touching.

Izzy also posted about two other sisters — 13 and 15 at the time — who said they told church leaders about Hawk’s behavior 35 years ago. But nothing was done and the church made them feel like it was all their fault.

The allegations here are disturbing even if they don’t all rise to level of criminal behavior. It’s even more damning that the church may have known about all this in real time but failed to stop it.

But this story also shows us the power of telling your story. Izzy may have started it, but many other young women used her story to tell their own. That barrage of anecdotes was enough to get this guy off the school board and out of the church. For now, anyway.

What will the church do in response? Who knows. They dropped the ball when they needed to take action and prayers today are meaningless. They’ve shown they can’t be trusted to look after their most vulnerable members. The school board can at least elect a replacement in due time, but the church is likely to just find another alpha male conservative Christian to take Hawk’s spot. That wouldn’t solve the underlying problems, though. Unless all the leaders there are kicked out and replaced by others who understand the sexual abuse crisis in the Christian world, nothing will prevent similar situations from developing in the future.

All of this, of course, comes on the heels of megachurch pastor Robert Morris also resigning after allegations that he sexually assaulted a child decades ago. The same kind of people who accuse liberals of moral flexibility and who accuse drag queens of grooming children have always been the biggest threats to children. These stories aren’t anomalies; they’re part of a pattern that’s been developing for decades. That’s why it’s so important that we hear these stories now. It doesn’t matter than it happened a long time ago; what matters is that the alleged culprits (and their allies) are called out so they can never hurt other children again.