The US Senate race in Kansas is taking a nasty turn after incumbent Republican Roger Marshall’s campaign released a new ad accusing Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton of failing to report a pedophile who once worked at Hamilton’s church to law enforcement.
Hamilton, who has served as lead pastor at Church of the Resurrection in Leadwood for more than three decades, caught flak from a Democratic primary opponent for allowing the employment of Scott Moore, a church volunteer accused of molesting teenage boys at two retreats in 2005 and 2006.
The Marshall ad, part of a $1.2 million buy that will run statewide on broadcast, cable and streaming services beginning this weekend, says Hamilton let the “child predator” return as a camp counselor in 2006 after allegations by two of his victims were ignored.
“What did Hamilton do when victims reported him to church leaders? Parents were ignored, and Hamilton never called the police,” the narrator says in the 30-second ad spot.
“The next fall, Hamilton welcomed him back. Free to lurk for new victims — later convicted of more child sex crimes,” the script continues. “Adam Hamilton protected a pedophile. He should never be our senator.”
Hamilton has denied covering up Moore’s sexual misconduct — but told the Kansas Reflector in July he “absolutely” would handle things differently today.
“This is a desperate and shameful attack from a losing politician on his own state’s largest Church. These smears from Roger Marshall were already examined in the primary by local reporters who found the church reported the incidents to law enforcement, and Adam later personally worked to help get this predator convicted,” said Tyson Brody, a spokesman for the Hamilton campaign.
“Marshall is resorting to these desperate lies and false attacks because Kansans have learned Roger Marshall had pregnant mothers arrested and jailed, and voted to block the release of the Epstein files. Roger Marshall is desperate to hide from his record of protecting predators, and preying on low-income families in Kansas.”
Current surveys show Marshall leading Hamilton by 1.5 percentage points ahead of the Nov. 3 election, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
Moore was convicted in 2013 of misdemeanor sexual battery for inappropriately touching his son’s friend at a sleepover in 2010. Among those who testified against him were the teenagers from Church of the Resurrection whom he purportedly victimized in 2005 and 2006.
In November 2005, two boys were preyed upon in a cabin at the Methodist church’s annual weekend-long sleep-away camp, according to trial testimony viewed by The Post.
One victim, 15 at the time of the abuse, testified that Moore put a hand on his penis, while a then-14-year-old recounted that Moore thrust his hand inside the boy’s sleeping bag near his groin before being scared off as others in the cabin woke up.
“I felt like a hand on my private area. And as soon as I began to stir, I noticed someone rise and leave the room very quickly,” one of the victims testified, identifying the groper later as Moore.
“He came in that night and said that he had an open door policy. And he repeated it multiple times when we tried to shut the door,” the second victim testified of Moore.
Both teenagers brought their concerns to church leadership the following day — only to be accused of “slander” by one of the church’s youth ministers.
“Essentially he told us that we were trying to slander Scott’s name and trying to make him look bad, and basically told us that we were messing with his life, and there could be serious repercussions for that,” the first victim testified. “And besides that, he really didn’t take any action to look into this further.”
At the time, two church officials investigated the allegations but ultimately cleared Moore of wrongdoing, allowing him to return as a counselor in November 2006 — despite the boys’ parents expressing frustration at not being told the findings of the church’s internal investigation.
“I was never really told the outcome,” one of the boys’ mothers later testified, referring to a Nov. 7, 2005, meeting between parents and church officials Randy Meyer and Nancy Brown to discuss the probe of Moore.
That meeting was apparently held in Hamilton’s office, but the founding pastor did not attend.
Church of the Resurrection fired Moore the following year and referred him to the Linn County Sheriff’s Office for allegedly inappropriately touching a 15-year-old boy at the 2006 retreat, but the county attorney’s office declined to pursue charges.
Prosecutors later wrote in court documents that the teenage victims provided “detailed” statements to church officials, but weren’t able to positively identify Moore as their abuser at the time.
“As such, the non-experienced church investigators decided that they were not to report the disclosures to social services or law enforcement,” prosecutors said in a November 2011 filing.
It’s unclear how involved Hamilton was with the internal investigation in 2005 or the 2006 referral, but the pastor told the Reflector earlier this year: “I can just say that our aim was to make sure that if we got anything wrong, we wanted to get it right,” adding: “There was no attempt at a cover-up.”
Hamilton and one of his former assistants, Sue Thompson, acknowledged to the Reflector that the pastor did meet with one of the boys and his parents at the time of the allegation. Thompson also told the outlet that neither Meyer nor Brown were qualified to investigate the 2005 incidents.
Brown, who died in 2020, served on the church’s sexual ethics committee and had authored a training course for United Methodist Church members to handle allegations of abuse, but did not have any state certifications and wasn’t a mandatory reporter under state law. Neither was Meyer.
“We learned from that,” said Jason Gant, who told The Post that he took over as director of student ministries in January 2006, before the incident that led to Moore’s dismissal: “My thought was, the moment this happened, ‘We’re calling the authorities.’”
Gant, who continued to work at Resurrection for the next two decades, cited the difficulty of verifying evidence and explained that Moore’s “positive” and “engaged” demeanor caused many in the community to doubt the accusations initially — but he stressed that Hamilton always made the safety of children his highest priority.
“Everything was very above board,” said Gant, adding that there was an “overhaul” of church policies in 2006 following the second round of claims against Moore.
In April 2010, one month before the assault that led to Moore’s conviction, a fourth alleged victim had told police that Moore sexually abused him in 1979 — after speaking with Hamilton and being encouraged to come forward even though the statute of limitations had passed.
“At that time, he spoke with the pastor of the church and chose to make a report so the information could be documented,” the court papers show.
After serving less than a year in prison and being released on probation, Moore was found dead in a family member’s home in 2015 — after being caught in the backseat of a car, half-naked, with a teenage boy and fleeing the scene, the Reflector previously reported.
“He took his life,” Gant said of the convicted sex offender.
Attempts to contact Thompson were unsuccessful. Moore’s alleged 2005 victims did not respond to requests for comment.
