Chain of Command part 3

Speaker: rubenRuben: I'm Ruben Luciano Jr. My parents are still in NTCC, and I grew up as a O Oscar son for much of my life in the organization.

Tracy Pelfrey: Starting at about what age would you say?

Speaker: Ruben says he is one of the lost children of NTCC. He was not recruited outside his barracks. He did not choose this life. He was born into the religious sect.

Ruben: So I, um, spent pretty much my entire life, or I should say my formative years in the church.

Speaker: I would say as far back as I can remember, my, my memories are, are founded on NTCC. I just remember just life being dominated by the church This audio is from Tracey Pelfrey's youtube channel, Stay Away form NTCC. I've wrestled for so many years with just, with just sharing my account of what I went through in NTCC. Um, and it's very hard when you have kind of been programmed to not have a voice, to not have an identity. Today, we're going inside an organization where the people at the top answer to no one and the people at the bottom have nowhere to go. We're going to hear from the children who were born into it, the women whose futures were decided for them, and the ones who tried to speak up and lost everything.. This is the story NTCC doesn't want you to hear. I'm Javier Leiva, and this is PRETEND, stories about real people pretending to be someone else. INTROACT ONEWe've spent two episodes describing a church that recruits young military men and women, isolates them from their families, and runs the whole operation like a well-funded business with almost no accountability. But according to former members, that lack of accountability doesn't stop at the top. It shapes how leaders treat their members, how men treat women, and how adults treat children. And in a church that claims to control every aspect of its members' lives to keep them holy, Sarah DeJonghe says the real danger was standing at the pulpit.

Sarah Dejonghe: Bad men, bad actors, bad ministers that the church kind of tried to just cover up and not, you know, for instance, one of my teachers.

Speaker: But Pastor Michael Kekel, would disagree. He insists that the Church doesn't care who you marry.

Michael Kekel: I don't get involved in people's marriages and divorces.

Speaker: I stay way clear of that stuff. That is none of my business, and I don't wanna get involved in it. I am not going to pick your love.

Javier: But that doesn't seem to match the stories I'm hearing.

Vasectomiesvo: And the control didn't stop at marriage. According to former members, NTCC leadership took a position on whether ministers and their wives should be having children at all.

Speaker: A woman named Deborah Shunk, who was married to a minister inside NTCC, published a detailed account on blog in 2010. According to Deborah, in the early 1980s, founder RW Davis began promoting vasectomies for ministers. But why? Because kids are distracting. Childless couples could be moved around easily. Couples with kids could not. Former members say women who got pregnant during this period were terrified. Some were told publicly they would answer to God for ruining their husbands' ministries. Because of this, several ministers reportedly went through with the vasectomies. Can you imagine? Some of their wives were devastated. But things have since changed. Once RW DAvis's daughter, Tanya got Married to Michael Kekel, she got pregnant and suddenly the rules changed. Babies were all of a sudden celebrated. But the men who had already gotten the the vasectomies were out of luck. Michael Kekel has publicly denied that NTCC ever had a vasectomy doctrine. But multiple former members say they remember it clearly. One of the most disturbing patterns former members describe is what was happening to the young girls. Reporter Bruce Smith has been covering NTCC for almost twenty years. And he says the culture inside the church didn't just create cover for predators. It rewarded them.

Men Dating Girlsbruce: the fact that ministers date young teenagers, that you have men in their twenties dating girls who are 14 and 15, and that's encouraged by the church and encouraged by the parents.

Javier: Tracy Pelfrey, who you may remember from part two, watched this happen with her own daughter. According to former members, church leaders would pull girls as young as 12 and 13 aside

Speaker: to suggest potential husbands among the older adult seminary students.

Diane: You girls have both mentioned feeling like you were, I mean, the word used out on the street is groomed. I think that is a good word

Diana: for it. Well, it was. I mean, you get, and it wasn't just the people that lived there. You get all.

Speaker: Not even the leaders' wives. Sometimes it was the leaders themselves. Sometimes it was people, I guess you could say lower than that. You'd be like, oh, who are you interested?

Diane: You know, did you, did you notice that brother and so and so is here?

Speaker: Fortunately for Tracy's daughter, they left the church before her daughter got married to anyone.

Javier: But again, Michael Kekel disputes this claim.

Speaker: this lady in the church said to this girl who was young girl, said, "Have you thought about brother so-and-so?" All she was doing was, you know, making like. So she went down in history as grooming people in the church to marry them off. She went no more because she told her to think about this boy that likes her. You gotta be kidding me. Good luck with that. Good luck with stopping people from saying, "Hey, did you know brother so-and-so likes you?" You're not gonna stop that.

Michael Kekel: He's basically saying that no one is telling you who to marry. It's just the typical church people getting in your business.

Speaker: Mike Eckel Dating ClaimsSpeaker 10: I probably wouldn't be married today if a brother hadn't come and said, "Hey, she likes you." I said, "What? You're kidding." I couldn't believe it. She likes me?

Javier: He's right. That is how everyone I spoke to remembers Michael Kekel meeting his wife Tanya. People familiar with the family say she was just 14 years old. He was 22.

Speaker: Tayna is kind of considered royalty at NTCC. Afterall, her father RW Davis was the founder of the church. Michael Kekel was just another recruit.

Bruce: We talked about what their dating life was like and they assured me that it was legal and proper and appropriate and faith-based, and, um, they felt very comfortable with it and were not ashamed about it.

Javier: But even if you don't believe they start dating when she was 14 years old. We know, she was married as soon as she turned 17.

Speaker: This was a consistent theme that came up over and over with my conversations with former members. One source told me that a 15-year-old girl was engaged to a minister in his late 20s. He waited for her until they could legally marry. This source told me that her adult fiancé would drop her off at high school in the morning. That was the culture inside NTCC. From a very young age, these girls entire future was geared toward one goal....attend the unaccredited Bible school and marry an NTCC preacher.

Desiree: they convinced me to go to Bible seminary.

Speaker: Desiree is a former NTCC member and the former minister's wife. She was in her early 20s when she was forced to get married. I wasn't called to be a preacher's wife and this, this wasn't for me. I'm not supposed to be here. They pretty much arranged that marriage. Um, pastor, my pastor said, can you have your phone number? His mom was pushing it. Even Pastor Davis was pushing it. 'cause everyone, like, nobody knew me. I was just some person in Kansas. But everyone knew Teman and he was at the church that day and they really pushed me into that marriage. I only knew him three weeks before we got married. And so you just. I hadn't had a lot of life experience and my

Javier: Her experience mirrors the pressure young women face at NTCC. Adult men in positions of authority alledgedly dating girls as young as their early teens... and for what I hear, this wasn't a scandal.

Speaker: It was just how things worked.

Dress Codevo: So when something actually went wrong, when one of these NTCC girls came forward to report what had happened to her, she says the church didn't protect her. Instead, she says they questioned her. The girls name is Elieen and she told her story to The Daily Mail.

Speaker: Eileen said she never asked to be part of NTCC, that decision was made for her by her family. She said growing up in the church was tough. She had to ask for permission to hang out with friends, and was forced to abide by their strict rules. Those memories are scars, sure. But nothing what really hurts is thinking back to the say she said her uncle, an NTCC minister, forced himself on her.

Elieen: I had gone through a sexual assault through a member of the church who was a reverend, who also was a family member.

Speaker: She says she was 14 years old when it happened. When she approached leadership about the incident, she said they turned the blame on her.

Elieen: One of the first questions was what was I wearing? You know, what did I do?

Speaker: Tracy Pelfrey and Sarah DeYoung discussed this on the StayAway from NTCC youtube channel.

Sarah: It breaks my heart, to be honest. I just, I'm so glad that she definitely seems like she's found healing-

Tracy Pelfrey: Yes

Sarah: from all of this, but there's just too many stories like this.

Tracy Pelfrey: Too many. And if she was asked that, what she was wearing, at 14, and you're gonna see in the video how she dressed, how we all dressed.

Javier: The absurd thing about that question is that this was a Pentecostal church. All the women dressed in long dresses covering nearly every bit of exposed skin. Women weren't allowed to wear makeup, jewelry, or pants. They couldn't cut their hair, ever, not even a trim. Skirts had to fall at least an inch below the knee when sitting down, sleeves had to land halfway between the elbow and the shoulder, and sheer blouses... well forget about that. The men had their own rules, but the ones for the women governed everything from their bodies to their hair to the clothes they were allowed to put on each morning.

Speaker: So when a 14-year-old Elieen gets asked what she was wearing, when she said she was assaulted, in a church where every inch of a woman's skin was already covered, the question isn't really about clothes... is it? And here's the thing. Even with that strict dress code, former members tell me that once a girl hits a certain age, they were dressed to look older. And I'm not talking about making them look more mature. No. They were dressed like middle-aged women. Very, very mature. I'm talking Poofy hairstyles and High heels by the time they turned 12. This wasn't about making them look sexy. The dress code is never allowed. This was about making them look grown. And according to former members, that was the point. Because once a girl looked like a woman, she could be treated like one. Especially by the adult men inside the seminary who were already looking for a wife. //ad break//VO: All of this, the matchmaking, the child marriages, the way young girls were dressed up to look older, raises an obvious question. If this is the culture inside NTCC, what happens when it crosses the line from disturbing into criminal? That is after the break.

Michael Fontenot: What are the consequences of grooming young girls into marriage at such a young age?

Speaker: Some former members started asking the same question. So they went looking. They cross-referenced known NTCC ministers and members against public sex offender registries. What they found wasn't one or two isolated cases. It was a pattern. Multiple men associated with the church, past and present, were on the registry. Some had served time. Some hadn't.

Javier: One of them was a man named Michael Fontenot.

Sarah Dejonghe: When I was there, his name was Michael Fontenot.

Javier: Michael Fontenot was a minister, a part-time choir leader, and a teacher at the NTCC Bible Seminary in Graham, Washington. Most of what I'm about to tell you comes from a 2011 article by reporter Bruce Smith for The Mountain News, along with court records from Pierce County Superior Court. In late 2005, Fontenot's wife spotted him leaving their 12-year-old daughter's bedroom in his underwear. The next day, she asked her daughter directly. Her daughter said yes. She confronted Fontenot. He confessed.

Speaker: In 2006, Fontenot was convicted on two counts of Rape of a Child in the Second Degree. Which means Fontenot was raping his own child while he was teaching at the NTCC Bible Seminary. Heree's Sara Deyoung again.

Sarah Dejonghe: He is, was found guilty of raping his own daughter.

Speaker: She was 12. Um, he started, uh. Grooming her when I think she was like eight years old or younger. And so that was while he was my teacher.

Javier: Fontenot served only six months under an alternative sex offender program, and was forbidden from any contact with minors. Within a few years, he had violated those terms multiple times. When Fontenot was released and rejoined the NTCC congregation, his ex-wife warned Davis and Kekel that he was a convicted child rapist.

Speaker: He was let back into the church.

Sarah Dejonghe: Um,

Javier: nobody was warned nobody that had children.

Speaker: According to her, the leadership did nothing with that information. They never warned the congregation. A former NTCC minister told Bruce Smith he had never heard a single warning, not even a rumor. Bruce Smith reported that because of that, Fontenot started dating a woman with a five-year-old daughter. She had no idea who he was. She let him around her child. When her family eventually found out about his past, it wasn't from the church.

Javier: Bruce Smith called NTCC for comment. He reached co-pastor Phil Kinson, who told him, quote, I have nothing to say to you. Have a nice day. And hung up. Bruce called Mike Kekel. Kekel said, quote, no comment, and sat in silence on the line. Instead of protecting the vulnerable, former members say the church protected the abuser. And then it protected itself.

Hiding Abusevo: We've heard anticodtal stories of children being pressured into marrying older men. We've heard stories about convicted child molestors rejoining the church. And if I put a magnifing glass on any church, anywhere in America, I could cherry pick stories like this here and there to make it look like a systemic problem. But I don't want to do that. I want to know the church's position on all of this. As you know, I've reached out to NTCC leadership and have yet to hear back. But I did stumble upon a social media post, written by Michael Kekel that clearly lays out their views.

Speaker: In March 2021, Michael Kekel posted his views on reporting child abuse publicly on Facebook. He stated explicitly that no church is under a legal obligation to report child abuse. He acknowledged there might be a moral obligation depending on state laws, but his focus was on the burden of proof and protecting the accused. According to Kekel, without concrete evidence or multiple eyewitnesses, the church should refuse to accept the accusation or treat the accused any differently. Take the case of Andrew Crawford, a licensed minister at NTCC. In March 2021, a woman named Tasha posted publicly on Facebook that Andrew Crawford had molested her daughter. He was charged with one count of Child Molestation in the first degree. NTCC issued an official letter signed by its secretary certifying that Andrew Crawford was a licensed minister in good standing with the church. Three days later, on March 16, 2021, Michael Kekel posted about this on Facebook. In it, Kekel stated explicitly that no church is under a legal obligation to report child abuse. He acknowledged a possible moral obligation depending on state law, but argued the church should focus on the burden of proof. Without concrete evidence or multiple eyewitnesses, Kekel said, the church should refuse to accept the accusation or treat the accused any differently. He referenced a woman who came to him saying her husband was abusing her child. She asked Kekel to report it. Kekel refused. He said because the mother wouldn't call the police herself, she wasn't serious about it. He said he had no legal obligation to act. He said it was, quote, "really none of my business." He suggested if people wanted to know who was a child molester, they should research online and find the convicted. Now, technically, Kekel was right about one thing in that 2021 post. At the time, Washington state was one of only five states in the country where clergy were not mandatory reporters of child abuse. NTCC is headquartered in Graham, Washington. So legally, Michael Kekel did not have to report what that mother told him. But that is no longer the case. In May 2025, the Washington state legislature passed a Bill, signed into law by the Governor , making clergy mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect. The bill was inspired in large part by investigative reporting on how religious organizations had been using Washington's legal loophole to cover up child abuse. Lawmakers decided the loophole had to go. The law has been partially challenged in court since, but the core requirement still stands. As of today, if a parent walks into Michael Kekel's church and tells him her child is being abused, he is legally required to report it. So is this where we stand? If a church is given the choice between protecting their institution and protecting a child, some churches will make the wrong choice every time. Until somebody passes a law forcing them not to. As for Andrew Crawford , the NTCC member charges with child molestation, the case went to trial in June 2022. The jury deadlocked. A mistrial was declared.

Javier: Two months later, the state offered Crawford a plea deal. The first-degree child molestation charge was reduced to fourth-degree assault, a gross misdemeanor. Crawford accepted. In his own written statement on the plea form, he admitted only that he intentionally assaulted the child by resting his head on her shins in an offensive manner.

Speaker: A

Lot Of Broken Peoplevo: [TRANSITION TO BROKEN PEOPLE SECTION]

Speaker: Former members argue that the extreme, high-pressure environment of the NTCC—which demands absolute submission—often bred, protected, or pushed broken men to horrific extremes. Sarah tells me that the true tragedy at NTCC is not just loss of personal agency over your life or the fiancial burden. She said it's the permanent scars it leaves on its members. He, it's, it's like a lot of broken people. And I, I think, you know, something goes wrong, very wrong. And I know this stuff happens everywhere, but this is not a large group. Some of those broken people... like Roland and Maria Moreno

Roland And Mariavo: Um. The Roland and Maria, that, that was the most devastating thing for me personally.

Speaker: Roland and Maria were the one's who first prayed with Sarah DeJonghe when she was recruited in Japan.

Sarah Dejonghe: Um, but he,

Speaker: he murdered his wife, his son, and himself. Um, and it was after he had found out, allegedly, um, there Maria Moreno was an Air Force veteran. She and her husband Roland were devoted members of the church. But Sarah tells me that changed when Roland allegedly reported their pastor, for questionable behavior. According to multiple former members, Roland allegedly witnessed his pastor, Phillip Kinson, leaving a brothel in Okinawa. But Roland was uncomfortable enough with it that he went to the leaders and tried to report it and, um, it did not go well.

Javier: When Roland confronted him, former members say he was blacklisted. Um,

Sarah Dejonghe: Well, they kicked him out and they sent him back to Texas.

Javier: Life in Texas was rough. Roland was unemployed, exiled, and cut off from the NTCC leadership. His pregnant wife Maria was forced to get a job. While trying to raise their 5 year old son.

Speaker: No one could have predicted what came next. It could be the financial pressure, depression, hopelessness, or something else.

Sarah Dejonghe: Between, you know, the church pushing him out and then now he's, his wife's on the job and he is gonna, I think he just cracked.

Javier: The church typically discouraged wives from working, but with Roland out of work and Maria pregnant and raising their five-year-old son Frankie, she took a job as a receptionist just to keep the family afloat.

Speaker: Years later, a former member and friend of Roland's wrote about what happened on a blog called True Stories of Life in the NTCC. The post is titled "Oh, The Hypocrisy That Drove A Man To Murder And Suicide." In it, the author writes that NTCC leadership systematically targeted Roland from the moment he reported Kinson, making his life inside the church so miserable that they hoped he would simply leave on his own. According to the post, Roland refused to go. He had given everything to what he believed was God's church, and he wasn't ready to walk away from it. The author's conclusion is blunt. The NTCC leadership drove this man mad. In a comment on that same blog, someone identifying himself as Phillip Kinson denied the allegations entirely. He denied visiting a brothel, denied ever making the condom comment, and said he has been married for over 27 years with his wife being the only woman he has been with since marriage. Early on a Wednesday morning in 2003, Roland took a Glock handgun and shot his pregnant wife and their young son. At 1:51 in the morning, he called his pastor, confessed what he had done, and asked for a prayer. The pastor pleaded with him to stop. Roland hung up the phone and turned the gun on himself.

Sarah Dejonghe: He murdered his wife, his son, and himself. Um,

Javier: None of them made it.

Outro: BRUCE

On The Word Cultjavier Leiva: When I talked to reporter Bruce Smith, who has covered NTCC for nearly twenty years, I asked him whether this organization deserved the label.

Speaker: You're not so quick to call N-T-C-C-A cult, Like you said, they have cult like behavior, but you know, it's like where, where do you draw the line between an organized religion and a cult

Bruce: to me the word cult is an inefficient word. What do you do with that? You call your, that's a cult. Then people just get defensive. No, it's not. Yes, it is. No, it, you know, what's important about the lack of accountability. What does an organization has cash only financing, how does, how does that really work?

Speaker: And what are the abuses? What, what do you trigger when you say. It's okay a 22-year-old ministerial to date 14-year-old girl. And the parents of girls are encouraging their children to age up to wear blouses with more cleavage to wear, more pushup bras to wear makeup. Starting at 12 years old. talked to some of these girls. They hated it and they loved it. It was a, a real. A real push and pull kind of dynamic when you end up with ministers raping their daughters. You know, it, it, and, and then they're allowed back into the community. And the ministers, the leadership doesn't say anything. They don't protect the congregants. That's that. Is that a cult? No, I don't think so. I think it's just criminal behavior on the part. Javier Leiva interview: It's almost like, it's almost like the label cult is a distraction

Bruce: exactly right. Right.

Speaker: Javier Leiva interview: a, that's, that's really interesting. I wanna, I wanna definitely include that. Yeah. Because it's so easy. I think cult is just a mental shortcut, right. To an organization that's not like us, you know? Um,

Bruce: Avi.