McClatchy Washington BureauIncest allegations shatter public image of church-going clan
written by By Judy L. Thomas, Donald Bradley and Brian Burnes Kansas City Star
Monday, November 23, 2009
Last June, 76-year-old Burrell E. Mohler Sr. seemed a perfectly reasonable choice to give the Father's Day sermon at his tiny Bates City Community of Christ Church.
After all, he was a family man. Proud of his four sons. Loved all those grandchildren.
A churchgoer who was present that day believes Mohler’s message followed the lectionary Scripture suggested by the mother church: the Gospel of Mark 4:35, the story of Jesus quieting the storm at sea.
Fortunate, perhaps, that he did not speak on Mark 10:14: “Suffer the little children to come unto me.”
Because months later, Mohler’s reputation as the strict but good patriarch would come crashing down.
He’s in jail now, after allegations from at least three grandchildren that “sleepovers” on his farm at 3067 Old Concord Road often meant incestuous rape, and that when granddaddy sang “Itsy-Bitsy Spider” his hands ended up in wrong places.
After allegations that their uncles wedded and bedded first-graders in a chicken coop and that their father did unspeakable things to them less than a mile from that little white church.
Once the charges — 42 so far — were filed, it seemed the Mohler family was shattered as irreparably as the bad-memory jars the little girls purportedly buried and authorities earlier this month hoped to dig up.
It’s a dark and ugly family portrait, causing dismay and disbelief among relatives and friends. They paint a starkly different picture — one of people who took joy in their children, their churches and friendships.
Time in court will tell which is the correct one.
Many stand fiercely by Mohler and his four sons, Ed, David, Roland and Jared, as well as his brother, Darrel — all in jail.
Gina Fauth, a good friend who sang church duets with Burrell Mohler Sr.’s wife, doesn’t buy any of the allegations.
“He’s a very respectable man,” Fauth said. “I have no reason to not trust him. It’s mind-boggling. I’m just sick over it.”
What about the prosecutor’s relentlessly recounted atrocities against girls as young as 5?
“I don’t believe it, and we go back to 1951,” said Ron Gamble, a brother-in-law of the senior Mohler.
Yet all or nearly all six children of Burrell “Ed” Mohler Jr. — including one who is a police officer in a Kansas City suburb — gave credence to the tales of twisted family relationships, according to court documents.
Nor did it help the senior Mohler’s legal defense or public image as a grandfather when police hauled incest porn out of his current Independence home.
While some question the validity of the accusations, others may ask why authorities did not investigate earlier.
In the 1980s or early ’90s, at least some of the grandchildren reportedly went to their mother about the abuse, according to police documents. Instead of going to law enforcement, she told the head of her Mormon church. And nothing happened.
An Overland Park man, who once shared custody of his 7-year-old son with an ex-wife who married into the Mohler family, said he tried to alert the Lafayette County sheriff, the Missouri Division of Family Services and a court-appointed guardian to what he feared was happening at the Mohler place.
“I notified everybody I could notify in February 2000 about this.” Then, three months ago, an Independence police detective told the man there were multiple victims, “and my son was on the list.”
“I said: ‘You mean it took them nine years to figure this out?’ ”
Many remember how the family children once looked forward to what they called “cousins camp” every summer, a happy and normal gathering of the young in the tribe.
“I just cannot wrap my head around it,” said Erin Hill, who went to school with David and Roland’s children — who are not mentioned in any of the court documents.
Hill considers herself a good friend of the senior Mohler, who used to drive her to the Bates City church and who once came to her house to pray for her after she accidentally super-glued shut an eye.
“Those three men I know personally are probably the nicest men alive,” she said. “If you can’t trust them, then you can’t trust anybody.”
Less than a year after Alice died, the senior Mohler married a woman who worked at the Community of Christ Temple in Independence.
They resided in a small, white bungalow on a corner lot in Independence — him in the basement lately since she found a porn trove above the ceiling tiles.
Police took incest mags titled Family Taboo and Best of Family Secrets, along with hand-labeled videotapes, guns, computers and sex toys.
The porn find was unfortunate, said Alice’s cousin, Bob Bruch. “But it doesn’t convict him.”
Bruch hired Burrell Mohler Sr. when Bruch ran maintenance at the Community of Christ Auditorium. “He was a good employee. Did what he was told, knew what he was doing and didn’t complain.”
Bruch, who once worshipped with Mohler in Bates City, said he had no doubts about Mohler’s commitment to Christ. [WTF? My gosh, they are ALL twisted over there.]
Gamble told of how he might have been with Mohler at month’s end. “Usually we get together at Thanksgiving, so we see each other then.”
He had to settle for a courtroom in Lexington, Mo., on Tuesday.
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