Lawsuit Says Adventist Church Should Have Prevented Fresno Teacher’s Alleged Abuse of Students

A lawsuit filed against the Seventh-day Adventist Church alleges that a former teacher at Fresno Adventist Academy should never have been hired and that the church could have prevented the abuse of students. The teacher, Chris Bispham, faces 18 felony charges. Police say he molested students beginning in 2012, just months after he started working at the school, and that he often abused them inside a classroom closet. Police arrested the 29-year-old last year after a fourth grader reported sex crimes.

The new lawsuit names the Central California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and says the school never should have hired Bispham. It states that he came to the Fresno school after another Adventist school in Tennessee fired him for drunk driving. The lawsuit also hints at possible sexual misconduct by Bispham while he was in Tennessee. Action News reported that it found the drunk driving conviction online without difficulty.

Legal analyst Tony Capozzi described the charges as very serious and said the alleged abuse took place over at least a four-year period. Capozzi said church leaders will probably argue they had no knowledge of any problems with Bispham. He said that if the church did not conduct a substantial investigation, especially given information suggesting something had gone wrong in Tennessee, it could face substantial damages.

The lawsuit also claims that a pastor with the Adventist church in Clovis, who had also been Bispham’s pastor in Tennessee, secretly tipped him off while police were investigating the case. These claims are allegations in the lawsuit and have not been proven. Capozzi said that if the pastor told Bispham about the complaint and advised him to leave town to avoid it, as the lawsuit alleges, that would put the church in a difficult legal position.

Protecting children from harm is at the center of the case, a concern reflected in the call to defend those who cannot defend themselves (Proverbs 31:8-9).

When reached for comment, the church responded by email, saying it was aware of the lawsuit. The message stated that the church could not comment on the substance of pending litigation. Cindy Chamberlin, vice president for communication for the Central California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, wrote that the church wished to reaffirm that its children and youth are its most precious resource and that their safety is of paramount importance.