The U.S. Senate campaign of United Methodist megachurch Pastor Adam Hamilton is again facing questions about how he handled reported sexual abuse by a volunteer at a church youth camp two decades ago, which is now featured in a seven-figure ad buy from his GOP opponent. The allegations — which resurfaced during Hamilton’s Democratic primary campaign for Kansas’ U.S.
Senate seat — date back to 2005, when a camp leader at Hamilton’s Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, reportedly molested two teenage boys at a church youth camp. Hamilton, the church’s founder and lead pastor, kept Scott Moore on as a church volunteer even after Moore was accused of child molestation in 2005 and 2006, according to the campaign attack ad from Hamilton’s opponent, Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan.
“What did Hamilton do when victims reported him to church leaders? Parents were ignored, and Hamilton never called the police,” the ad’s narrator says. “The next fall, Hamilton welcomed him back.
Free to lurk for new victims, later convicted of more child sex crimes.” “Adam Hamilton protected a pedophile,” the narrator says, before concluding, “He should never be our senator.” In a statement to The Christian Post, Hamilton campaign spokesman Tyson Brody called the Marshall campaign's ad "a shameful attack." “This is a desperate and shameful attack from a losing politician on his own state’s largest church," Brody said in a statement.
"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.” The video, part of a reported $1.2 million ad buy by the Marshall campaign, refers to allegations that first surfaced in local Kansas media in May, when Democratic state Sen. Patrick Schmidt accused Hamilton