So, this is Room 215. Where Dean Bruer—overseer, predator, career manipulator—checked out, died like a fugitive This is where decades of spiritual rot came to a head. Where the silence, secrecy, and power that defines the 2×2 church finally ran out of places to hide.
And once the dam broke, there was no containing it. Thousands of victims and survivors began coming forward—sharing their stories, naming their abusers. Countless others too, horrified not only by the scale of the abuse but by the ministry’s cold refusal to change, have walked away.
In some regions, 40 to 50 percent of the church’s membership is gone. Convention grounds have closed. Special meetings canceled. The illusion is collapsing under the weight of its own corruption.
This isn’t the story of one fallen man though. And this is important—It’s the story of what this system creates, over and over again. Dean Bruer wasn’t a bug in the system, but a feature of it. Because he wasn’t just a man. He was an overseer. A leader. A trusted authority. Revered—sometimes even worshiped—by the people he ruled over.
And like so many others before and since, he didn’t just fail to live up to that trust—he shattered it. He exploited it. He used it as a weapon. He raped many, including underage victims He coerced. He gaslit his victims, and as is true for most in his position, ruled from the platform like a petty king—where God’s will and his own appetites were, conveniently indistinguishable.
He preyed on the vulnerable while holding a Bible and wearing a benevolent smile, spinning out vapid stories about lighthouses and quoting saccharine poems he himself had penned, only to cloak the vanity by attributing them to “author unknown.”
Although many overseers have been exposed as sexual predators, even those who haven’t share something fundamental with Dean Bruer and his ilk: nearly all are morally bankrupt frauds—wolves in sheep’s clothing, clothed not in humility but in authority they neither earned nor deserved. This is the pattern—not the exception.
And let’s be clear: even those overseers and others in positions of power who weren’t sexual predators have consistently been emotionally abusive, spiritually manipulative, and corrupt in ways that would be disqualifying in any system with real accountability.
And as is all too common with workers in his position, when people came to him for guidance at their lowest—single women facing unplanned pregnancies, women beaten by husbands, and people with sincere, good faith questions about senseless rules—he met them not with grace, not with wisdom, but with open, brutal contempt. He humiliated them. He spiritually bludgeoned them. He made obedience feel like the only path to emotional and spiritual survival.
Because in a system this theologically suffocating, this spiritually abusive, men like Dean Bruer don’t rise in spite of the structure—they rise because of it. He was accountable to no one. And think about this– every overseer today enjoys the same impunity that he had. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change.
Thomas Paine said, ‘A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.’ Now ask yourself: who fits that description better than the overseers of this church?
This room isn’t just where a man died. It’s where a system unmistakably exposed itself. A system built not on truth, but on control. Not on humility, but power. A church that fetishizes secrecy, punishes transparency, and recoils from accountability—as if a single crack in the facade might bring down the whole illusion of being the one true way. And they don’t care how many lives they’ve wrecked—and will go on wrecking—so long as the illusion holds, and the myth of the perfect way is preserved.
To call him a bad apple is an insult to rotten apples. This wasn’t just one man gone wrong in an otherwise perfect way. It’s a system that produces rot by design. Give me the name of any overseer—any time, any country—and I will tell you this without hesitation: They were either a sexual predator… or they protected one, or several, or many.
Let’s stop pretending this is about a few isolated failures. Eldon Tennison. Dan Hilton. Leslie White. Ira Hobbes. Mark Huddle—who spoke at Bruer’s funeral. Dale Shultz. Jerome Frandle. These are just a few of the overseers who fit the pattern. There are no doubt many more. And when you add in the rest of the workers, and the friends, who have committed abuse within this system, the list stretches on endlessly.
This isn’t a string of unfortunate incidents—it’s the product of a culture. A system that protects power, silences victims, and punishes those who speak out. One independent investigator—who has compiled an exhaustive body of data from reports that have come to light in just the last few years—estimates that over the course of this church’s history, as many as one in five male workers have had credible allegations made against them.
And at Bruer’s own funeral? One of the pallbearers was Robert Corfield—an admitted child rapist. He raped a boy. Repeatedly. And they still handed him a place of honor next to the casket. That is not an oversight. That is not an accident. That is a culture. But Scott Rauscher, another overseer, who also had a part in Bruer’s funeral, even after Robert Corfield’s abuse was widely publicized, still defended him, saying, and I quote, ‘he has the most wonderful spirit.’ You don’t get this many “exceptions” without it being the rule.
This is a church where the wolves wear ties and sit on platform chairs, and the sheep are told to smile and submit—for the sake of the kingdom, of course. What kind of “truth” demands that victims be silent and predators be protected and welcomed in their midst? What kind of God needs you to cover for a rapist to preserve the image of his way?
And we need to be absolutely, unambiguously clear about this: the idea that this is the one true way—the exclusivity they relish, hide behind, and work tirelessly to preserve—is demonstrably false. Theologically. Historically. Morally. Ethically. By every meaningful measure, it collapses under the slightest scrutiny.
They’ll say, “But they’re not all like that, the way is perfect even if the people aren’t” And I say, “prove it.” Show me any worker in a position of authority who stood up and named names. Show me the overseer who called the police, instead of telling parents to stay silent. Show me the overseer who thought first of the victim—not the reputation of the one true way, not the illusion of the perfect way. You won’t. Because in this system, protecting the myth has always mattered more than protecting the innocent. And those who have spoken up—those with a conscience, whose humanity remained intact—have either left on their own, been pushed out. The rest? Bullied into silence, terrified of losing the only life they’ve ever known, trapped in the system with nowhere else to go.
And that’s why this room matters. Because for once, there was no back room. No more cover ups. No quiet transfer to another state. Just a body, a laptop, and a Best Western preferred customer account. And a truth that can’t be prayed away.
I’ll close with this. A few weeks ago, during a private meeting of U.S. and Canadian overseers, a leaked transcript revealed a moment when they couldn’t identify someone who had signed on the Zoom call. One of them joked, “As long as it’s not Cynthia”—referring to the private investigator who has spent hundreds of hours documenting close to 1500 credible reports of abuse within this church, around the world. Many of them laughed.
As long as it’s not Cynthia. And that tells you everything you need to know. The people they fear and loathe the most aren’t the sexual predators who destroy the lives of the most vulnerable in their church. They fear the ones who bring accountability. They fear the ones who demand transparency. They fear the ones who give a voice to those whose lives have been shattered by this organization.
Make no mistake: They do not want to ensure the safety of the most vulnerable in their midst, or to make amends for the harm their church has caused. They want power, they want control, and they will cling to both by any means necessary.
And they will not change. Not willingly, not honestly, not ever.
By Ted Harris
June 5, 2025
Video: It’s not a scandal – it’s a culture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Owz9_NfUME&t=4s