Kansas Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton acknowledged during a Wednesday night debate that he made a “mistake” in 2006 when he failed to stop a church volunteer accused of sexual abuse from returning to a youth retreat, where the man allegedly abused another teenage boy.
Hamilton, a Methodist pastor who leads Kansas’ largest church, is facing pointed attacks in the final stretch of his campaign from Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall over the case of Scott Moore, a church volunteer later convicted of a sex offense, who was accused of molesting teenage boys at church retreats in 2005 and 2006.
Hamilton said an internal church review of allegations made by two boys in 2005 came back “inconclusive,” and that police investigators reached the same conclusion at the time. Even so, he said he now believes Moore should not have been permitted back at the church in 2006.
“I was actually preaching that weekend at Church of the Resurrection, and I did not sign off on him going back. I should have checked to make sure that he wasn’t going back,” Hamilton said. “That was a mistake on my part. But I will tell you, when he was investigated the next year, we forbade him from working with youth or children anymore. He left our church angry and upset. And again, we played a critical role several years later in getting him arrested and convicted.”
Moore was convicted in 2013 of misdemeanor sexual battery for inappropriately touching his son’s friend during a sleepover in 2010. Teenagers from Hamilton’s church who had alleged abuse in 2005 and 2006 testified against him in that case.
According to court records, a 15-year-old boy alleged in November 2005 that Moore touched his penis, while a 14-year-old said Moore reached inside his sleeping bag during an overnight retreat. Prosecutors later wrote that both boys gave “detailed” statements to church officials but were unable to positively identify Moore at the time.
Moore returned to the church as a volunteer in November 2006 and allegedly inappropriately touched a 15-year-old boy. The church reported the incident to the Linn County Sheriff’s Office, but the county attorney’s office did not pursue charges.
Hamilton told the Kansas Reflector in July that he “absolutely” would have handled the matter differently in hindsight, but maintained “there was no attempt at a cover-up.”
Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, Hamilton said “it was not completely clear what had happened at the time [in 2005] and who exactly had done this thing,” adding that Moore “should have never been there [in 2006]. These were mistakes that were made.”
Marshall, meanwhile, faced his own late-campaign scrutiny Wednesday, including over reports that his medical practice had sued roughly 700 patients over unpaid bills. Marshall said the litigation decisions were “out of our hands” once unpaid accounts were turned over to collections agencies, and said the practice was consistent with what other doctors and hospitals do.
The Kansas Senate race remains close heading into the final weeks of the campaign, according to recent polling. Hamilton has cast himself as a moderate Democrat, criticizing former President Joe Biden’s border policies and distancing himself from the party’s growing socialist wing.
