Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Evangelical, Pentecostal, and independent Hammond, Indiana, USA · 2013

United States: Jack Schaap, megachurch IFB pastor, sentenced federally for abusing a girl he was 'counseling'

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond and superintendent of its schools

Organization

First Baptist Church of Hammond, Hyles-Anderson (IFB network)

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The girl was a congregant delivered into her senior pastor's one-on-one spiritual counseling — the office itself created the access and the unrefusability.

Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2013-03-20 · guilty plea and sentence

US District Court, Northern District of Indiana. Jack Schaap, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond — one of the largest Independent Fundamental Baptist congregations in the country — pleaded guilty in September 2012 to transporting a sixteen-year-old congregant across state lines for sexual conduct, having taken over her personal 'counseling' after she was flagged to him as vulnerable. In March 2013 he was sentenced to 144 months in federal prison plus five years' supervised release; later sentence-reduction motions were denied.

Documented coercion mechanisms

one-on-one pastoral 'counseling' of a sixteen-year-old congregant flagged as vulnerable by his own school administrator
transport across state lines for the abuse

Cited record

Sources

official prosecutor release sentencing release US Attorney's Office, N.D. Indiana, sentencing release.: The prosecuting authority's own statement of the plea and sentence.
national newspaper court reporting sentencing report 'Schaap sentenced to 12 years', The Times of Northwest Indiana, 2013.: Regional paper of record's court reporting.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndin/pr/former-baptist-minister-sentenced-12-years-imprisonment Corpus classification: official-prosecutor-release; evidentiary role: sentencing-release. SHA-256 9b1b89f6dfdf1b1d2044776ef01629d9d65a8f4d904b5a4b04de032efd0b6c18
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/hammond/schaap-sentenced-to-12-years-for-sexual-relationship-with-teen-parishioner/article_c7aa6a30-5a5a-567a-ae02-1e8664b4a4ae.html Corpus classification: national-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: sentencing-report. SHA-256 e67280a0047b9e4ff7e35e8edccf81f8378d63299740c95216ee7979b27bdba4
Retrieval: 2026-07-27 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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