Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Other or denomination not established Fort Leonard Wood, MO, USA · 2022

David J. McKay: thirty-year sentence for abuse enabled through a military youth ministry

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

youth ministry director for the Religious Services Office, adult youth-group leader

Organization

Fort Leonard Wood Religious Services Office youth ministry

Archive classification

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

The Justice Department identifies McKay as the youth ministry director for Fort Leonard Wood's Religious Services Office. He met the four children through the youth group and used the ministry's recurring activities, including ski and camping trips, to obtain access and transport. The documented nexus is institutional religious authority and youth-ministry trust; the sources do not report that he invoked a particular doctrine or ritual.

Pastoral or clerical authority
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2021-04-29 · guilty plea

U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. McKay pleaded guilty to one count of transporting a minor across state lines to engage in criminal sexual activity and four counts of sexually abusing a minor.
2022-02-04 · sentence

U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. The court sentenced McKay to thirty years in federal prison without parole, followed by lifetime supervised release.

Documented coercion mechanisms

youth-ministry access
religious-program trust
transport of minors
youth-group ski and camping trips
abuse in ministry and residential settings

Cited record

Sources

official prosecutor release criminal disposition and nexus U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Missouri, 'Former Youth Director at Fort Leonard Wood Sentenced to 30 Years for Child Sexual Abuse' (Feb. 4, 2022).: The official sentencing release records the five guilty pleas, thirty-year sentence, lifetime supervision, four victims, Religious Services Office youth-ministry role, youth-group access, transport and ski and camping trips.
state newspaper court reporting criminal plea corroboration The Kansas City Star, 'Former youth director at Fort Leonard Wood pleads guilty to sexually abusing minors' (Apr. 29, 2021).: Missouri newspaper reporting independently corroborates the guilty pleas and the youth-ministry relationship through which McKay met the children.

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-wdmo/pr/former-youth-director-fort-leonard-wood-sentenced-30-years-child-sexual-abuse Corpus classification: official-prosecutor-release; evidentiary role: criminal-disposition-and-nexus. SHA-256 ede9ec465a36e36bb9c894919c8f725a92421890adb9806e348098d85904f328
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article251040024.html Corpus classification: state-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: criminal-plea-corroboration.
Retrieval: 2026-07-27 · Retrieval failed; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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