Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Church Volunteer Accused of Sexually Assaulting Youth Ministry Teen: 'Stay Pure'

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Reagan Gray, 26, worked as a volunteer in the youth ministry at her church in Little Rock, Arkansas. Gray was also a teacher. She is now accused of sexually assaulting a boy in the youth ministry at Immanuel Baptist Church. An FBI agent detailed the evidence in the case and how law enforcement found out about it in an affidavit. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy and criminal defense attorney Jonna Spilbor go through five disturbing allegations made against Gray in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show that covering the biggest stories in crime.If you’ve used Incognito mode in Google’s Chrome browser, find out if you have a claim in a few clicks by visiting https://incognitoclaims.com/crimefixHost: Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest: Jonna Spilbor https://www.instagram.com/jonna_spilbor/?hl=enCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoAudio Editing - Brad MaybeGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Reagan Gray, a former church volunteer and a teacher accused of sexually assaulting a teenager in the youth ministry. I have five disturbing claims made against Gray in this case. Thanks for joining me for Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Reagan Gray was a teacher at two different schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, but the allegations made against her involve a boy who was 15 and 16 at the time and stemmed from her volunteer work at Emanuel Baptist Church back in 2020. An affidavit charging Gray with first-degree

sexual assault says in 2020, the church'savit charging Gray with first-degree sexual assault says in 2020, the church's head pastor confronted her about text messages the boy's parents discovered. The affidavit says Gray claimed the relationship was not physical. The teen's parents actually told Gray to stop messaging their son, and the church sent her to counseling, but then allowed her to return to that student ministry. But then, according to an FBI agent who worked on the case, Gray disclosed in a counseling session last fall that she and that teen boy had continued to communicate on Snapchat and other social media apps. This is a law and crime legal alert. Google Incognito is accused of tracking users browsing

data without their knowledge. Mass Tort Alliance, one of our legal sponsors, is helping users file for compensation because they believe Google misled users about the privacy of their Incognito browser. If you've used Google Incognito anytime since 2016, you can start your claim in less than 10 questions. Just go to incognitoclaims.com slash crime fix. Again, that's incognitoclaims.com slash crime fix. I want to bring Jonna Spilbore in to discuss some of these allegations. Jonna, it's very vivid, very graphic. This woman, Regan Gray, is accused of approaching a boy in the youth ministry at her church. And then one of the

things she's accused of doing is encouraging him to send naked photos of himself. And then she is accused of sending photos of her chest, her buttocks, and her vaginal area to him on a daily basis. Your thoughts? Well, first of all, the irony, right, of being a volunteer at a church and engaging in this type of behavior is just adds to the horribleness of it. But I don't know what kind of defense this person is going to be able to mount because, I mean, look, they weren't even trying to be all that smart about this salacious behavior. And I don't think there's any doubt in her mind that she was dealing with a minor. Interestingly, though, I read that she's only charged with a single count of sex assault, which is very odd when you consider that they had a texting relationship for quite a long time. They could also add charges at grand jury. I mean, at this point, she's charged in county court and she has another court appearance

coming up in June. So they could always go to the grand jury and add additional charges. Do you see that possibly happening? Yes, that could happen. But the other thing, I mean, the elephant in the room, if you don't mind, is when we are dealing with these types of cases, specifically older female person in a position of power, I'll put that in air quotes, like a teacher, or in this case, the volunteer at the church, and a younger child who's male, for some reason, a lot of prosecutors and a lot of people tend to not give the defendant a pass, not at all, but they don't look at it as harshly as they would if it were

reversed. And that does not seem to be changing. And we can go back to a lot of these cases from 15, 20 years ago. It just doesn't seem to be changing. And that's a phenomenon that I can't quite understand. That's interesting you point that out. She's free right now on bail. We'll be back in court in June. So it'll be interesting to see how they handle this. One thing is concerning, though, concerning the allegations of how this was handled at the church. So the head pastor involved in this, according to the affidavit, takes her out of the youth ministry. He doesn't kick her out, but he sends her to counseling because she said this wasn't physical. It was just some text messages. She gets some counseling. And then they put her

back in the youth ministry. That to me is shocking because she still has access to kids. And we don't know if this was just isolated to this one teenager. She was 23 at the time that this happened, allegedly in 2020. She's 26 now. The kid was 15 and 16 when this was going on. So your thoughts on the fact that the head pastor sends her to counseling. She says it's not physical. Apparently it is physical, according to the complaint, and then sends her back into the youth ministry to do her choral volunteer work. Yeah, I have a number of thoughts about that. So, okay, so if we give her the benefit of the doubt and it's not physical, although I think the evidence is going to be pretty clear that it was, at least her victim

said that it was, then you have to look at the church and say, number one, now they've opened themselves up for civil liability. And number two, while I get that, I mean, that's what churches do, right? If somebody comes to them and they're having some sort of issue, it's incumbent upon them to try to help that person. But in this day and age, there was no way. Well, let me back up. If they thought that there was even the appearance of impropriety, probably would have been smarter to not allow her to return. And from my understanding, she was simply a volunteer. So it's not even like there was red tape involved. So that is just really, unless the church, the church's position is we believe her, but that's going to have to play out, right, in a criminal court.

Most definitely. And I'm going to have an update for you on the head pastor here in just a minute or two. Let's go to our next allegation involved in this. And it's the teen identified, he's identified as V1 in the affidavit, said that he and Gray did not have penile slash vaginal intercourse. They wanted V1 to stay pure. So this involved Gray allegedly performing oral sex on this boy and then him in turn doing some things digitally to her. Yikes. So we're talking about church stuff here, staying pure. And this was kind of some weird rationalization according to the document, that this would help him stay pure because it wasn't going all the way, I guess.

Know what that is? That's sick. That is a perpetrator who is sick and they'll probably never be able to prove or disprove that they had carnal knowledge of each other. Because I don't think this was caught in time where there could be DNA to substantiate that. But that's a predator mentality. That is absolutely predator mentality. And again, it won't matter much in the eyes of the law because in that state, sex assault, that's all encompassing. And she's

still looking at anywhere from 10 to 40 years for a single count of sex assault. So nice try. I think that's going to fall on deaf ears in terms of being a valid defense. They've got her Snapchat. They've got her TikTok. They've got, I'm assuming, her phone. I mean, they've noted all of these things they have in the paperwork. They're still looking through it. An FBI task force is involved in investigating this. So more charges could be coming. She's also been a teacher at some other schools. She's on leave from the Sylvania Hill Academy. She had been a teacher at the Little Rock Christian Academy. We're trying to figure out why she left that school. I think we might be able to guess that maybe something was going on. We don't know that. We don't know that, but we're trying to figure

that out. But when we're talking personnel issues, things can get a little hinky. There could be a lot more there, Jonna. So how do you defend this case? Yeah, that's going to be very, very difficult. So first and foremost, I mean, I suppose all defense attorneys have to look at the evidence that's either available or going to be made available before you can decide how you're going to present your defense. But it sure looks bad at this early stage, even with my criminal defense cap on. And this person, if any of these allegations are true, there's something obviously mentally, emotionally wrong with her. And typically, to go back to an earlier point, maybe sometimes one of the reasons why prosecutors, courts, et cetera, have a lighter hand when it comes to the older female

and the younger male is because of that. Maybe there's some sort of mental, not defect or deficiency, but illness that is going on. And if you can convince your client to get treated for that, that can mitigate how the prosecution and the courts want to treat you. I don't know if that's going to happen in this case, but I'm just trying to figure out why we take such a light approach in these cases that are just all too common. It would be interesting for a prosecutor to come out and say it, you know, to get some comments from them. And maybe we will in some other cases. There are a couple of others that I've looked at over the last several months that I'm interested to see how they had a comment on all of this stuff. I was told that that head pastor, Stephen Smith, is no longer with the church. I was not told why. I spoke to the church secretary. She wouldn't comment.

She connected me with somebody who's filling in. That person's out of town for the entire week. So that person's not going to be commenting. But the head pastor who was kind of involved in putting her in counseling, letting her come back into the counseling or to the youth ministry. And then he was interviewed by the FBI with regard to these allegations. He's gone. So there's my big update on the Baptist church. And as I mentioned, she will be back. Reagan Gray will be back in court in June. Johnna Spilbor, thank you so back. Reagan Gray will be back in court in June. Janice Bilboer, thank you

so much. Thank you. And that's it for this edition of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.