SAN JOSE — A well-known nonprofit director charged with sexually abusing a girl during his previous career as a youth pastor is arguing his innocence ahead of a bail hearing that will decide whether he will have to litigate his case from behind bars.
Brett Bymaster was being held Thursday without bail in the Elmwood men’s jail after being charged last week with six felony counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor between 2014 and 2019, beginning when the reported victim was 8 years old through when she was 14 years old.
Bymaster is scheduled to return to court Friday, when his attorneys are expected to request reduced bail and supervised release conditions. His bail was initially set at $400,000 before being revoked at his arraignment last week.
Prosecutors plan to ask a judge that Bymaster continue to be held in jail without bail, a status reserved for defendants deemed to be a significant safety or flight risk.
Defense attorneys Renee Hessling and Dana Fite say they plan to call attention to Bymaster’s ties to the community and public service to convince a judge he can be safely released. But in a departure from typical practice, they also intend to use this early stage of the case to aggressively challenge the substance of the criminal charges.
They contend that previous church probes into Bymaster did not produce any results resembling the charges he faces now, and that the criminal case is part of lengthy effort by The River church — where he once led a youth ministry — to discredit and embarrass him.
“Our position is that records demonstrate a longstanding campaign by The River church and other individuals to destroy our client, his career, and his reputation, and they have tried over and over again,” Hessling said in an interview. “This is their newest and latest attempt to do that. They are trying to weaponize law enforcement to achieve their goal.”
Hessling and Fite pointed to a portion of a San Jose police report in which former teen congregants attributed a “porn addiction” and references to sex and masturbation to Bymaster — claims that helped form the basis of an alleged pattern of abuse. The attorneys say that account was drained of important context; namely, that Bymaster was following a church-approved curriculum on how to broach those topics and promote abstinence from sex and consuming sexually explicit materials.
The criminal charges are borne from parallel investigations by the San Jose Police Department and San Jose-based The River church, which employed Bymaster to lead its youth ministry during the time period covered by the criminal allegations. The police investigation was launched around the same time the church announced in late January it was commissioning an independent investigation into a series of sexual abuse claims against Bymaster. The church admitted that those allegations had been overlooked by a prior church probe into Bymaster’s leadership.
The woman whose claims are the basis of the felony charges contacted police earlier this year to report that Bymaster molested her multiple times over a span of about six years, and that an encounter when she was 14 spurred her to attempt suicide. She is not being identified by this news organization because she is a reported sexual assault victim.
When The River church announced its new investigation, it stated that a 2021 church inquiry into Bymaster did not address allegations of sexual misconduct. The earlier probe had concluded he “was a toxic leader who was spiritually abusive towards many of the students, volunteers and staff” and was poorly supervised by the church.
The church also stated that the inquiry excluded “some students who did not feel safe to share freely” with the Rev. Theresa Marks, who conducted the investigation.
Nine parents representing five church families co-signed the new iniquiry but also lamented that they were misled by the church into believing that the full scope of the allegations against Bymaster and his oversight of their children had been examined.
Hessling and Fite assert that the church revived its scrutiny of Bymaster expressly because its past attempts to vilify him were unsuccessful. They also question the circumstances in which Doe’s sexual assault allegations surfaced, which the police report states initially occurred while she was undergoing eye movement and desensitization and reprocessing (EDMR) therapy.
The attorneys’ contention is that the therapy is meant for reducing the vividness of traumatic memories, not revealing them, making its reported role in the case “highly suspicious and suggestive.”
The River church did not immediately respond to an inquiry Thursday about the comments by Bymaster’s attorneys. In a statement after Bymaster’s arrest, the church said, “We are deeply saddened by these developments and continue to express our concerns, prayers, and support for the young people who have bravely raised their voices, for all victims of abuse, and for our entire church community during these distressing times.”
Since leaving The River in 2019 amid criticisms of his management of the youth ministry, Bymaster has served as executive director of Healing Grove Health Center, an organization that supports low-income families and is based in San Jose’s Washington-Guadalupe neighborhood. After he was arrested and charged, the center stated that Bymaster was put on unpaid leave pending the results of the criminal case.
Anyone with information for investigators can contact Detective Camarillo at 4576@sanjoseca.gov or 408-273-2959. Tips can be left with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-7867 or at siliconvalleycrimestoppers.org.