Man abused at popular NI ‘Christian nightclub’ accuses Presbyterian Church and PSNI of failing him and ‘other victims’

A man who was abused as a child by a youth leader at a ‘Chris­tian nightclub’ has slammed the Pres­by­terian Church in Ire­land and the PSNI for fail­ing him when he first repor­ted it more than two dec­ades ago — and when he respon­ded to an appeal for vic­tims to come for­ward.

Ross Hunter (39) was preyed upon by his cousin when he was aged between 12 and 16. The per­pet­rator was a youth leader in First Dun­boe Pres­by­terian Church in the 1990s.

While none of the incid­ents took place in the Art­iclave-based church, the vic­tim was tar­geted at Exodus — a sep­ar­ate Chris­tian youth organ­isa­tion — where he said his older rel­at­ive served as the “right-hand man” to its chief exec­ut­ive.

“I feel let down, but I’m mainly angry that every­one is still try­ing to keep it bur­ied, because it’s not going to reflect well on the Pres­by­terian Church or Exodus,” Mr Hunter told the Bel­fast Tele­graph.

“They would rather cover it up and keep it secret, because it might impact their busi­ness.

“I have no con­fid­ence in the PCI invest­ig­a­tion or even the police probe.

“They are doing it to be seen to be doing it, but it’s a pub­lic front. No one is look­ing for answers.”

Mr Hunter says he first repor­ted the abuse in Novem­ber 2009 to the then min­is­ter of his fam­ily church, Rev James Mccaughan, but that the now retired cler­gy­man took no action other than prom­ising to pray for his dis­tressed parish­ioner.

The then 22-year-old, who broke his silence after his life “spir­alled” as a res­ult of keep­ing the dark secret, also noti­fied the PSNI and repor­ted the alleged per­pet­rator, who was by this time a serving police officer.

Jonathan Hyndman was sus­pen­ded from duty after a crim­inal invest­ig­a­tion was launched, but took his own life days later on Novem­ber 19, 2009.

Mr Hunter said he “couldn’t believe” that the probe ended with “no con­cern about other poten­tial vic­tims.”

In 2011, Mr Hunter emailed the co-founder of Exodus — a pop­u­lar youth club, which attrac­ted hun­dreds of young people through its doors when it opened in 1997.

He said some of the abuse took place on premises where a “Chris­tian night­base” was set up to offer “altern­at­ive parties” for teens and young adults. The registered char­ity has strong links to churches across NI, includ­ing PCI.

“[Exodus chief exec­ut­ive] Jim Brown wrote back say­ing he was ‘deeply saddened’ by what I had exper­i­enced and was will­ing to talk about it — but said he would be abroad for two months,” Mr Hunter explained.

“I was really angered by his response, so I didn’t fol­low it up. I was mak­ing a massive alleg­a­tion and he brushed it off.”

In cor­res­pond­ence seen by this news­pa­per, Mr Hunter con­tac­ted Mr Brown again on Janu­ary 21 this year, seek­ing clar­ity over whether he took the ini­tial com­plaint any fur­ther and ask­ing how he intends to now in light of the PCI safe­guard­ing scan­dal.

The vic­tim stressed it’s “never too late” to identify oth­ers who may be affected.

However, the sender did not receive a response until after this news­pa­per con­tac­ted Mr Brown three weeks later.

“It bounced back imme­di­ately, which makes me won­der did he block me after my first email 15 years ago? When I sent it from a dif­fer­ent email address, it went through straight away,” Mr Hunter said.

“My cous­in­ was Jim­ Brown’s right-hand man and a prom­in­ent youth leader in Exodus when I was a young teen­ager.

“He led sum­mer camps with under-18s, tak­ing them all around the globe.

“I believe there are other vic­tims, but no one is even check­ing.”

Mr Brown emailed the vic­tim a day after the Bel­fast Tele­graph posed a series of ques­tions to him.

He told Mr Hunter that the cor­res­pond­ence went to his spam folder and stressed that the organ­isa­tion has robust safe­guard­ing meas­ures in place.

The per­tin­ent ques­tion was not addressed and Mr Brown did not reply to this news­pa­per.

Act­ing on the advice of the cur­rent min­is­ter of Dun­boe, Mr Hunter also con­tac­ted a ded­ic­ated helpline set up by the PCI to identify poten­tial vic­tims and the scale of safe­guard­ing fail­ings, which led to a Zoom meet­ing.

The vic­tim says the safe­guard­ing team were “very empath­etic” until they found out Hyndman was dead.

“They said words to the effect of ‘there’s not much we can do’,” Mr Hunter said.

“It was so deflat­ing — this was the second chance as I saw it for them to cor­rect the error of their ways.

“I know my abuser is dead, that wasn’t why I was report­ing it.

“It’s because I believe there may be other vic­tims.”

“But there was no curi­os­ity about that and no one asked any ques­tions.”

Mr Hunter has had no more con­tact with the safe­guard­ing team and said he has no reason to expect fur­ther com­mu­nic­a­tion.

“There isn’t even a ref­er­ence num­ber — noth­ing,” he said.

“And because it was online, there isn’t even a paper trail of the con­ver­sa­tion.”

The vic­tim also re-repor­ted the abuse to the PSNI in dir­ect response to the crim­inal invest­ig­a­tion it launched into PCI days after former mod­er­ator Rev Tre­vor Grib­ben announced his resig­na­tion over “ser­i­ous and sig­ni­fic­ant fail­ings”, which res­ul­ted in people being “harmed” and “put at risk” between 2009 and 2022.

Assist­ant Chief Con­stable Davy Beck pre­vi­ously vowed to make sure per­pet­rat­ors are “held to account” and determ­ine if any offences have been com­mit­ted by those respons­ible for safe­guard­ing.

The senior officer prom­ised vic­tims would be treated with “sens­it­iv­ity, respect and pro­fes­sion­al­ism.”

Mr Hunter said, des­pite a des­ig­nated officer being assigned to his case and com­ing in “all guns blaz­ing”, that was not his exper­i­ence.

“They talked me through best prac­tice... then, two days later, they came back and said it didn’t meet the threshold to pro­sec­ute any­one.”

Mr Hunter has been left won­der­ing “what is the threshold?”

He’s con­cerned by the lack of effort to determ­ine if there are other vic­tims.

“I do not believe I am the only one, no way,” he said.

“It’s really frus­trat­ing that des­pite the pub­lic appeal, those in author­ity still can’t deal with this, which doesn’t sug­gest they will ever be able to.” 

The PSNI con­firmed that a crim­inal report was made on Novem­ber 6, 2009, and given the sus­pect’s death “there was never a like­li­hood of a pro­sec­u­tion”.

Con­firm­ing that the case was reviewed last month, the PSNI refused to respond to ques­tions seek­ing to estab­lish if action was taken in 2009 to find out if there were other vic­tims.

This news­pa­per also asked if the PSNI aler­ted PCI or Exodus that a youth leader had been accused of child sex abuse, but did not get an answer.

A spokes­per­son said there were no other sus­pects or lines of inquiry at the time and that the broader ongo­ing crim­inal invest­ig­a­tion into PCI safe­guard­ing con­cerns remains ongo­ing.

“PSNI are not able to com­ment fur­ther on spe­cific churches or indi­vidu­als,” they added.

A state­ment issued by PCI, and on behalf of Rev Mccaughan, said “we are genu­inely and deeply con­cerned to hear of what allegedly has taken place”.

“As these dis­tress­ing events are part of an ongo­ing invest­ig­a­tion by the PSNI, we are unable to make any spe­cific com­ment, except to say that as a church, we have com­mit­ted pub­licly to co-oper­at­ing fully with any police invest­ig­a­tion, and to assist them in every way we can,” it added.

PCI reit­er­ated its pre­vi­ous appeals encour­aging vic­tims and sur­viv­ors who wish to make a report to con­tact the police or its own safe­guard­ing team.