Danny Kramer

Ohio Mennonite church elder disciplined for sexual misconduct

Danny Kramer (b. 1968) allegedly groped a young woman who was living in his home in 2007. Both Kramer and the victim were at the time part of United Bethel Mennonite Church (UBMC), a congregation in Plain City, Ohio, that is affiliated with the Biblical Mennonite Alliance (BMA). Kramer was serving as an elder at UBMC and was removed from that leadership position as part of a disciplinary process after the allegations came to light.

In 2023, the leadership at UBMC engaged Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE) after the public criminal cases of two church members. GRACE investigated how UBMC handled those and other allegations of abuse and in 2024 released the report of their independent investigation.

GRACE investigators found the victim’s allegations of sexual misconduct by Kramer to be credible and to meet the evidentiary threshold of the GRACE evidentiary standard. According to the GRACE report, the victim reported the sexual abuse in 2008 to the dean of Elnora Bible Institute (EBI), a ministry of the BMA where many UBMC members have attended. The dean then reportedly met with EBI and UBMC leaders and told them what the victim had reported.

According to the GRACE report, a UBMC leader “described that when he went home from [EBI], he and an associate pastor spoke to Kramer. He described Kramer as having ‘a hard time really embracing responsibility for it. He downplayed it, acted like it wasn’t as bad as what [the victim] said.’ UBMC leadership asked Kramer to step down as an elder and share a confession with the men of the church.”

The leader reportedly “described that in Kramer’s confession, he wasn’t clear and it ‘almost seemed like it muddied the situation,’ making people confused as to why he was being disciplined. [The leader] remembers they then held a second meeting for Kramer to address the issue again, but both times, Kramer wasn’t very clear and [the leader] now wishes they had come up with a statement together or that the leadership team had spoken.”

“According to [the leader], Kramer’s perspective about the events was so different from what was reported by [the victim] and how the church leadership perceived the events. He stated that within a few months after Kramer’s confession and removal from eldership, Kramer’s family left the church and when he stood up in front of the church and said they were leaving, he ‘wanted the church to know that he forgave the leadership team for what they did.'”

In an email to GRACE, Kramer wrote, “I have no desire to address and make a big issue but if you can help them [UBMC] to see that it’s not okay to in some circumstances address things and then other things (depending who it is) you just push things ‘under the carpet’ and go on.”

One person reported to GRACE that after stepping down from leadership and leaving UBMC, Kramer became a founding member of a non-Mennonite church in the area.

The victim reported to GRACE that after one abusive experience with Kramer, “I’m just frozen. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know. I don’t remember even walking away from there. It was just like, what just happened?”

Later, after a phone call in which Kramer reportedly spoke in a sexualized manner, the victim said, “I just froze. And I remember just trying to get off the phone as fast as I could. I just probably said a couple of things and I just hung up. And I remember being in that store and just, everything is just, it feels like your world is spinning. You almost don’t know where you are, you don’t know where you’re going. I mean, I just remember feeling completely, I was out of body. I was seeing myself there with a shopping cart and just going, ‘What am I even doing? I don’t know what I’m doing next.’ I don’t know.”

“After moving out of the Kramer home, [the victim] described dealing with depression and suicidality. She described her reflections on the events with Kramer and the response of certain individuals to her allegations: ‘[A] part of me wants to go back and confront some of those people and go, what you did, that was really hurtful to me. I just feel like that wasn’t right. You should know how much you hurt me through that extremely vulnerable time. I wish, part of me wants to do that. At the same time, but the rest of me wants to just leave it in the past.’”