Richard Gingerich

Ohio Mennonite church member credibly accused of sexual misconduct with a minor

Richard Gingerich (b. 1988) allegedly sent sexually explicit messages and later sexually touched a minor female without her consent in approximately 2013, when Gingerich was in his mid-20s. Both Gingerich 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).

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 Gingerich to be credible and to meet the evidentiary threshold of the GRACE evidentiary standard. According to the GRACE report, “Gingerich’s admissions of having a key to the church, using the key to meet young women alone in the church, communicating with them over text, giving and receiving massages and backrubs, and reaching under a young woman’s shirt after she had previously denied consent are consistent with allegations of [the victim] and corroborating allegations of [two other young women]. His initial denial/obfuscation of any relationship with young women within the young group, failure to mention the age/time period of alleged encounters with [the victim], and refusal to give the names of any of the young women suggests a lack of transparency at least and a specific intent to hide information or deceive at most.”

The victim told GRACE that she didn’t report the events to leadership at UBMC at that time because, based on her observations of other cases of abuse in the church, she didn’t think anything would be done. “I never said anything to leadership about [Gingerich] just because how the [abuse by Jerod Corbin] was handled directly informed what I did… [and thought], ‘Well, if what happened when a grown man was this extreme with a five-year-old with meetings, what’s the point? Nothing’s going to happen.'”