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HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Exxon Mobil is “well along” in a plan to build its first commercial power plant, fueled by natural gas, to directly supply electricity to data centers, the company announced Wednesday. It’s a new venture for the Spring-based oil and gas giant, which has in previous years defied pressure to get into the electricity business as other oil majors experimented with — and then moved away from — renewable energy. Exxon plans to outfit the power plant with technology to capture and store more than 90% of its emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by the burning of fossil fuels. The buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the primary driver of climate change. In an email statement, Dan Ammann, Exxon’s president of its low carbon businesses, said the company has secured sites for the power plant project near its network of carbon dioxide pipelines. Exxon has CO2 pipelines running along the Gulf Coast in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi as well as in Montana and Wyoming.

AUSTIN – Inside Higher Ed reports Brandie Cleaver, the college counselor at Stephen F. Austin High School, has a metaphor she likes to use when talking to students about applying to the University of Texas at Austin. As with most of her teaching analogies, this one is about dessert—specifically, pie. “Mrs. Cleaver loves pie,” she says. “Coconut and chocolate are my favorites, but UT Austin pie is OK, too.” She’s drawing a pie chart on the whiteboard in her office, which seems to have an open-door policy: About a dozen students sit around the large room in desks and on colorful chairs, working on homework or applications under walls plastered with college pennants. One pipes up from a bean bag: “The pie thing again?”

It’s a familiar analogy for Cleaver’s students because most of them have the state flagship, whose campus is just uptown, on their short list of prospective colleges, and she often has to explain just how slim their chances of admission really are. The pie conceit helps a complicated state policy issue go down a bit easier for 17- and 18-year-olds, though they may not love the taste. “This big chunk of the pie is already eaten by the time you apply; if you’re not in the top of your class, you’re wrestling with everyone else for this other little slice,” Cleaver explains, wielding a dry-erase marker like a cake knife. “If you’re a junior or senior not in [the top 6 percent of your class] and you’ve only got Austin on your list of schools, it’s time to think of some backups, because there’s just not enough pie to go around.” Getting into UT Austin is no sweat for Texas residents who graduate in the top 6 percent of their high school class. In accordance with a nearly 30-year-old state policy—which, until last year, was the only one of its kind in the country—all those students have to do is apply and they’ll be automatically admitted. The law mandates that at least 75 percent of UT Austin’s admits come from this pool.

AUSTIN (AP) – Wynn Rosser, a bow tie-wearing East Texan with multigenerational familial roots in rural life, will take the helm of Texas’ higher education agency in the new year.

As higher ed commissioner, Rosser will serve as the chief executive officer of the Coordinating Board, the state agency with a $2.9 billion budget that oversees Texas’ financial aid programs and helps enact the state’s strategic vision for public higher education.

Rosser said he is focused on getting more low-income Texans to college because a postsecondary degree is a pathway to a stable job and can transform future generations of families. And the state can get there by expanding financial aid programs, investing in research and emphasizing associate degrees and certificates.

In front of higher education leaders and policymakers on Friday, Rosser reflected on how his mother grew up in a house the size of the stage he was on, using an outhouse because they did not have indoor plumbing. And how his father’s decision to get a degree at Texas A&M University changed the trajectory of his family’s life.

“How lucky am I that dad managed to get into (college) and succeed? Mom and Dad made wise decisions,” said Rosser, his voice choking up and trying to find balance. “That’s why I get to sit with you guys talking about the seventh largest economy and setting more students up for success.”

Rosser spoke with journalists about his plans as commissioner before his public remarks. Here are three takeaways from his comments.
Texas must help more students pay for college

Students want to go to college but are afraid of taking on debt to continue their education after high school, Rosser said.

“Aspiration isn’t the challenge in Texas but, yet, we still have only about half the students enrolling directly,” Rosser said. “That’s a big opportunity for us. How do we take advantage of the aspiration and support students into their dreams, whether it be sub-baccalaureate or baccalaureate?”

The board is requesting $340 million from the Legislature to expand financial aid for students. The appropriations request would allow the board to guarantee low-income students in the top 25% of their high school graduating class financial aid through the Texas Education Opportunity grant and the Toward EXcellence, Access and Success, or TEXAS, grant, said David Troutman, the deputy commissioner for academic affairs, at a quarterly board meeting in October.

Higher education leaders also need to help them understand the cost of college – and the degrees they need to get the jobs they’re interested in, Rosser said.

“We need to help students and families understand ‘What does it take to achieve that dream?’ and provide that information early, consistently, so that students and families can plan,” Rosser said.
To achieve workforce goals, a shift to focus on adult learners

Rosser will be inheriting the state’s 60×30 plan, which set an ambitious goal to increase the number of Texans ages 25 to 34 with a postsecondary credential to 60% by 2030. The plan was created to meet the workforce needs of the state: About 71% of jobs are expected to require postsecondary education by 2036.

In rural East Texas, students often hear they “have to leave to succeed.” But there are thousands of high-demand, well-paying jobs in the area, Rosser said. He’s currently the president and CEO of the T.L.L. Temple Foundation, which analyzed jobs in the region. Those jobs don’t require a bachelor’s degree but do require a credential beyond high school.

“All credentials aren’t necessarily created equal,” Rosser said.

More rural students have been enrolling in dual credit, where they can take a college class while they are enrolled in high school. That has put more young people on the path to college, getting the state closer to its goal.

His predecessor, Harrison Keller, oversaw the expansion of the 60×30 plan to include Texans ages 25 to 64.

Adult students have different needs when they are returning to school to complete their degrees. That means the coordinating board and Texas colleges need different strategies to support those students, Rosser said.

“Life’s more challenging when you are working, when you have dependents that you’re supporting,” Rosser said. “How do you balance all of those things with trying to go to class? So that makes the more flexible credential options perhaps more attractive.”
Texas universities should expand their research arm

The incoming commissioner is also considering how Texas can help “emerging” research universities expand their research capabilities.

Rosser spent 14 years in teaching and administrative roles at Texas A&M University, one of the top two public research institutions in the state.

Universities across the country have been actively investing in their research because it helps attract grants and industry partners who might want to work on research projects and helps recruit faculty and graduate students.

“We’ve got to ensure that we’re preparing students, not only for the job today but the jobs of the future. And why we do that is with research universities, funding that the Legislature has invested in,” Rosser said. “I hope that more Texas students take advantage of that opportunity and become researchers and faculty members themselves, so that we can reinforce the economy.”

In the 2023 legislative session, Texas lawmakers created the Texas University Fund, a $3.9 billion endowment to help other universities meet research milestones.

ARLINGTON (AP) — From the street they’re easy to miss. But in the self-proclaimed “American Dream City” — famous for its roller coasters and sport stadiums — residents know where to spot them. Oil and gas wells and compressor stations are tucked in between houses, schools, businesses and strip malls, woven into daily life.

And at times, methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change by trapping heat in the atmosphere, escapes from the equipment. Often, the methane comes out with other chemicals, including volatile organic compounds that contribute to smog formation, creating a cocktail of chemicals that are harmful to human health.

Earlier this year, a long-anticipated federal climate rule was finalized requiring oil and gas operators to dramatically reduce how much methane is released in many oil fields, including those in Texas.

The rule, written with input from industry, calls for operators to identify and fix equipment leaking methane and curb the practice of flaring — or burning off excess natural gas. Under the rule, operators will have to monitor emissions, wasteful flaring and leaks from most existing and new well sites.

States are now on a timeline to submit plans to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency detailing how they will implement the rule. Texas regulators are taking input from the public on the state plan until Dec. 31.

Some residents in Arlington, home to about 400 gas wells and 50 drilling sites, want the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to do more than the bare minimum outlined in the EPA’s guidelines and submit a plan before President-elect Donald Trump assumes office.

Trump reversed a methane reduction rule during his first term. Experts say rolling back the current rule would take years, and support from industry for the rule might help keep it in place.

At a public meeting last month in Arlington, Texas environmental regulators heard from more than a dozen residents about the proposed rule. One woman with severe asthma said “air quality is a life or death issue,” and asked state regulators to prioritize the health of citizens over economic interests. One man pointed out that oil and gas equipment sits close to schools and day care centers and called on regulators for speedy implementation of the rule to protect people from the health risks of urban fracking.

“The flares are not fun, smelling the rotten eggs is not fun,” Rogelio Meixueiro, who lives in Arlington and is a member of the nonprofit organization Sunrise Tarrant, told TCEQ regulators. “I can only trust that you’re going to do your job. I can only trust that you’re going to do everything possible to reduce methane emissions.”

Fracking in Arlington can be traced back two decades, when drillers discovered they could use horizontal drilling to access natural gas in the Barnett Shale formation underneath the city. Today in Tarrant County, which includes Arlington, more than 1 million people live within one half mile of a gas well, according to data from the local environmental group Liveable Arlington. The group’s organizers say that oil and gas air pollution disproportionately impacts many low-income communities of color.

Nearby cities have tried and failed to ban fracking. Roughly a decade ago, Denton, located about 45 miles north of Arlington, voted to prohibit fracking within city limits. The local ordinance was swiftly overturned by the state Legislature, which passed a law barring cities and towns across Texas from imposing such bans.

According to several studies, living near oil and gas wells is linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, impaired lung function, anxiety, depression, preterm birth and impaired fetal growth, primarily due to air pollution from the wells.

“(For years) we’ve been getting complaints from neighborhoods about smells, odors, headaches, sickness and what to do about it,” said Ranjana Bhandari, founder and executive director of Liveable Arlington. “Often we don’t have a remedy.”
What does the rule do?

Methane, a primary component of natural gas, accounts for about 16% of global emissions. Because methane lasts in the atmosphere for a few decades rather than a few centuries, reducing emissions would help moderate global temperatures more quickly.

Most of the methane emissions in the U.S. come from the energy sector — especially those in Texas, the nation’s largest oil and gas producing state.

Last year, Texas broke a record by producing 42% of the nation’s oil. Most of the state’s oil comes from the Permian Basin, a 75,000-square-mile region that stretches from eastern New Mexico and covers most of West Texas. The Permian Basin generates 1.4 million metric tons of methane each year — enough gas to meet the annual gas needs of nearly 2 million homes, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.

Currently, Texas doesn’t have a rule to capture escaping methane emissions from energy infrastructure. The state’s implementation of the EPA rule could change that.

The regulations are broken in two parts: one for new equipment constructed or modified after December 2022, and another for existing equipment. Most of Texas’ oil and gas equipment are existing methane sources.

A major component of the proposed state rule is tackling leaks from equipment failures, which are the largest source of methane pollution from oil and gas operations.

Operators will be tasked with inspecting their sites for leaks using handheld gas-imaging cameras or other technologies, which need to be approved by the EPA, to identify what equipment needs to be repaired or replaced. Gas wells will also need to be monitored for leaks until they are closed and plugged.

Oil and gas companies will be required to phase out routine flaring, a relatively common practice where excess natural gas produced during oil extraction is burned off at the wellhead. This is often done to dispose of gas that companies find uneconomical to capture or transport, or sometimes as a safety measure to relieve well pressure.

Flares can fail to burn off all the methane or can be unexpectedly extinguished, releasing raw methane into the atmosphere.

In Texas, state law says companies aren’t supposed to flare or vent gas without special permission from the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry. In 2022, the agency approved about 3,660 venting and flaring requests from oil and gas operators, according to agency data. Last year’s numbers are not available on the agency’s website.

Newly-constructed oil wells will be required to stop routine flaring altogether under the EPA rule. Existing sites can only flare if operators prove they cannot capture the gas for sale, reinjection or reuse.

According to a spokesperson at the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. oil and gas industry is already doing its part to reduce emissions by improving its production processes, which the organization said resulted in methane emissions falling 37% between 2015 and 2022.

The EPA estimates implementation of the rule would eliminate 58 million tons of methane emissions nationally by 2038, as well as 16 million tons of smog-forming volatile organic compounds and nearly 590,000 tons of toxins like cancer-causing benzene.

Over that time, the standards will yield net health benefits worth up to $98 billion, after accounting for industry’s compliance costs, according to the EPA.
What will a new Trump administration mean?

Texas has already received $134 million from the federal government to permanently plug low-producing wells to help reduce methane emissions.

And while the EPA’s methane rule has been a cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s climate strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Trump has said he will roll back federal regulations targeting climate change. Climate advocates were quick to warn that this could lead to the weakening or elimination of federal safeguards designed to limit harmful air pollution and greenhouse gases.

However, some experts believe Trump may face new pressures if he attempts to reverse the methane rule.

Arvind Ravikumar, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin who co-leads the Energy Emissions Modeling and Data Lab, said industry support for emissions reduction has grown since Trump’s last administration.

“Technologies have come a very long way. There’s a whole ecosystem of industry catering to addressing methane emissions, and the technologies from 2016 have significantly improved and are now being routinely deployed across the country by many oil and gas operators, both big and small,” he said.

Ravikumar added that international buyers are increasingly demanding cleaner, climate-friendly oil and gas production. The European Union approved a standard earlier this year that places limits on how much methane can be emitted in imported gas. Ravikumar said this would require all suppliers to the European Union, including the U.S., to comply with their new limits.

“So U.S. exporters are under pressure to make sure that their supplies are clean and have lower methane emissions,” he said.

Without the EPA’s standards, Ravikumar said, U.S. producers could struggle to compete in global markets.

Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil & Gas Association, said state operators have focused for years on reducing emissions and have made considerable progress.

“We are hopeful President Trump and his administration will seek stakeholder input so that any policies implemented facilitate this progress and can survive political changes. In the meantime, a TXOGA workgroup has been actively involved in state implementation of the Biden administration’s methane rule to ensure common-sense, science-based outcomes for all operators,” he said.

Reversing the new methane rule could take years, as the process involves navigating regulatory hurdles and public review.

Others are concerned that Texas could adopt the new rule but fail to enforce it.

“Strong rules are great, but they need to be properly and adequately enforced to deliver their promises,” said Elizabeth Lieberknecht, a regulatory and legislative manager at the Environmental Defense Fund.

The TCEQ has said that the agency is experiencing staffing shortages due in part to salaries that aren’t high enough to attract and retain workers. At a September legislative meeting, an agency representative said the agency had nearly 400 vacant positions.

David Lyon, a senior research environmental scientist at UT-Austin, said it’s likely that states would opt not to enforce the rule without strong federal oversight to compel compliance.

“I could see states like Texas essentially not doing any enforcement,” Lyon said. “In an ideal world EPA would get Texas in trouble, but I think with Trump they might not do anything and allow Texas to not enforce.”

CHICAGO (AP) — Ismael El-Amin was driving his daughter to school when a chance encounter gave him an idea for a new way to carpool.

On the way across Chicago, El-Amin’s daughter spotted a classmate riding with her own dad as they drove to their selective public school on the city’s North Side. For 40 minutes, they rode along the same congested highway.

“They’re waving to each other in the back. I’m looking at the dad. The dad’s looking at me. And I was like, parents can definitely be a resource to parents,” said El-Amin, who went on to found Piggyback Network, a service parents can use to book rides for their children.

Reliance on school buses has been waning for years as districts struggle to find drivers and more students attend schools far outside their neighborhoods. As responsibility for transportation shifts to families, the question of how to replace the traditional yellow bus has become an urgent problem for some, and a spark for innovation.

State and local governments decide how widely to offer school bus service. Lately, more have been cutting back. Only about 28% of U.S. students take a school bus, according to a Federal Highway Administration survey concluded early last year. That’s down from about 36% in 2017.

Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s fourth-largest district, has significantly curbed bus service in recent years. It still offers rides for disabled and homeless students, in line with a federal mandate, but most families are on their own. Only 17,000 of the district’s 325,000 students are eligible for school bus rides.

Last week, the school system launched a pilot program allowing some students who attend out-of-neighborhood magnet or selective-enrollment schools to catch a bus at a nearby school’s “hub stop.” It aims to start with rides for about 1,000 students by the end of the school year.

It’s not enough to make up for the lost service, said Erin Rose Schubert, a volunteer for the CPS Parents for Buses advocacy group.

“The people who had the money and the privilege were able to figure out other situations like rearranging their work schedules or public transportation,” she said. “People who didn’t, some had to pull their kids out of school.”

On Piggyback Network, parents can book a ride for their student online with another parent traveling the same direction. Rides cost roughly 80 cents per mile and the drivers are compensated with credits to use for their own kids’ rides.

“It’s an opportunity for kids to not be late to school,” 15-year-old Takia Phillips said on a recent PiggyBack ride with El-Amin as the driver.

The company has arranged a few hundred rides in its first year operating in Chicago, and El-Amin has been contacting drivers for possible expansion to Virginia, North Carolina and Texas. It is one of several startups that have been filling the void.

Unlike Piggyback Network, which connects parents, HopSkipDrive contracts directly with school districts to assist students without reliable transportation. The company launched a decade ago in Los Angeles with three mothers trying to coordinate school carpools and now supports some 600 school districts in 13 states.

Regulations keep it from operating in some states, including Kentucky, where a group of Louisville students has been lobbying on its behalf to change that.

After the district halted bus service to most traditional and magnet schools, the student group known as The Real Young Prodigys wrote a hip-hop song titled “Where My Bus At?” The song’s music video went viral on YouTube with lyrics such as, “I’m a good kid. I stay in class, too. Teachers want me to succeed, but I can’t get to school.”

“Those bus driver shortages are not really going away,” HopSkipDrive CEO Joanna McFarland said. “This is a structural change in the industry we need to get serious about addressing.”

HopSkipDrive has been a welcome option for Reinya Gibson’s son, Jerren Samuel, who attends a small high school in Oakland, California. She said the school takes care to accommodate his needs as a student with autism, but the district lined up the transportation because there is no bus from their home in San Leandro.

“Growing up, people used to talk about kids in the short yellow buses. They were associated with a physical disability, and they were teased or made fun of,” Gibson said. “Nobody knows this is support for Jerren because he can’t take public transportation.”

Encouragement from his mother helped Jerren overcame his fear about riding with a stranger to school.

“I felt really independent getting in that car,” he said.

Companies catering to kids claim to screen drivers more extensively, checking their fingerprints and requiring them to have childcare or parenting experience. Drivers and children are often given passwords that must match, and parents can track a child’s whereabouts in real time through the apps.

Kango, a competitor to HopSkipDrive in California and Arizona, started as a free carpooling app similar to the PiggyBack Network and now contracts with school districts. Drivers are paid more than they would typically get for Uber or Lyft, but there are often more requirements such as walking some students with disabilities into school, Kango CEO Sara Schaer said.

“This is not just a curbside-to-curbside, three-minute situation,” Schaer said. “You are responsible for getting that kid to and from school. That’s not the same as transporting an adult or DoorDashing somebody’s lunch or dinner.”

In Chicago, some families that have used Piggyback said they have seen few alternatives.

Concerned about the city’s rising crime rate, retired police officer Sabrina Beck never considered letting her son take the subway to Whitney Young High School. Since she was driving him anyway, she volunteered through PiggyBack also to drive a freshman who had qualified for the selective magnet school but had no way to get there.

“To have the opportunity to go and then to miss it because you don’t have the transportation, that is so detrimental,” Beck said. “Options like this are extremely important.”

After the bus route that took her two kids to elementary school was canceled, Jazmine Dillard and other Chicago parents thought they had convinced the school to move up the opening bell from 8:45 a.m. to 8:15 a.m., a more manageable time for her schedule. After that plan was scrapped because the buses were needed elsewhere at that time, Dillard turned to PiggyBack Network.

“We had to kind of pivot and find a way to make it to work on time as well as get them to school on time,” she said.

___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Nearly every detail about the religious group Lisa Webb’s family belonged to was hidden from the outside world. Its followers met in homes rather than churches. Its leadership structure was hard to discern, its finances opaque. It didn’t even have an official name.

But for decades, no secret was as closely guarded as the identities of the sexual predators inside the group known as the “Two by Twos.”

Now a growing number of public allegations from around the world have prompted a broad investigation by the FBI and placed an uncomfortable spotlight on the long-quiet Christian sect. Survivors say the group’s leaders protected child-abusing ministers by pressuring victims to forgive, ignoring legal reporting requirements and by transferring abusers to new locations to live with unsuspecting families.

Ministry leaders have publicly condemned the abuse but several declined to answer questions from The Associated Press.

For Webb, who was sexually abused by one of the group’s ministers as a child, the attention has brought an unexpected sense of “strength in numbers.”

“There are so many who are frustrated and disheartened,” said Webb. “But there’s also camaraderie in that, and support.”

A website, a hotline and social media pages established by victims have documented allegations against more than 900 abusers, with survivors in more than 30 countries and cases continuing to emerge. In the past year, news stories and a Hulu documentary have focused on the sect’s predator preachers and the leaders who enabled them.

While perpetrators have been sentenced to prison in isolated cases, the sect has largely avoided legal repercussions, protected by its decentralized structure, hidden finances and state laws that limit the timeline for criminal charges.
The secret sect’s origin story

The sect, also known to its members as “The Way” or “The Truth,” was founded in Ireland in 1897 by William Irvine, who railed against the existence of churches. The only way to spread Christianity, he argued, was to do as Jesus instructed in the Book of Matthew: to send apostles out to live among those they sought to convert.

The sect grew as volunteer preachers — known as workers — went “two by two” to live in the family homes of followers for days or weeks at a time. Sect historians say there were up to a few million members just a few decades ago, but current estimates put the figure at 75,000 to 85,000 worldwide.

Unlike the Boy Scouts or the Catholic Church, which have paid out billions to sex abuse victims, the sect’s aversion to property leaves it without apparent assets that might be used to pay settlements, legal experts say.

Workers are supposed to shun worldly possessions, relying on followers for food, shelter and transportation. But that also ensures abusive workers have access to potential victims.

Webb was abused by a preacher who stayed with her family in Michigan when she was 11. The man, Peter Mousseau, was convicted much later — after he expressed an interest in visiting her in 2008 and she decided to pursue charges. A regional overseer to whom she previously reported the abuse was later convicted for failing to report abuse allegations against another local worker.

“You have this mindset that they are angels in your home. They can do no wrong, so you don’t have any kind of wall up,” she said. “It was just the perfect storm created, the perfect recipe for this kind of behavior.”
Abusers live among their victims

Sheri Autrey had just turned 14 when a 28-year-old worker moved into her family’s home in Visalia, California, for two months.

He began abusing her immediately, sneaking to her room at night and taking her for daytime drives. He turned up the radio whenever the Hall & Oates song “Maneater” came on, singing: “Watch out boy, she’ll chew you up.”

When Autrey revealed the abuse to her mother a few years later, her mom reported it to the sect’s regional overseer, who was in charge of all the workers in the area.

The overseer refused to warn other families. Instead, he sent the worker back to Autrey’s home to apologize.

Autrey, raised to be meek, erupted. Her family took her to the district attorney’s office but declined to put her through a prosecution.

“I would have to explain, explicitly, what happened,” Autrey said. “And I was in no way prepared for that.”

Decades later, Autrey was at a baseball game when “Maneater” came on. She had to walk around the stadium to calm herself down, and she resolved to send a letter about the abuse to hundreds of sect members.

“I wanted anyone else who was a victim to know she is not the only one,” Autrey said. “She needs to know there is help.”
Many more cases of abuse

One worker from Peru, Americo Quispe, was sent to Garland, Texas, in the early 2000s after facing allegations of inappropriate behavior in his home country. He soon found new victims, some of whose families went to police. He returned to Peru before he could be arrested.

Quispe was later convicted of molestation in Peru and sentenced to 30 years. He has never faced the charges in Texas.

Another worker, Ruben Mata, abused dozens of boys, among them 10-year-old Douglas Patterson, who was lured away from his family during a sect convention in the early 1990s. Patterson said he kept quiet about it because he feared his family would leave the sect — and thus be barred from eternal salvation — if he told.

Mata was eventually convicted in 2006 in a separate sex abuse case. He died in a California prison.
Members told to keep abuse reports quiet

A few months before Mata’s trial, the Saskatchewan, Canada, overseer, Dale Shultz, sent two letters to colleagues.

One was to be shown to any concerned members. It acknowledged Mata was a pedophile and that workers had been alerted to his abuse at least three times. The sect only notified authorities after Mata resigned, according to the letter.

The second was for staff. It said no copies should be made of the first letter.

“The purpose of the letter is to help those who have concerns, not to advertise a kingdom problem to those who either do not know about it or are not having a problem with it,” Shultz wrote.

In another case, a regional overseer for Arizona, Ed Alexander, wrote a letter to a child-molesting elder in 2005 observing that “we love our people very much and don’t want to report their misdeeds.”

The letter suggested the sect could fulfill its mandatory abuse-reporting obligations by recommending offenders get professional counseling, because then the counselors — rather than sect leaders — would be obligated to make the reports to police.

“They believe that child sexual assault is just a sin. Like, you’re a sinner, they are a sinner, it’s all just sin,” said Eileen Dickey, one of the man’s victims. She reported the abuse to sect leaders because she was worried other children would be targeted.

“I was told never to talk about it,” she said.

Alexander would not speak with The Associated Press: “Unfortunately, the media coverage has been so negative and one-sided that I am going to have to decline an interview,” he texted.
Former minister recounts culture of downplaying misdeeds

Jared Snyder spent more than two decades as an itinerant minister before becoming disillusioned and quitting. No one told him directly about abuse, Snyder said, but he occasionally heard rumors.

The sect’s culture — which makes gossip taboo and places tremendous pressure on members to be merciful — meant that misdeeds big or small were downplayed, he said.

“One overseer just explicitly told me, ‘The less you know, the better off you are,’” he said.

As a worker, Snyder received no paychecks, retirement benefits or health insurance benefits, and he was discouraged from using banks. But he was never without spending money: Followers regularly offer cash to the workers, and Snyder said he frequently had thousands of dollars in his pockets.

Most of that money would get spent on building materials, food or other supplies at regional conventions, Snyder said.
The case that exposed the sect to more scrutiny

In June 2022, a regional overseer named Dean Bruer died in an Oregon motel room. Bruer, 67, had served in at least 22 states and territories and seven countries since 1976, according to a timeline compiled by Pam Walton, a former member who has used historical records and photographs to track the movements of predatory preachers.

Nine months after Bruer died, Doyle Smith, the overseer for Idaho and Oregon, wrote a letter to members. Evidence left on Bruer’s phone and laptop showed he had raped and abused multiple underage victims, Smith wrote.

“Dean was a sexual predator,” Smith wrote. “We never respect or defend such totally inappropriate behavior among us. There is a very united consensus among us that the only thing to do is to be transparent with all of you for obvious reasons, though this is very difficult.”

That transparency did not extend to dealings with local police. It was only after Autrey, another abuse survivor, and private investigator Cynthia Liles — all former sect members — pressured Smith that he turned Bruer’s laptop over to detectives, Autrey told the AP.

By then, the computer had been tampered with, according to records from the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon. The web browser search history was cleared. Bruer’s Apple ID had been changed and files transferred out of his DropBox account. Bruer’s phone was never provided to police, and the “Find My iPhone” feature had been disabled.

“What web browsing history was present on the laptop that someone didn’t want anyone else knowing about?” Detective Jeffrey Burlew wrote in a police report. Unable to find any evidence of a crime within its jurisdiction, the office closed the investigation.

Smith did not respond to phone messages from the AP.
Survivors and law enforcement dig deeper

Though Autrey and others had long sought reforms in the sect, Bruer’s death proved to be a catalyst. Autrey, Liles and another survivor launched a hotline, website and Facebook pages for survivors.

In February, the FBI’s field office in Omaha, Nebraska, announced an investigation.

The outcry prompted some sect leaders to condemn the abuse and to ask consultants for advice on how to better protect members. But at least some regional overseers have ultimately declined to adopt recommended child abuse prevention policies — saying the only true code of conduct is the New Testament.

And some leaders still warn members against criticizing the sect.

At an August convention in Duncan, British Columbia, a worker helping to lead the event did not mention the abuse scandal directly but told members to lay aside “evil speakings.”

“It’s more easy to be critical than to be correct,” preached Robert Doecke, a worker from Australia. “If you feed on problems, it will only make more problems. But if you focus on the Lord, it will lead to solutions.”

HOUSTON (AP) — Two teens were killed and four were injured — including a 13-year-old girl — in a shooting at a makeshift club in Houston, police said Sunday.

Officers arriving at the site of the shooting late Saturday night found “a very hectic scene — a large crowd of people running out of a makeshift club,” Assistant Chief Luis Menendez-Sierra said at a news conference.

Police have not yet identified a suspect and have asked those who were at the event to call police with any information. Police said some witnesses told detectives that they saw a man wearing all black, including a hooded sweatshirt and a black mask covering his face, shoot a pistol into a crowd of people at the venue.

Police said a 16-year-old male died at the scene and a 14-year-old female died at the hospital. Their identifies are pending verification by the medical examiner.

The four who were injured, all females, were hospitalized. The injured 13-year-old was in critical condition, while an 18-year-old was in serious condition and a 17-year-old and 19-year-old were both in stable condition, police said.

Menendez-Sierra said most of those attending the event, which appeared to be organized on social media, were juveniles. He said they were gathered in an empty business.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said in a post on X that “makeshift, unsanctioned pop-up parties can quickly lead to chaos and violence.”

“Pop-up parties raise public safety concerns and teens need to stay away for their own safety,” he said.

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This story corrects the age of the female who was killed to 14, not 16, per Houston police.