Amanda's Story

This blog is for the silenced, the marginalized, and the victims of the many types of abuse that the leadership and members of Liberty Church in O'Fallon Missouri have inflicted on their members and any who opposed their love for control. These are the stories of the witnesses:

Amanda's Story

"My introduction to Liberty Church was confusing. I had been dating my now husband for a couple months, and he wanted to introduce me to his church. We were pretty quiet about our relationship (we didn’t post many photos and didn’t have our relationship status on facebook), but he had told a couple friends that we were together and they would meet me soon.

He was being mentored by Dan Benson, long term member and head of Liberty’s classical school, at the time, who immediately ran backround checks on not only me, but my entire family. He then told Peter about this by telling him all sorts of things he found out about me, my family, where I worked, and where I lived. Benson justified this by saying that he cared so much about Peter and Peter wasn’t telling him what he wanted to know.

When we got engaged the situation got worse. Dan Benson asked to meet with us under pretense of wanting an update on our lives and plans since we had split our time between our two churches. We met for lunch at KFC, and when we stood by our decision to get married he leaned across the table and screamed in my face. Peter told him to back off and reminded him that he was not allowed to yell at me. When Peter left the table for the restroom Benson told me that he was burdened by Peter’s “returning anger problem,” and asked me if I really wanted to be saddled with it for life.

We were not allowed to announce our engagement at Liberty. The leaders decided that they did not approve of our relationship and they read Peter’s insistence for privacy as proof that we were being sinful.

We asked over and over to meet with the leaders and our friends to discuss concerns. These requests were ignored. Finally, in early 2014 after we were married for a month, we reached out to them again. David Vaughan said he was too busy to meet with us and suggested we just get settled with a new church and move on. But Peter had attended for 15 years, and he had many friends there. We desired to reconcile, so we continued to ask for weeks for a time to meet, if only for an hour. David’s responses were shorter and shorter, until finally he just replied with a date and time. We immediately changed our schedules to make that work.

When we arrived for the meeting, Dan Benson met us at the door and followed us to David Vaughan’s office. David came out of his office and blatantly ignored me. He looked at Peter and said “she needs to wait in the car.” Peter said no, and David accused him of lying about the purpose of the meeting and said if I was going to stay there that there would be no meeting. Peter refused again, and David offered a handshake and said “well then goodbye.” Peter and I agreed then that I would sit at the table just outside the office, and he and David went into the main office and closed the door.

What David didn’t realize was that those walls weren’t soundproof. I watched through the French doors as David reclined arrogantly behind his desk, as though he was deigning to meet with Peter. Peter said he needed advice to help mend the broken relationships. David curtly suggested he follow Matthew 18 and just speak with them. When Peter explained everything that he had done already and how he had followed Matthew 18 and was now reaching the leadership step, David said he should leave and just make new relationships at our new church. When Peter asked why David wouldn’t help him, David said “the Bible says ‘don’t speak to fools.” Peter asked “are you calling me a fool?” and David leaned back further in his chair and said “I’m just quoting the Bible, Peter. Are we done?”

For the next half hour or so, I listened as Peter tried explaining the brokenness of the relationships and his desire to reconcile, only to hear David continuously ask “so are we done here? Are you done?” When Peter said he had a witness in me, David would not let me in the meeting, saying that I was not a witness to hurtful things that had been said (to me), but that Dan Benson was (Dan was not present when these things were said). He kept pressuring that if we wanted witnesses to our hurt that he would call in Benson as a witness.  

We finally left, shocked at the way church leadership was behaving and more broken than before.

Afterwards, we did look for a new church for quite awhile, but each place we went we learned that Liberty leadership had called ahead and “warned” the church about us. We went to Matthias Lot, but the pastor Mark had said the leadership had contacted them. Mark said unless we were willing to erase all complaints against Liberty and submit fully under his shepherding and do exactly what he said, Matthias Lot “probably isn’t the church for you.” David found out we went to the Journey for awhile and threatened to call Darron Patrick. I had heard that Liberty had a habit of calling the surrounding churches and this only proved it. We also learned through a friend at Liberty that they had held a meeting (apparently with my parents) and decided that Peter was clinically insane and urged everyone to pray for us and shun us.

Liberty is a laughable name, for there is no true liberty there. They are controlling, manipulative, and cruel when crossed."

Do you have a story to tell? Has Liberty Church hurt you? Email your story to petertkintz@gmail.com and I will have it posted!