Over the past several years, my name has been connected to serious allegations from my time in ministry. I have stayed largely out of public conversation since then. As I begin to step back into public work, I believe the right thing to do is speak clearly and directly rather than let silence be misread as avoidance.
That time is now because my life, my family, and my work are in a place where I can speak from stability rather than reaction. This is not a statement born out of pressure. It is one I am making on my own terms, at a moment I have chosen, because I believe honesty requires it.
In 2013, I was unfaithful in my marriage. That was wrong. It caused real harm to people I cared about, and to my family, and I have never tried to minimize that. It is the most significant failure of my life and I carry it as such.
In the years that followed, more serious allegations were made about the nature of that relationship. I want to be honest and plain about this: the allegation that what occurred was non-consensual is not true. I understand that saying so publicly means I am disagreeing with what someone else has said, and I do not say it carelessly or without understanding the weight of it. But I cannot step back into public life while leaving something untrue about me unchallenged.
I also want to acknowledge something that rarely gets said in situations like this. An internal church process produced a report. That report reflects one side of a deeply painful situation. No criminal charges were ever filed. No civil action was ever brought. No legal body ever reviewed or validated those findings. What exists is a document produced inside an institution that was itself under enormous pressure and public scrutiny at the time. I am not asking anyone to dismiss it. I am asking that it be understood for what it is and what it is not.
What I will say directly is this. The publications that originally covered this story ran with the most damaging and inflammatory language possible. Those headlines spread widely, were accepted as fact, and shaped public perception before any fair or complete picture existed. Since then, in ways that have received far less attention than the original coverage, that language has been materially changed. The Christian Post updated its coverage and removed the most serious characterizations from its original reporting. The Roys Report made similar material changes. The New York Post made the additional decision to deindex their coverage entirely. A deliberate technical choice that signals the publication no longer stands behind its original framing as written. Publications do not make these decisions casually.
This matters not just for my situation but as a broader point about how we consume information. Headlines printed in a moment of institutional chaos are not facts. They are not findings. They are not verdicts. They shift, they change, they get quietly corrected while the original damage lives on. The people who were shaped by those headlines deserve to know that the outlets responsible for them have since walked back the most serious language. That correction is part of the record.
Separately, allegations were made that I misused church funds. That is also false. During my entire tenure in ministry, our finances operated under formal accountability structures including monthly reporting, independent oversight, and institutional checks and balances. The allegation originated from a single disgruntled source and was never substantiated because there was nothing there to substantiate.
What I take full responsibility for is the affair. The harm it caused my wife, my family, and others was real. That responsibility is not something I have run from.
My wife and I have done the hard work of rebuilding our marriage and our family. That has required honesty, patience, and a commitment from both of us that goes far deeper than anything public. The fact that we are still standing together, stronger than we have ever been, is the evidence I am most proud of.
In the years since leaving ministry, I stepped away from public life because it was the right thing to do. That season has shaped me in ways I could not have anticipated and would not trade, even though I would change how it began if I could.
In that time, across every professional and business context I have operated in, there have been no complaints, no allegations, and no concerns raised about my conduct, my finances, or my integrity. That consistency is not something I have to argue for. It exists.
I am a different man than I was in 2013, not because I say so, but because the people closest to me can say so and because my life reflects it.
I recognize that some people will not accept this statement. I am not issuing it to win an argument or to demand anyone's approval. I am issuing it because I believe in being honest about where I have failed and equally honest about what I did not do. Both things matter.
As I return to public work, I intend to be evaluated on what I do from here. Not on a statement, but on consistency over time. That is the only thing that actually means anything.
I would ask sincerely that my family, particularly my children, be left out of public discussion around this. They were not part of what happened and they should not carry the weight of it.
Reed Bogard, April 2026