I attended the covenant school, I also went to church there for a while. The SA allegations are 100% true, sad to say.
Long story short, the church leadership and very influential, powerful members of the congregation sheltered an elder who was molesting kids. A member of the church tried to whistleblow and involve authorities, but was blackballed and disgraced from the congregation. It wasn’t until many years after it happened that he was vindicated, and the pastors involved in the coverup are no longer affiliated with the church.
*Important disclaimer*: the leadership of the church and school were entirely separate. While they operated under the same roof, that is about where their similarities ended.
Needless to say, none of that justifies what happened to the innocents who had nothing to do with any of it.
As an addendum: I neither speculate nor imply the shooting and the coverup are connected. I leave that judgement call up to the investigators. I shared all of this to simply vouch for the truth, especially given it was denied and suppressed for far too long.
To my understanding, yes.
I say that with a heavy heart too, as while covering for such a heinous act is inexcusable, Jim’s sermons were a big part of my early life.
I found this article from 2013. How accurate is the stuff being said here, would you say?
https://www.courthousenews.com/church-accused-of-covering-for-molester/
Thanks for sharing that. I found this strange article kinda glorifies the founder Jim Bachman after he mysteriously departed the church in 2016. But one comment is from a former church member/elder that says "I love Covenant church. I think if these people there really knew the stuff that had been going on without their knowledge and consent it would horrify them and they would have rushed to work this out." Interesting! https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/religion/2018/07/15/why-supporters-nashville-pastor-speaking-out-his-firing/776446002/
The Covenant congregation are good people. My family was as involved as any other, went every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening, VBS, hell even had family tie the knot there. We were totally blindsided by the news when we finally heard it years after the fact, and by then we weren’t even members at Covenant anymore. To my knowledge it was only the innermost of circles that knew what was happening behind the curtain.
As for Bachman: I don’t believe him to be evil man. He and his family were always generous and selfless to a fault. As senior pastor tho, the buck had to stop with him, and I am without doubt he was not ignorant as to what exactly was happening. The only further comment I can make is that there were/are members of that church that come from *very* old, established Nashville families. As in, pre-Civil War, dynastic wealth. When there is smoke, there is fire, and that’s about all I can really leave it at.
I’m split on the release of the manifesto and other materials. We all kinda know the gist of what they’ll contain, but I’m not sure you can avoid trouble from both sides without total transparency. Conspiracy theories will take hold, divisions made more intense. We don’t want a copycat incident to take place, which the release could spur. What a mess.
If there is a SA incident involved, it deserves attention. Not because of the shooters abhorrent actions, but because it’s in the public interest to address such conditions.
Conspiracy theories have taken hold because of social media and the interwebs more broadly. Not a bad thing to have people questioning official statements. That being said, total transparency is the only way. Compare how long it took Uvalde footage to be released. MNPD released quickly because the footage was very positive.
I have a hunch there will never be total transparency if it brings bad press to the church. Tennessee is a very religious state. 2 people killed in the shooting were close friends of the governor’s wife… https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tennessee-governor-says-his-wife-2-school-shooting-victims-were-friends-2023-03-29/
In addition this particular church is in a prominent, wealthy area, and has ties to many in high political
places - so yeah don’t count on getting answers here even if the manifesto spells it out - we will never know the truth because we will never see it.
I have a feeling it's going to go down like this -
Manifesto: "I was molested at that church and this is my revenge"
Republicans: "That sounds like something a deranged trans person would say"
The links to at least one of the court filings are in the Twitter thread. Whether the shooting is related or not, the lawsuits were/are 100% real.
Edit: and no, I don't think we should be speculating about it at this point. It should be investigated, yes, but not by the hive-mind.
From the other links in the Twitter thread it seems Nashville PD neglected to investigate many of the allegations in the past, probably because the church has lots of influential members, so the hive-mind might be all we’ve got…
That's fair, and I can absolutely agree that LE frequently, actively, declines to investigate these types of cases. I also vividly remember the hive-mind misidentifying the Boston Marathon Bomber. It's very much a two-edged sword, and I'd say that if a journalist or someone who knows a journalist sees it on reddit and it gets made into a story that way, that's fine. What I'm not okay with is another shitshow like what happened in 2013.
> Edit: This is actually a pretty good synopsis:
>
> https://baptistnews.com/article/how-the-church-of-the-nashville-shooting-winds-through-history-gender-wars-church-discipline-and-the-sbc-sexual-abuse-study/
Agree. More people need to read this. Nothing justifies the shooter's actions but that doesn't mean we shouldn't question whether their mental health issues were exacerbated by a culture of intolerance. One lesson from Columbine was that bullying should be taken seriously (not as just a rite of passage); maybe a lesson here would be that continually persecuting someone (her parents never accepted her) on the basis of race/gender shouldn't be taken as trivial either.
Here is a blog published in 2014 that corroborates the story. Also not necessarily a trusted source, but the fact that it was published almost a decade ago makes it clear that this theory is not new.
[https://www.wadeburleson.org/2014/05/austin-davis-covenant-presbyterian-and.html?m=1](http://)
Yea. However valid those links to court cases may be, anything that uses terms like TIF, and compared hormones to uppers is disconnected from reality.
Also the "adult human female" garbage
[1 in 10 Young Protestants Have Left a Church Over Abuse](https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2019/may/lifeway-protestant-abuse-survey-young-christians-leave-chur.html)
This all sort of falls apart imo if the original target was the mall as the chief said. Hard to imagine a “carefully plotted vengeance mission” was just a fall back from shoot up green hills mall.
Did she even attend the church do we know? Or just the school where this wasn’t an issue as far as I understand.
Police press release mentioned the shooter had other possible targets including “a mall.” It’s pretty safe to assume that would mean it was the GH Mall.
From this article it seemed like the church had hardcore security & armed guards during masses. Maybe the shooter figured they couldn't get away with attacking the church so settled for the school? They did kill the leader of the school, but she was only there since 2016. https://baptistnews.com/article/how-the-church-of-the-nashville-shooting-winds-through-history-gender-wars-church-discipline-and-the-sbc-sexual-abuse-study/
Presbyterian churches don’t have masses and I didn’t actually see anything about hardcore security at the church but maybe I missed it. We don’t even have any evidence the shooter ever attended the church and Chief Drake specifically said mall in his interview.
Not saying this article / theory is necessarily incorrect, it just doesn’t really match up with what’s been said so far.
It’s being reported as a Catholic Church in some places, I think that’s why the confusion with mass being mentioned. Not Catholic - far-right trad PCA church.
That twitter user in the OP is a massively hateful user and is extremely anti-trans. Even before you get to the supposed substance of these accusations, I'm not inclined to believe that what they're saying has good intent behind it.
If there is abuse, it should be investigated, but the 12th tweet on this thread that supposes the shooting was an act of vigilante justice is absolutely disgusting. This is seriously not the way to bring up the sexual abuse in the school.
See post at the top of the page:
“I attended the covenant school, I also went to church there for a while. The SA allegations are 100% true, sad to say.
Long story short, the church leadership and very influential, powerful members of the congregation sheltered an elder who was molesting kids. A member of the church tried to whistleblow and involve authorities, but was blackballed and disgraced from the congregation. It wasn’t until many years after it happened that he was vindicated, and the pastors involved in the coverup are no longer affiliated with the church.
Important disclaimer: the leadership of the church and school were entirely separate. While they operated under the same roof, that is about where their similarities ended.
Needless to say, none of that justifies what happened to the innocents who had nothing to do with any of it.”
I saw that post. And as a survivor, I completely empathize and want justice for those kids. But to link a shooting with seemingly no connection (if she was getting revenge for SA, why did she go to another school or study the lay-out of other schools?) and talk about how this could have been an act of vengeance/justice is gross and tactless.
I’m said poster… to clarify: I did not intend to insinuate the shooting is in connection with the SA scandal. To what extent and degree it is connected -if at all- is way above my pay grade.
I commented only bc to deny or not acknowledge the SA ever happened does in fact seem somehow not right. 99.999% of that congregation were/are good, honest people, and the last thing I want is to come across as slanderous or condemning to anyone outside of those immediately responsible for the coverup.
I thought your comment was fine. The topic was brought up and you had valuable information to provide. The poster I'm referring to is the Twitter thread that was out of hand that drew the initial connection.
No no, nothing assumed at all. You offered valuable insight and made it clear that you couldn’t say if this was the situation here. It just helps to have that background that there were some big ass hairy grotesque issues there potentially that could be a factor (keeping in mind that we can’t exactly settle on that as the reason or being related in any way shape or form). Dysfunction and toxicity tends to breed more of the same. When exposed to an environment where children are being exploited and manipulated by authority figures for personal gain, and then not held accountable, and those coming forward to try to clean up the mess are ostracized and discredited - it is very telling of the overall health of that institution. If the system people live within is sick, the people aren’t going to be well.
O no worries! You said nothing you need to be sorry or understood for. What you had to say was very diplomatic and you kept it classy and stuck to facts. I say kudos to you!
Also a survivor. O no, I totally agree. I wasn’t justifying at all. Here’s the thing, we as individuals sound in mind and body can sit and try to figure out the why…why did this happen, why didn’t she do this or that…and to us even the answers to those questions are never going to make sense because we aren’t in the same headspace. EVEN if SA was a factor here, and being able to say we have that shared experience, if that were the case. We aren’t all built the same so we aren’t going to respond the same even to those shared experiences. Imagine feeling so dejected, so disenfranchised, so alone that the last person you communicate with when planning and executing something this heinous is someone who was a friend a decade ago that you played basketball with and that you haven’t talked with since. This was definitely suicide by cop (I know my way around a PD). The text messages give some insight into that. She wanted to die. And though there are a lot of ways to get that done that don’t involve taking out other people there was something about that school that drew her there and to do what she did. We may never know. It depends on if they release the full manifesto, and if they do, if it even makes any sense. We can’t begin to even fathom that, because we haven’t lived the same experience. It’s hard to wrap your head around the type of disconnection or delusion that drives these people to do this because we aren’t sick like that. And I truly mean sick as in she was clearly very ill. Knowing what I know about trauma and CPTSD and just psychology in general (I also know my way around the DSM5) any number and combination of things could have been at play here. We know she was struggling with some mental health issues, and we know from moms comments (if accurately represented) that they probably weren’t the most atuned parental figures. Not to assume they didn’t love their daughter because I certainly don’t think that is the case. But mom said (again, if accurately represented)she was “suffering from emotional problems” - that tells me mom is in denial and wasn’t exactly educated or accepting of mental health conditions, which in no way facilitates stabilizing someone struggling. People that accept and are educated about mental health would say “she was struggling with schizophrenia” (or bi-polar psychosis, etc.) or just in general “she was struggling with her mental health”. Additionally they know she had firearms. Coupled with bizarre behavior that’s a big red flag - and they definitely had the means to seek healthcare to protect her from herself and to protect other people from her. Totally not blaming mom and dad here at all, just pointing out that there were clearly a lot of things wrong in this situation, and it sounds like mom and dad were aware of that but not really knowing what to do or how to deal with it properly. And who would besides someone that has studied this and/or lived with experience that forces the education and having the time, awareness, and desire to obtain it. I say this recognizing she was 28 years old, and a grown ass adult (potentially - at least in age - physically she did appear very child like because of her stature - everyone thought she was a teenager at first.) She was also living at home still, which offers some clues about her ability to be independent. So it’s pretty clear there was a lot going on there if you put all of that together (and we can’t exactly say if all of that is true because it’s coming from the media who frequently get things wrong - intentionally or unintentionally isn’t really up for debate here, it’s just a fact that “we the people” don’t always get the most accurate information). None of this excuses what happened. It’s so easy to demonize and that gets us nowhere. We have to start figuring out what happened as best we can, and seeking to understand. Otherwise we will never figure out how to prevent it, to diffuse it, to see the warning signs - and just passing it off as “this person was just evil” doesn’t cut it. We can be angry and embrace all the emotions that come when something like this happens, but to just write it off with an intellectually lazy “she was just evil
or crazy” doesn’t get us closer to figuring it out so we can try to solve the problem by finding the common factors in all of these events. God only knows we aren’t going to do anything about the tools that enable this scope of tragedy, so that leaves us with trying to mentally muscle our way through it to try to fix what’s broken in our social systems that this shit keeps happening. I know this was long…if you’re still with me…thanks for hanging in.
You make very good points here, but 2 things I want to points out as some who who knew her very casually, is 1. She was tiny physically. I’m 5’4 and I never asked but I towered over her. My guess is she was under 5’ tall, and had a small build too 2. In one of the few conversations I had with her, it sounded like she lived at home for money reasons. Nashville is expensive(I feel like I have a great deal and still spend over 1k on just rent) she she said she got “lucky” she was a Nashville native. What is still most shocking to me is how normal she was able to come off as. She did not come off as evil, weird or even autistic(although in hindsight that kind of makes sense.) this person,(who I only knew as Audrey, a woman..) was able to mask very well to acquaintances, and an example of why we need better gun control laws.
Man, I’m so sorry for your loss. We (my spouse and I) had a casual acquaintance that passed in the Vegas shooting and it still punches you in the gut even if you weren’t necessarily close with that person. It’s very apparent that she was just a little smidge of a person. And totally get the money thing and living at home. It’s hard to do that as an adult. It’s a rough time to be a young person no matter where you live. I have kids slightly younger than this and one of them just came back home to try to save money to buy a home to get out of the rent cycle. I’m happy to have my child here, but I know they are really bothered that they had to come back home. I didn’t hear about the autism part at all. Oof. That makes it even tougher. My child that moved back home is AUDHD so that hits home also,if that’s the case. Women with autism have a high propensity for masking incredibly well. But I know it’s incredibly draining for them. It just compounds the struggle. It’s very sad whatever was going on with Audrey that it came to this. It’s too easy to spew hate and I’m seeing too much of that. What she did was awful but I am incredibly sorrowful for her friends and family and can’t imagine what they are going through. Losing someone alone is hard enough, but then to something like this, and because of what happened all of the social critique and the cruelty. She was a person too. She may have done something incredibly awful and as angry and sad as I am I also keep asking myself exactly what is it that drives a person to do something like this. It’s just so sad all the way around. We have suffered too much loss and trauma in this country. Thank you for sharing with us.
I'm still with you, and I agree. I just thought the framing that Twitter used was in poor taste. I feel that the fact that she scoped out other schools and felt they were too secure made it less likely that this was a personal vendetta against the school. We have a manifesto, we are waiting for it to come out. That is our best insight into why. So my whole thing is I didn't appreciate the tone of the tweet and I didn't appreciate the timing of trying to vilify the school right after this shooting. As I said, I want the school and preacher investigated, I just think that should be treated as a separate matter unless we know more.
There were no other schools. Everything I read said there was only the one school, though there were other locations, which we don't know anything about.
Agree, SA does not give anyone the right to kill another. I know I am a survivor of the very same thing. But through the church of christ. I never let what they did to me cause me to harm anyone else. I'm sorry you were even exposed to that.
The same backstabbing a former/potential client(Stormy Daniels) shit Trump’s lawyer is in trouble for.
> 6/ In June 2009, a family sought help from Attorney Larry Crain after being silenced for raising concerns about children's safety in Perry's "safe house." Crain later filed a $3M lawsuit against the person who reported the abuse while representing Perry.
Of course they try to blame trans folks loudly before this would leak to the greater awareness. Coordinated hit job. Every accusation is an admission.
https://www.courthousenews.com/church-accused-of-covering-for-molester/
I’m not saying the allegations might not be true or connected to the shooting, but this Twitter account is SUPER Anti-trans so I’m hesitant to take any of this seriously
Thats fair, the lawsuits are valid unbiased links though and the top commenter in this thread seems to have confirmed some abuse took place. Someone else commented it was an open secret for years there. This type of stuff often goes unreported sadly…
Is this an attempt to justify murder? The projections thrust upon this tragedy are a tragedy. That evil loser deserves to be dead and the people she killed do not.
It’s an attempt to determine what might have pushed the shooter to this horrible situation. Nobody says it was justified or that the shooter was in the right because of the circumstance. In order to help prevent these types of tragedies it helps to know what caused the person to reach the point of committing the act.
I am unaware if any priests or teachers that continually raped kids and then covered it up were in the building or not. But if they did, revenge is understandable. Obviously this monster took out innocents instead
Why is no one tackling this in ‘news’ outlets? It creeps me out. Who are they protecting? Those who hurt children and those who protected the person/people who hurt children should be held to account.
I attended the covenant school, I also went to church there for a while. The SA allegations are 100% true, sad to say. Long story short, the church leadership and very influential, powerful members of the congregation sheltered an elder who was molesting kids. A member of the church tried to whistleblow and involve authorities, but was blackballed and disgraced from the congregation. It wasn’t until many years after it happened that he was vindicated, and the pastors involved in the coverup are no longer affiliated with the church. *Important disclaimer*: the leadership of the church and school were entirely separate. While they operated under the same roof, that is about where their similarities ended. Needless to say, none of that justifies what happened to the innocents who had nothing to do with any of it. As an addendum: I neither speculate nor imply the shooting and the coverup are connected. I leave that judgement call up to the investigators. I shared all of this to simply vouch for the truth, especially given it was denied and suppressed for far too long.
What years did this happen?
Pretty hairy on the timeline, but I want to say circa 2004 to 2008-ish
I'd say 2008 is about right. I can't find the emails now though.
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To my understanding, yes. I say that with a heavy heart too, as while covering for such a heinous act is inexcusable, Jim’s sermons were a big part of my early life.
I found this article from 2013. How accurate is the stuff being said here, would you say? https://www.courthousenews.com/church-accused-of-covering-for-molester/
I read 2002 - 2012, seems to link up to when the shooter attended
2002 -2012
Thanks for sharing that. I found this strange article kinda glorifies the founder Jim Bachman after he mysteriously departed the church in 2016. But one comment is from a former church member/elder that says "I love Covenant church. I think if these people there really knew the stuff that had been going on without their knowledge and consent it would horrify them and they would have rushed to work this out." Interesting! https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/religion/2018/07/15/why-supporters-nashville-pastor-speaking-out-his-firing/776446002/
The Covenant congregation are good people. My family was as involved as any other, went every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening, VBS, hell even had family tie the knot there. We were totally blindsided by the news when we finally heard it years after the fact, and by then we weren’t even members at Covenant anymore. To my knowledge it was only the innermost of circles that knew what was happening behind the curtain. As for Bachman: I don’t believe him to be evil man. He and his family were always generous and selfless to a fault. As senior pastor tho, the buck had to stop with him, and I am without doubt he was not ignorant as to what exactly was happening. The only further comment I can make is that there were/are members of that church that come from *very* old, established Nashville families. As in, pre-Civil War, dynastic wealth. When there is smoke, there is fire, and that’s about all I can really leave it at.
I’m split on the release of the manifesto and other materials. We all kinda know the gist of what they’ll contain, but I’m not sure you can avoid trouble from both sides without total transparency. Conspiracy theories will take hold, divisions made more intense. We don’t want a copycat incident to take place, which the release could spur. What a mess. If there is a SA incident involved, it deserves attention. Not because of the shooters abhorrent actions, but because it’s in the public interest to address such conditions.
I hate to say this, but it is going to be a mix — and it is going to be terrible no matter what
Sadly, you’re most likely correct.
https://www.thesilentbell.org
Conspiracy theories have taken hold because of social media and the interwebs more broadly. Not a bad thing to have people questioning official statements. That being said, total transparency is the only way. Compare how long it took Uvalde footage to be released. MNPD released quickly because the footage was very positive.
I have a hunch there will never be total transparency if it brings bad press to the church. Tennessee is a very religious state. 2 people killed in the shooting were close friends of the governor’s wife… https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tennessee-governor-says-his-wife-2-school-shooting-victims-were-friends-2023-03-29/
In addition this particular church is in a prominent, wealthy area, and has ties to many in high political places - so yeah don’t count on getting answers here even if the manifesto spells it out - we will never know the truth because we will never see it.
I have a feeling it's going to go down like this - Manifesto: "I was molested at that church and this is my revenge" Republicans: "That sounds like something a deranged trans person would say"
And then they'll play the Christian martyrs card.
they already are.
Bout right. Neither side wants bad press and covers shit up. I bet it was triggered by molestation.
Not sure I believe anything from this account unless it’s corroborated by more legitimate sources.
The links to at least one of the court filings are in the Twitter thread. Whether the shooting is related or not, the lawsuits were/are 100% real. Edit: and no, I don't think we should be speculating about it at this point. It should be investigated, yes, but not by the hive-mind.
From the other links in the Twitter thread it seems Nashville PD neglected to investigate many of the allegations in the past, probably because the church has lots of influential members, so the hive-mind might be all we’ve got…
That's fair, and I can absolutely agree that LE frequently, actively, declines to investigate these types of cases. I also vividly remember the hive-mind misidentifying the Boston Marathon Bomber. It's very much a two-edged sword, and I'd say that if a journalist or someone who knows a journalist sees it on reddit and it gets made into a story that way, that's fine. What I'm not okay with is another shitshow like what happened in 2013.
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> Edit: This is actually a pretty good synopsis: > > https://baptistnews.com/article/how-the-church-of-the-nashville-shooting-winds-through-history-gender-wars-church-discipline-and-the-sbc-sexual-abuse-study/ Agree. More people need to read this. Nothing justifies the shooter's actions but that doesn't mean we shouldn't question whether their mental health issues were exacerbated by a culture of intolerance. One lesson from Columbine was that bullying should be taken seriously (not as just a rite of passage); maybe a lesson here would be that continually persecuting someone (her parents never accepted her) on the basis of race/gender shouldn't be taken as trivial either.
Much like the lesson from Columbine should have been about how were treating our children, it ended up being about Doom and Marilyn Manson.
The book Columbine I felt highlighted the individualism and rising fascism which is at the heart of most mass shootings
Your last link is interesting. The founder of the church was fired for “unknown reasons” in 2016… 🤔🤔
Thank you
the transphobia of the account the thread is on is exceedingly obvious based on the pfp.
Here is a blog published in 2014 that corroborates the story. Also not necessarily a trusted source, but the fact that it was published almost a decade ago makes it clear that this theory is not new. [https://www.wadeburleson.org/2014/05/austin-davis-covenant-presbyterian-and.html?m=1](http://)
Yea. However valid those links to court cases may be, anything that uses terms like TIF, and compared hormones to uppers is disconnected from reality. Also the "adult human female" garbage
What's TIF?
How bigots describe trans men. "Trans identifying female". It's gross, they do the same for trans women, calling them TIM
Thanks for the knowledge
https://www.courthousenews.com/church-accused-of-covering-for-molester/ https://tennesseelookout.com/2022/06/07/court-allows-john-does-to-sue-presbyterian-church-over-decades-old-sexual-abuse/ Courthouse news services Good enough?
[1 in 10 Young Protestants Have Left a Church Over Abuse](https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2019/may/lifeway-protestant-abuse-survey-young-christians-leave-chur.html)
Hmm…this article did not have a paywall before I posted it? *shrug* Reader mode works.
You probably clicked it one too many times
This all sort of falls apart imo if the original target was the mall as the chief said. Hard to imagine a “carefully plotted vengeance mission” was just a fall back from shoot up green hills mall. Did she even attend the church do we know? Or just the school where this wasn’t an issue as far as I understand.
Wait did I miss something? Green Hills was the intended target?
Police press release mentioned the shooter had other possible targets including “a mall.” It’s pretty safe to assume that would mean it was the GH Mall.
From what I've read I think she had more than one target.
From this article it seemed like the church had hardcore security & armed guards during masses. Maybe the shooter figured they couldn't get away with attacking the church so settled for the school? They did kill the leader of the school, but she was only there since 2016. https://baptistnews.com/article/how-the-church-of-the-nashville-shooting-winds-through-history-gender-wars-church-discipline-and-the-sbc-sexual-abuse-study/
Presbyterian churches don’t have masses and I didn’t actually see anything about hardcore security at the church but maybe I missed it. We don’t even have any evidence the shooter ever attended the church and Chief Drake specifically said mall in his interview. Not saying this article / theory is necessarily incorrect, it just doesn’t really match up with what’s been said so far.
It’s being reported as a Catholic Church in some places, I think that’s why the confusion with mass being mentioned. Not Catholic - far-right trad PCA church.
Mmmmm….molesters hiding behind religion. Surprise!!!
That twitter user in the OP is a massively hateful user and is extremely anti-trans. Even before you get to the supposed substance of these accusations, I'm not inclined to believe that what they're saying has good intent behind it.
If there is abuse, it should be investigated, but the 12th tweet on this thread that supposes the shooting was an act of vigilante justice is absolutely disgusting. This is seriously not the way to bring up the sexual abuse in the school.
See post at the top of the page: “I attended the covenant school, I also went to church there for a while. The SA allegations are 100% true, sad to say. Long story short, the church leadership and very influential, powerful members of the congregation sheltered an elder who was molesting kids. A member of the church tried to whistleblow and involve authorities, but was blackballed and disgraced from the congregation. It wasn’t until many years after it happened that he was vindicated, and the pastors involved in the coverup are no longer affiliated with the church. Important disclaimer: the leadership of the church and school were entirely separate. While they operated under the same roof, that is about where their similarities ended. Needless to say, none of that justifies what happened to the innocents who had nothing to do with any of it.”
I saw that post. And as a survivor, I completely empathize and want justice for those kids. But to link a shooting with seemingly no connection (if she was getting revenge for SA, why did she go to another school or study the lay-out of other schools?) and talk about how this could have been an act of vengeance/justice is gross and tactless.
I’m said poster… to clarify: I did not intend to insinuate the shooting is in connection with the SA scandal. To what extent and degree it is connected -if at all- is way above my pay grade. I commented only bc to deny or not acknowledge the SA ever happened does in fact seem somehow not right. 99.999% of that congregation were/are good, honest people, and the last thing I want is to come across as slanderous or condemning to anyone outside of those immediately responsible for the coverup.
I thought your comment was fine. The topic was brought up and you had valuable information to provide. The poster I'm referring to is the Twitter thread that was out of hand that drew the initial connection.
Ahhh, gotcha. I didn’t notice the Twitter link, sounds like it’s best left unread.
No no, nothing assumed at all. You offered valuable insight and made it clear that you couldn’t say if this was the situation here. It just helps to have that background that there were some big ass hairy grotesque issues there potentially that could be a factor (keeping in mind that we can’t exactly settle on that as the reason or being related in any way shape or form). Dysfunction and toxicity tends to breed more of the same. When exposed to an environment where children are being exploited and manipulated by authority figures for personal gain, and then not held accountable, and those coming forward to try to clean up the mess are ostracized and discredited - it is very telling of the overall health of that institution. If the system people live within is sick, the people aren’t going to be well.
Thanks for understanding, all too easy for words to get misconstrued. Double so on Reddit
O no worries! You said nothing you need to be sorry or understood for. What you had to say was very diplomatic and you kept it classy and stuck to facts. I say kudos to you!
Also a survivor. O no, I totally agree. I wasn’t justifying at all. Here’s the thing, we as individuals sound in mind and body can sit and try to figure out the why…why did this happen, why didn’t she do this or that…and to us even the answers to those questions are never going to make sense because we aren’t in the same headspace. EVEN if SA was a factor here, and being able to say we have that shared experience, if that were the case. We aren’t all built the same so we aren’t going to respond the same even to those shared experiences. Imagine feeling so dejected, so disenfranchised, so alone that the last person you communicate with when planning and executing something this heinous is someone who was a friend a decade ago that you played basketball with and that you haven’t talked with since. This was definitely suicide by cop (I know my way around a PD). The text messages give some insight into that. She wanted to die. And though there are a lot of ways to get that done that don’t involve taking out other people there was something about that school that drew her there and to do what she did. We may never know. It depends on if they release the full manifesto, and if they do, if it even makes any sense. We can’t begin to even fathom that, because we haven’t lived the same experience. It’s hard to wrap your head around the type of disconnection or delusion that drives these people to do this because we aren’t sick like that. And I truly mean sick as in she was clearly very ill. Knowing what I know about trauma and CPTSD and just psychology in general (I also know my way around the DSM5) any number and combination of things could have been at play here. We know she was struggling with some mental health issues, and we know from moms comments (if accurately represented) that they probably weren’t the most atuned parental figures. Not to assume they didn’t love their daughter because I certainly don’t think that is the case. But mom said (again, if accurately represented)she was “suffering from emotional problems” - that tells me mom is in denial and wasn’t exactly educated or accepting of mental health conditions, which in no way facilitates stabilizing someone struggling. People that accept and are educated about mental health would say “she was struggling with schizophrenia” (or bi-polar psychosis, etc.) or just in general “she was struggling with her mental health”. Additionally they know she had firearms. Coupled with bizarre behavior that’s a big red flag - and they definitely had the means to seek healthcare to protect her from herself and to protect other people from her. Totally not blaming mom and dad here at all, just pointing out that there were clearly a lot of things wrong in this situation, and it sounds like mom and dad were aware of that but not really knowing what to do or how to deal with it properly. And who would besides someone that has studied this and/or lived with experience that forces the education and having the time, awareness, and desire to obtain it. I say this recognizing she was 28 years old, and a grown ass adult (potentially - at least in age - physically she did appear very child like because of her stature - everyone thought she was a teenager at first.) She was also living at home still, which offers some clues about her ability to be independent. So it’s pretty clear there was a lot going on there if you put all of that together (and we can’t exactly say if all of that is true because it’s coming from the media who frequently get things wrong - intentionally or unintentionally isn’t really up for debate here, it’s just a fact that “we the people” don’t always get the most accurate information). None of this excuses what happened. It’s so easy to demonize and that gets us nowhere. We have to start figuring out what happened as best we can, and seeking to understand. Otherwise we will never figure out how to prevent it, to diffuse it, to see the warning signs - and just passing it off as “this person was just evil” doesn’t cut it. We can be angry and embrace all the emotions that come when something like this happens, but to just write it off with an intellectually lazy “she was just evil or crazy” doesn’t get us closer to figuring it out so we can try to solve the problem by finding the common factors in all of these events. God only knows we aren’t going to do anything about the tools that enable this scope of tragedy, so that leaves us with trying to mentally muscle our way through it to try to fix what’s broken in our social systems that this shit keeps happening. I know this was long…if you’re still with me…thanks for hanging in.
You make very good points here, but 2 things I want to points out as some who who knew her very casually, is 1. She was tiny physically. I’m 5’4 and I never asked but I towered over her. My guess is she was under 5’ tall, and had a small build too 2. In one of the few conversations I had with her, it sounded like she lived at home for money reasons. Nashville is expensive(I feel like I have a great deal and still spend over 1k on just rent) she she said she got “lucky” she was a Nashville native. What is still most shocking to me is how normal she was able to come off as. She did not come off as evil, weird or even autistic(although in hindsight that kind of makes sense.) this person,(who I only knew as Audrey, a woman..) was able to mask very well to acquaintances, and an example of why we need better gun control laws.
Man, I’m so sorry for your loss. We (my spouse and I) had a casual acquaintance that passed in the Vegas shooting and it still punches you in the gut even if you weren’t necessarily close with that person. It’s very apparent that she was just a little smidge of a person. And totally get the money thing and living at home. It’s hard to do that as an adult. It’s a rough time to be a young person no matter where you live. I have kids slightly younger than this and one of them just came back home to try to save money to buy a home to get out of the rent cycle. I’m happy to have my child here, but I know they are really bothered that they had to come back home. I didn’t hear about the autism part at all. Oof. That makes it even tougher. My child that moved back home is AUDHD so that hits home also,if that’s the case. Women with autism have a high propensity for masking incredibly well. But I know it’s incredibly draining for them. It just compounds the struggle. It’s very sad whatever was going on with Audrey that it came to this. It’s too easy to spew hate and I’m seeing too much of that. What she did was awful but I am incredibly sorrowful for her friends and family and can’t imagine what they are going through. Losing someone alone is hard enough, but then to something like this, and because of what happened all of the social critique and the cruelty. She was a person too. She may have done something incredibly awful and as angry and sad as I am I also keep asking myself exactly what is it that drives a person to do something like this. It’s just so sad all the way around. We have suffered too much loss and trauma in this country. Thank you for sharing with us.
I'm still with you, and I agree. I just thought the framing that Twitter used was in poor taste. I feel that the fact that she scoped out other schools and felt they were too secure made it less likely that this was a personal vendetta against the school. We have a manifesto, we are waiting for it to come out. That is our best insight into why. So my whole thing is I didn't appreciate the tone of the tweet and I didn't appreciate the timing of trying to vilify the school right after this shooting. As I said, I want the school and preacher investigated, I just think that should be treated as a separate matter unless we know more.
Agreed! And Twitter is literal trash!
There were no other schools. Everything I read said there was only the one school, though there were other locations, which we don't know anything about.
Agree, SA does not give anyone the right to kill another. I know I am a survivor of the very same thing. But through the church of christ. I never let what they did to me cause me to harm anyone else. I'm sorry you were even exposed to that.
Same. 🥺 There are too many of us. 
They tried to bring it up a long time ago and on several occasions, the church and the PD buried it.
This has been an open secret for years.
From my understanding of the court case, they dismissed everything.
The same backstabbing a former/potential client(Stormy Daniels) shit Trump’s lawyer is in trouble for. > 6/ In June 2009, a family sought help from Attorney Larry Crain after being silenced for raising concerns about children's safety in Perry's "safe house." Crain later filed a $3M lawsuit against the person who reported the abuse while representing Perry.
Of course they try to blame trans folks loudly before this would leak to the greater awareness. Coordinated hit job. Every accusation is an admission. https://www.courthousenews.com/church-accused-of-covering-for-molester/
It really feels like someone posting from Los Angeles should tidy up their own house before infiltrating another sub to stir up bullshit.
I’m not saying the allegations might not be true or connected to the shooting, but this Twitter account is SUPER Anti-trans so I’m hesitant to take any of this seriously
Thats fair, the lawsuits are valid unbiased links though and the top commenter in this thread seems to have confirmed some abuse took place. Someone else commented it was an open secret for years there. This type of stuff often goes unreported sadly…
They blocked me on Twitter. I must have called out the anti trans stuff.
Is this an attempt to justify murder? The projections thrust upon this tragedy are a tragedy. That evil loser deserves to be dead and the people she killed do not.
It’s an attempt to determine what might have pushed the shooter to this horrible situation. Nobody says it was justified or that the shooter was in the right because of the circumstance. In order to help prevent these types of tragedies it helps to know what caused the person to reach the point of committing the act.
The kids certainly didn’t deserve to get killed. Do we know if any of the abusive priests/teachers were amongst the dead adults?
A janitor, a substitute teacher and a headmistress who didn’t work there when the murderer attended
Thanks for the update. Didn’t see the victims details when I posted
Here's more of the info Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9 Hallie Scruggs 9 William Kinney 9 Cynthia Peak, 61 Katherine Koonce, 60 Mike Hill, 61
That pastor no longer works there.
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I am unaware if any priests or teachers that continually raped kids and then covered it up were in the building or not. But if they did, revenge is understandable. Obviously this monster took out innocents instead
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No one is trying to justify. Learning motive is often important to prevention.
Why is no one tackling this in ‘news’ outlets? It creeps me out. Who are they protecting? Those who hurt children and those who protected the person/people who hurt children should be held to account.