Salvation Army failed to stop a Kentucky music director from abusing a girl for years, lawsuit says

Interspersed with messages about personal and spiritual matters, the lawsuit said, Collier shared details of his “unhappy marriage” and described the sexual acts he expected from Neville once she turned 18. 

“As a result of Collier’s grooming and manipulation, all of Riley’s defenses and boundaries were destroyed,” the lawsuit said. “She had shared every aspect of her life with him and became solely dependent on him.”  

NBC News has not independently reviewed text messages and other correspondence described in the lawsuit.  

In the summer of 2019, after Neville turned 17, she was riding alone with Collier in a Salvation Army equipment truck, in violation of the ministry’s child protection polices, according to the lawsuit. While driving, the complaint said, he reached across the seat and fondled her vagina. 

Afterward, he told Neville he loved her, then sent her a nude photo of his wife, according to the lawsuit. In March 2020, on her 18th birthday, Collier sent Neville a video of himself masturbating, according to the complaint. 

At a music camp four months later in Kentucky, Collier repeatedly attempted to initiate sexual contact with Neville, the lawsuit said. Toward the end of the weekend, he got her alone in a room, where he “fondled and kissed her while she cried,” according to the complaint. Neville asked Collier if she could leave, then ran back to her room. 

With her view of herself and their relationship warped by years of grooming, the lawsuit said, Collier had dismantled Neville’s capacity to consent to the sometimes-violent sex acts that he performed on her in the months that followed. “I either convinced myself, or was convinced by him, to just sort of play along in order to keep that key piece of my life going,” she said in an interview. 

Her parents could see the joy fading from her, but they didn’t know why. In December 2020, and again the following February, Neville attempted suicide, the lawsuit said. 

In April 2021, her parents finally learned what had been happening and immediately reported the allegations to the Salvation Army, according to the lawsuit. Soon after, they discovered that the Salvation Army’s Southern Territory had hired Collier despite the 2014 report of sexual misconduct. The lawsuit also alleges that two pastors raised concerns to the Salvation Army about Collier texting with Neville and keeping her out past curfew, but no one followed up. 

“I’m a fifth generation Salvation Army person,” said Terri Neville, Riley Neville’s mother. “It was an organization we trusted, and they had knowledge they didn’t share with us.” 

In 2005, the Salvation Army issued a national policy statement on child sex abuse that established territorial registries that contain the names of individuals previously associated with the Salvation Army who have been credibly accused of child sex abuse. Any former volunteers or employees included on the registry are to be excluded from future hiring, according to the policy, which has since been updated. 

Collier landed on the registry in the Salvation Army’s Eastern Territory in 2014, after sending sexually explicit texts to a girl attending a music camp where he worked, the lawsuit said. The complaint describes internal correspondence indicating that former leaders in the Salvation Army’s Southern Territory sought to remove Collier from the registry before hiring him the following year.  

In September 2015, the Southern Territory’s top officer at the time, Commissioner Don Bell, had determined that “no additional sanctions regarding Mr. Collier’s participation in Salvation Army program and activities are required,” according to a letter written by one of Bell’s deputies, which was described in the lawsuit. The Salvation Army’s Eastern Territory strongly disagreed with that decision and warned the Southern Territory not to hire Collier, the lawsuit said.  

“This should have never happened,” said Boz Tchividjian, Neville’s lawyer, a former prosecutor who spent decades investigating sexual misconduct and child abuse. “Had the Salvation Army followed its own policies, Riley would have never been targeted and groomed and victimized.” 

Bell, who has since retired, didn’t immediately respond to messages.