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As an adult, she was alarmed to see Massie in church, hugging and kissing children about the same age she was when the abuse began, which is why she’d felt a duty to report it all these years later, she said.
“I went back to the same preacher, which is Daryl [Bruckelmyer], and said, ‘Why is he still able to hold kids and whatever?’” she recalled to Kleffman in a recorded interview. “And he’s like: ‘I don’t know. Like, we’ve told him that he’s not supposed to, but he still does.’”
Kleffman picked up where LaBore left off and contacted the girl who spoke to their office in 2017. She was now in her early 20s, married, a new mom living in Washington state. In a recorded conversation, she told Kleffman that the trauma — and in particular, the mandate that she remain silent about it — still haunted her.
Though the woman had tried to put time and distance between herself and Massie, Massie’s wife, Sarah, had asked for a meeting about a year earlier when the woman returned to Duluth for a visit. At a Starbucks, she said, Sarah Massie told her that the abuse was no big deal and she needed to forget about what happened. The conversation, the woman said, was “horrible.”
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