Child Sex Offender Group Owns OKC Daycare – Linked To Kern’s Church

http://www.gossip-boy.com/Jernigan.html

December 22, 2008

By James Miko

In a startling discovery, Gossip Boy has learned a child sex offender group in OKC with ties to Steve and Sally Kern’s Olivet Baptist Church (as earlier revealed in the story below this one), has secretly purchased a daycare center in the OKC Metro and is tied to four other such facilities. A paper trail the ministry built was carefully dissected and revealed frightening details about close links between child predators and their prey.

Further, the Kerns and the offender group are part of an organization whose founder is accused by an international watchdog of the rape and murder of orphans.

Hand Up Ministries, founded and directed by David C. Nichols, has a compound/mobile home park located at 2130 SE 59^th St in Oklahoma City, that houses over 100 convicted sex offenders most of whom have sexually molested children. A check of the Oklahoma Sex Offender Registry for zip code 73129 shows 195 convicted sex criminals with 108 of them located at the ministry address. Nichols has imported the majority of these high risk felons from other cities and states and placed them in close proximity to children in the Metro. Hand Up Ministries is not a recognized or accredited treatment center, but a place where Nichols sends them out to work and collects their money in exchange for food and housing, while gaining donations from sponsor churches like Olivet Baptist Church.

The Hand Up Ministries site is a collection of FEMA trailers purchased at auction and were formerly used by
Hurricane Katrina’s displaced victims. It adjourns another mobile home park with a large population of children.

Nichols is not an ordained minister or a professional counselor. His adult work history has been as a tire plant employee with the defunct Bridgestone. Some have alleged, that prior to coming to Oklahoma, Nichols was involved in the Tony Alamo Ministries. In September, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Alamo’s compound in Arkansas as part of a child pornography investigation. Two weeks ago he was indicted in an Arkansas courtroom for several counts of transporting minors across state lines for sex. Former followers of the cult claimed in October that Alamo has a nine-year-old wife.

Prior to his arrest by federal agents in Arizona, Tony Alamo discussed the accusations on a CNN news report. In the video he deflects claims against him and uses gay slurs like "faggot". He remains jailed at this time awaiting trial.

A records check on Nichols has revealed his former residency outside of Alma, Arkansas where Alamo established his original compound. That compound has since closed and moved to the southern part of the state. Nichols now belongs to the Cornerstone Church in Midwest City. The pastor of that church, Ron McKey, moved to Oklahoma City directly from Alma, Arkansas where he lived for eleven years. Reports claim McKee houses a small armory in his home and has established a youth center. Until Nichols’ arrest for violations of the sex offender act, Cornerstone Church was considered Hand Up Ministries’ main financial supporter taking over that role from Crossings Community Church, whose most prominent member is Sally Kern supporter U.S. Rep. Mary Fallin.

For the record, Sally Kern is originally from Jonesboro, Arkansas, but there are no apparent links tying her into the Tony Alamo bunch.

The business entity of the ex-offender ministry is called HUM Enterprises LLC (HUM as in Hand Up Ministries), whose registered agent with the Oklahoma Secretary of State’s office is David C. Nichols. According to the Oklahoma County Tax Assessor’s office that business is the owner of the Little Ones Learning Center – a daycare facility at 7221 Lyrewood Lane. Details on that ownership are available here.

The post office box for the daycare company and the ministry are identical – P.O. Box 2896 OKC OK 73101 – as well. Here and here.

Oklahoma County Court Clerk records show Nichols and HUM Enterprises are being sued by Bayview Loan Servicing LLC, who are seeking to foreclose on the child care site. Filed under case number CJ-2008-9306 records show Nichols was served a summons at his home on December 2, 2008. Also, he is in criminal court for a violation of the sex offender registry act and appeared in a preliminary hearing over that on December 18, 2008.

An informant within Hand Up Ministries has identified the white mini-van on the right side
of the daycare center as one from the ministry that is used for transporting the sex offenders.

Ted Ketterling is the listed president of Ranchwood Ministries, who is the documented owner of the Hand Up Ministries location on SE 59^th St. Ketterling serves on the Hand Up board and is the owner of four other daycare centers across Oklahoma City. Ranchwood purchased the site, but the assessor’s office now lists ownership as being Hand Up Ministries with a mailing address to Ketterling’s home. Details on that are here.

Ketterling owns daycares in the Metro at 3109 South Bryant, 7916 South Western, 1213 North Rockwell, and 12501 Northeast 23rd St. Ketterling’s wife, Sharon, has established a group called Kids Ministries Inc. She owns a farm in Seminole County where Hand Up Ministries houses a smaller group of sex offenders.

In 2006 SB 1755 was passed which made it illegal for sex offenders to be housed near things like schools and daycares.

That bill reads:

SB1755, Legislative session: 2006. Authors: Riley (senate) and Perry (house)

A. It is unlawful for any person registered pursuant to the Sex Offenders Registration Act to reside, either temporarily or permanently, within a two-thousand-foot radius of any public or private school site, educational institution, a playground or park that is zoned by city, county, state, federal or tribal government, or licensed child care center as defined by the Department of Human Services. Establishment of a day care center or park in the vicinity of the residence of a registered sex offender will not require the relocation of the sex offender or the sale of the property. On the effective date of this act, the distance indicated in this section shall be measured from the nearest property line of the residence of the person to the nearest property line of the public or private school site, educational institution, playground, park, or licensed child care facility; provided, any nonprofit organization established and housing sex offenders prior to the effective date of this provision shall be allowed to continue its operation.

The last line “provided, any nonprofit organization established and housing sex offenders prior to the effective date of this provision shall be allowed to continue its operation” was not in the original bill. It was added by Rep. Gus Blackwell (R-Glenpool) and only Hand Up Ministries fit the description and was therefore excluded from the restrictions. In effect, Blackwell’s efforts for the ministry meant that the child sex offenders could reside near daycare centers.

Gossip Boy has previously reported that Blackwell, along with Sally Kern and Mike Reynolds, will be leading an effort in the coming year to ban adoption and foster care by gays and lesbians.

Olivet Baptist Church has played frequent embracer for the child sex predators and rapists of Hand Up Ministries. Additionally, Pastor Kern taught Character First training to the residents at their housing complex. In January the Character First training center in downtown Oklahoma City is playing host to Reclaim Oklahoma’s ‘Clouds Over America’ conference where Rep. Sally Kern will be giving a presentation on the ‘Homosexual Agenda’.

Argyl Dick, the Oklahoma County Jail Chaplain, works for Character First center as a consultant and served on the Hand Up Ministries board of directors for three years, as did Richard Klemm. While serving on the board, Klemm was convicted of molesting his daughter in a Canadian County court procedure.

Character First is a division of evangelist Bill Gothard’s Institute of Basic Life Principles. Gothard’s religious obedience training is repackaged in a secular version and sold to Oklahoma schools and prisons for training purposes.

Crimes Against Orphans has charged, “Bill Gothard, founder and president of IBLP, and his subordinate, George Mattix…are all involved in the abuse, rape, and murder of innocent Russian orphans and other children.”

A Wiki article on Character First states, “Critics argue that the movement is a thinly veiled attempt to reduce the separation of church and state and an attempt to legally require conformity and obedience in society. Additionally, critics eye the foundation and funding of the program by various evangelical leaders including those in the Dominionist movement. Finally, the character traits emphasized by the program are criticized for over-emphasizing orderliness and obedience which critics find especially troubling when mixed with a political agenda with "template" legislation.”

Gossip Boy is turning over the results of this investigation to the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office and the Oklahoma Department of Human Services daycare licensing division.