Barely two weeks before Southern Baptists gather in Dallas for their annual meeting, another alleged sexual abuse case — this time involving a former student at a Georgia Baptist university — has surfaced.
The story includes the alleged grooming of Hayle Swinson of Americus, Ga., by Bradley Reynolds, then vice president of student services at Truett McConnell University. Her story began with innocent home basement Bible studies and mentoring that slowly progressed to holding hands during prayer and eventually placing his hands on her leg, caressing her back and later moving to her breasts and placing his hands in her pants, she says.
But it didn’t end there. Reynolds tried to convince Swinson that God had showed him in dreams that his wife was going to die and it was in God’s divine plan for them to marry and raise his children together, according to published accounts.
Reynolds, about 20 years her senior, left employment with the university last year after the scandal first surfaced.
Swinson, both a former student and soccer coach of Truett McConnell University in Cleveland, Ga., has stepped forward with details of the experience and as a warning to others. In a May 29 podcast with Julie Roys of The Roys Report website, Swinson gave an hour-long interview detailing her allegations on spiritual and physical abuse and how she says President Emir Caner ignored the allegations.
Her story
Swinson enrolled at Truett McConnell University (then Truett McConnell College) as a 17-year-old freshman in 2009. The following year she met Reynolds, who had joined the staff as vice president of student services. While he attended all athletic events, he endeared himself to the women’s soccer team, of which she was a member on an athletic scholarship. He opened his home to them to come for dinner, do laundry and relax with his wife and children. It was to be a home away from home and provide home-cooked meals and a sense of security and family, she said.
Hayle Swinson
In 2010, after turning 18, Swinson had a powerful Christian conversion experience and was baptized “with an insatiable hunger for the gospel,” she recalled on the podcast. “I had no idea of how to follow Jesus, read the Bible, what it really meant to follow Christ. I needed context for my new life.”
That’s when Reynolds came into the picture with an offer to be her spiritual mentor and disciple her. She didn’t sense any danger because “everyone on campus viewed him as one of the most godly men they knew,” she explained. The fact that he also was a pastor added credibility to his persona.
With the groundwork already in place as a regular in the family’s home, Reynolds offered personal Bible study in his home’s basement, usually after evening meals. Swinson said Reynolds’ wife and children would watch her walk down the stairs; he would remind his children not to interrupt because they needed privacy for a Bible study.
Reynolds stood at a white board and wrote notes as she sat about 7 feet away on a couch. After several months of rather formal instruction, she noticed the atmosphere slowly began to change. They had been closing the sessions with prayer, but then Reynolds asked if he could hold her hand as they prayed together.
He later moved his hand to her back in an innocent caress, then onto her leg, and eventually he touched her breasts and later placed his hands into her pants, she said. This became a pattern.
During all of the progression she was being told, “This is God’s will for you” and “you have to trust me,” she explained. “That’s when I began to shut down and draw inward and really want to disappear.”
Before long she became deeply depressed and suicidal.
“When you are in that situation and you want to know God … and to be told that to know God you have to obey him and follow him … I had to ask myself, ‘Is this what a loving god would do?’
“Each time he would do something to me he would say, ‘The next time this will not happen; we will just read the Bible.’ But then something would happen again,” she said.
She said Reynolds told her he had made a vow with God, a betrothal agreement, to protect her.
350 emails as evidence
“Although I did not understand, God had shown him this and I had to trust him,” she said. “I think I believed it at the time but it was all so confusing because as a baby believer, I had never heard anyone saying that about marriage. I asked myself why was this God’s will for me to be violated?”
During this relationship, Reynolds sent her more than 350 emails while, she said, she never initiated more than five or 10. In one, dated March 21, 2015, he wrote “I KNOW (all caps) my sweet wife will get to heaven before me and I know I will need someone to help with my kids.”
Roys, who has seen the emails, describes some as being “very graphic and erotic in nature while others are just filled with this spiritual language. One such email featured a dream in which he and Swinson were laying on a beach; as he began making love to her, he began praying and their spirits were united spiritually.
Swinson described the relationship as a mixture of the holy and profane.
“I didn’t know what to do with it especially since he kept telling me it was all in God’s will.”
“I didn’t know what to do with it especially since he kept telling me it was all in God’s will,” she explained. “It will take years of my life to unwind every lie that was told to me. Sometimes I would get three or four emails a day with the narrative that this is God’s will and you have to trust me.”
Swinson detailed at least 25 lies she was repeatedly fed by Reynolds, including, “This is God’s will,” “I will never harm you,” I have never lied to you,” “I would never lead you astray,” “You have to trust me,” “God is not the author of confusion,” “I want to make you more like Jesus,” “You will be my wife,” “This is from God,” “The enemy would love to twist what God is doing; do not give him a chance,” “Don’t ever speak to anyone about this.”
“That was the narrative that he always kept in my mind,” she said.
Breaking the relationship was tough because he constantly bought her gifts, “anything I wanted,” she said. “He would send me and his wife on shopping sprees and pay for everything. He even gave me his personal credit card after he had done something (inappropriate).”
“You put that into the equation with someone you have known for three years and taught you Scripture but then began to manipulate it. … It’s difficult and so twisted,” she said.
Swinson eventually found the courage to break the relationship after another encounter in the basement. She never returned to the house and through personal Bible study began the path to healing, which continues to this day. But she maintains there was no university advocacy group through which to seek help, even when 50 students filed a petition about Reynolds with the administration.
After graduation, she found employment at the university in the athletic department, which eventually transitioned into another position as a life coach — ironically a role Reynolds created specifically for her and to whom she would report. She accepted the new position but refused to renew the relationship. She worked at the university from her 2013 graduation until 2018.
Allegations published
The law firm of Shein, Brandenburg and Schrope representing Swinson sent documents including summaries of the more than 300 emails to university trustees, the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, Gov. Brian Kemp, and Swinson’s legislator, Gabriel Sanchez. Swinson herself turned over the trove of emails to the White County Police for their short-lived investigation, which found no cause for prosecution.
The Roys Report published its story last week, on May 29, along with the podcast.
Around midnight May 29, the university posted on its Facebook page a lengthy statement calling Reynolds’ behavior “abhorrent, immoral, manipulative and unethical.” The statement said, “As was expressed more than once in a Friday afternoon faculty and staff meeting, we are all shocked and disgusted to learn of his secret side.”
The statement detailed that in February of 2024, Reynolds notified TMU leadership he was under investigation by the White County Sheriff’s Office regarding an inappropriate relationship. He was placed on administrative leave and was dismissed in a matter of days.
Later that summer, according to the statement, the White County Sheriff’s Office announced it had terminated the investigation. The police report noted a forensic analysis by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation “uncovered hundreds of graphic emails sent by Reynolds from his personal Yahoo account which he previously told investigators were not his. The police report also stated the investigator concluded that he did not find that there is enough evidence in the case to seek prosecution at this time.”
The university statement also acknowledged that two months ago, in February 2025, the university received from Swinson’s attorney “excerpts of Reynolds’ sexually explicit and theologically twisted Yahoo emails.”
University leaders said they take all allegations of sexual misconduct seriously – which Swinson strongly denies as seen in one smoking gun email from 2015.
The university then asserts that it encourages alleged misconduct to be reported as soon as possible. There was no mention of Caner, in his role as president, included in the document.
However, Swinson denies the university was open to taking action and says its leaders actually covered up the abuse. She and other individuals interviewed by Baptist News Global said her relationship had become such an open secret that nearly 50 students circulated a well-known petition to the president’s office to look into Reynolds’ behavior on campus. They charge their concerns were summarily dismissed and Reynolds remained on staff without discipline or investigation.
Excerpt of 2015 email from Reynolds to Swinson
Swinson said she knows Caner was aware of their improper relationship as described in the March 2015 email. In the communication with Swinson, Reynolds even tells her he had a meeting with Caner about “that student services crowd, or whoever it is, are the biggest busybodies” because someone noticed her Jeep at his home during lunch for an extended period of time.
Caner “did promise to tell Chris that anymore gossip like that, will result in the person saying it being fired,” Reynolds wrote.
Forensics testing of Reynolds’ mobile phone by the White County Sheriff’s Office backed up evidence in the emails Swinson supplied to law enforcement, according to the Now Habersham news site.
Swinson also reported that hers was not the only case of sexual abuse and there remains another employee on staff whose actions are yet to be investigated.
Marcia G. Shein, attorney with the law firm representing Swinson, told BNG Truett McConnell “should be embarrassed to now call Bradley Reynolds a liar. Also blaming the victim is what perpetrators do (and) it is clearly a disappointment that TMU has taken that route.
“Haley may have been an adult in the mind of the law but she was a child in Christian principles and Reynolds took advantage of that and groomed Haley. He had used similar words with another victim before he even arrived at TMU.
“TMU may also want to suggest that because Haley was an adult she consented to the relationship — another typical defense to blame the victim. What is more significant is that people saw them on campus and reported it. Haley failing to report the events herself again blames the victim for the behavior of a pastor 20 years her senior, a married man with two children at the time, and a vice president.
“Clearly someone who had a spiritual obligation to obey God’s laws and did not is Reynolds and the leadership of the school,” Shein said.
Bradley’s exact whereabouts are unknown but friends say he has relocated to the Dallas area.
Georgia Baptist leaders respond
On May 30, the day after the podcast dropped, the Georgia Baptist Mission Board released a statement acknowledging “the deeply troubling allegations of sexual misconduct” at the university, one of three such institutions of higher learning affiliated with the state convention.
It stated that, as is true for all Georgia Baptist entities, the university “is accountable to its board of trustees. We encourage the trustees to take the appropriate actions to fully understand what happened and to ensure this type of behavior will never be repeated.”
The document was signed by Thomas Hammond, executive director; Stephen Fountain, chairman of the Georgia Baptist Executive Committee; Chad Mantooth, vice chairman of the Georgia Baptist Executive Committee; Chris Humphries, chairman of the Administration Committee; Brady Howard, vice chairman of the Administration Committee; Steve Browning, president of the state convention; and John Waters, chairman of the Georgia Baptist Relations Committee.
The Georgia Baptist Mission Board, beginning under the administration of former Executive Director J. Robert White, pioneered workshops for convention staff, churches and all entities in how to identify and prevent sexual abuse. While the workshops focused on children, the concept of grooming by predators was taught and was applicable to individuals of any age.
As far back as 2013 — when the abuse was under way at Truett McConnell — the Christian Index, Georgia’s state paper, reported on one such annual workshop in which Greg Love of Texas-based Ministry Safe spoke on preventing sexual abuse. Attendance in the workshops was mandatory for state convention staff and offered free to any entity such as the university.
Paige and Dorothy Patterson (left) at Truett-McConnell
Ties to Paige Patterson
Truett McConnell touts on its home page that the university has been named the “No. 1 Christian college in the state of Georgia” by Best Value Schools for 2024 and 2025.
It remains the most conservative of the three Georgia Baptist colleges and has honored architects of the Southern Baptist conservative resurgence such as Paige Patterson, a close friend and mentor of Caner.
In 2019, Patterson and his wife, Dorothy, were issued a proclamation that praised the Pattersons, who “poured their lives into a myriad of people,” including Caner, Reynolds and others.
In 2018, the university cut ties with Nike in response to a new ad campaign featuring former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Caner said Nike “mocked our troops.”
In 2005, Caner was elected dean of the Southwestern Seminary’s undergraduate school, then called College at Southwestern, under Patterson’s leadership.
Controversy is nothing new to Caner and his brother, Ergun, who is former president of another Georgia Baptist school, Brewton-Parker College. The Caners co-authored a 2002 book, Unveiling Islam, in which both claim to have been raised as Muslims and Ergun Caner claims he was trained as a terrorist.
Ergun Caner earlier was removed from a position as dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and Graduate School of Liberty University when Liberty faculty and trustees alleged he had misrepresented his background.
In 2002, former Southern Baptist Convention President Jerry Vines cited the Caners’ book as the source of his claim that the Islamic prophet Muhammad was “a demon-possessed pedophile.”
At Truett McConnell, Emir Caner continues to advance conservative evangelical causes. He serves on the steering council of the Conservative Baptist Network, a group seeking to turn the Southern Baptist Convention more rightward and that has downplayed the significance of sexual abuse within the SBC.
Caner regularly brings far-right figures to campus, including the Todd Starnes Faith and Freedom Celebration, Oliver North, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Tony Perkins, Pastor Brad Jurkovich of First Baptist Church in Bossier City, La.; and evangelist Tim Lee.