Our investigation of a little-known church community in northeastern Minnesota started with something that has become depressingly familiar: child sex abuse.
ProPublica and the Minnesota Star Tribune found that some members of the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church community in Duluth enabled Clint Massie, who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing young girls. Massie is currently in prison in Faribault, Minnesota.
The Old Apostolic Lutheran Church — which has no affiliation with mainstream Lutheran denominations and is known as the OALC — is an insular community with many old-world traditions. There is no official count, but one academic study estimated 31,000 members worldwide as of 2016, with most in the United States.
We examined hundreds of pages of criminal records, conducted more than a dozen interviews with alleged victims across the country, reviewed video and audio of police interviews with Massie, victims and church leaders, and attended a service at the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church in Duluth.
Daryl Bruckelmyer, an OALC preacher, declined to comment or answer a detailed list of questions for this story. But in a 2023 interview with a St. Louis County detective, he acknowledged knowing about Massie’s sexual abuse. He said at the time that it was up to victims to report the crimes to police, a clear misreading of the law for mandated reporters — doctors, teachers and others who are required to report crimes against children.
