A prominent local minister has been asked to resign as cochair of the Massey Commission because of allegations that he groped Emma Shafer, a 24-year-old social-justice activist and organizer who died in July 2023.
The Rev. T. Ray McJunkins, 61, who recently celebrated 22 years as lead pastor of Union Baptist Church, 1405 E. Monroe St., one of the oldest Black churches in Springfield, denied the allegation involving the white woman when contacted by Illinois Times.
There have been no criminal charges or other formal complaints made to organizations, other than the nonprofit Faith Coalition for the Common Good, where Shafer previously worked, in connection with the alleged incident.
Springfield resident Jack Paciolla was one of several people who have used public forums to question McJunkins’ integrity, apparently referring to allegations in Shafer’s resignation letter, without mentioning Shafer’s name. Paciolla asked McJunkins to resign from the Massey Commission during the commission’s first “listening session” at Union Baptist.
Paciolla told the assembled crowd, “I do not believe someone with multiple allegations of inappropriately touching certain body parts of local female activists should be cochair or allowed to be on this commission.”
Paciolla later told Illinois Times that he based his statements on Shafer’s resignation letter, which he said has been shared by many social-justice activists in the community.
IT has been unable to verify the existence of other people who have made allegations of sexual misconduct against McJunkins despite references to such behavior in Shafer’s letter.
Shafer said in an email on March 22, 2023, to Faith Coalition for the Common Good board members, in which she resigned from her community organizing staff position, that McJunkins “grabbed my butt and squeezed it” as part of what she thought would be a friendly hug following a February 2023 meeting between the two in McJunkins’ church office.
Shafer was meeting in McJunkins’ office at Union Baptist as part of her work on the staff of the Faith Coalition, a nonprofit that addresses issues of racism and poverty in central Illinois. The coalition is made up of faith congregations, other nonprofits and labor unions.
McJunkins said he won’t resign from the volunteer, unpaid post on a commission the Sangamon County Board created in a Sept. 18 vote.
“I deny it because it did not happen,” McJunkins said. “I did give her a hug. The hug, I feel, was taken the wrong way. The only thing I have is my reputation. … I don’t know in her head what she felt or what she thought. … The hug with Emma was simply a fatherly or brotherly hug.”
McJunkins, who is married and the father of two daughters, ages 33 and 35, added: “Nothing like this has ever come up on me. I don’t do that. I’m an advocate for women’s rights.”
After Shafer’s death on July 11, 2023, a warrant was issued for the arrest of her alleged killer, her former boyfriend, Gabriel Calixto, 26, who hasn’t been apprehended.
When contacted by Illinois Times, John Shafer and his wife, Cathy Schwartz, said they believed their daughter after she told them about the incident, which allegedly happened on Feb. 23, 2023, during a one-on-one, closed-door meeting with McJunkins.
Schwartz and her husband also said in a joint statement: “Emma is gone, and her writing is left to speak to this. She and Pastor McJunkins know what happened behind that closed door, which should have been open.”
The statement continued: “We know without a doubt Emma would have wanted justice for Sonya Massey and for this process to be transparent in order to bring light to inequity and provide a way to go forth with love, justice and open doors, which is what she was all about.
“We would encourage this commission to go forth with as much integrity as it can and make the needed changes to the system. Again, Emma believed this was possible, as do we.”
McJunkins said he plans to remain a cochair of the Massey Commission after being asked to serve by state Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, and Sangamon County Board Chair Andy Van Meter, a Republican. Resigning would amount to an admission of guilt and would “stop progress of the commission,” McJunkins said.
He said he wants to help restore community trust in law enforcement and address other societal issues connected to the July 6 shooting death of Sonya Massey at the hands of a Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy.
Illinois Times recently obtained a copy of the resignation letter Shafer emailed to at least 15 people associated with the Faith Coalition. Shafer wrote that she was resigning immediately “due to inadequate support when I reported that I was sexually assaulted during work hours.”
Shafer attached a timeline to the email in which she said met with McJunkins on Feb. 23, 2023, after she saw him at Springfield’s Martin Luther King Jr. Jan. 16 breakfast. McJunkins was preparing to host a public forum for Springfield aldermanic candidates at the church.
Shafer said former Faith Coalition executive director Shelly Heideman told her that McJunkins, a founding member of the 16-year-old organization and the first president of its board, quit the group after a bout with cancer and that Shafer should try to convince McJunkins to get back involved.
During the meeting, Shafer said, she asked McJunkins questions about his church and his future plans.
“At the end,” Shafer wrote, “we hugged, and he rubbed his hand down the side of my body and then grabbed and squeezed my butt. Right afterwards – what felt like on-cue; I know it probably wasn’t – his assistant, Ms. Debra, walked in with a phone call for him. He said see you next Thursday at the forum!”
Shafer wrote that she was “physically ill” and “throwing up and anxious” the next day. She said she informed one of her supervisors two days later what had happened during the visit with McJunkins. Shafer wrote that she informed Heideman, immediate past Faith Coalition executive director, two weeks after the incident.
Shafer said that when she met Heideman on March 8, 2023, Heideman, a coalition consultant at the time, told Shafer to go back and meet with McJunkins “and said I could take someone else with me.”
Shafer said that according to Heideman, if Shafer refused to meet again with McJunkins, “I would be leaving my power on the table and letting that happen to me again or to others, considering we would be having these forums at his church.”
Heideman told Illinois Times she disputes the letter’s account of her exchange with Shafer. Heideman said she offered Shafer four options after Shafer described the visit with McJunkins. In the first option, Heideman said, she offered to accompany Shafer if Shafer wanted to meet with McJunkins and confront him about the alleged conduct.
Heideman denied saying Shafer would be leaving her power “on the table” if she decided against confronting McJunkins.
Heideman declined to list the other three options.
According to Shafer, Heideman also said Susan Eby, a former Faith Coalition board member, told Heideman “that this used to happen to other young women when he was president of FCCG and they had to sit down with Pastor McJunkins about it, and he denied it.”
Eby told Illinois Times that she never knew of any prior complaints about McJunkins’ treatment of women and never reported any such complaints to Heideman.
Heideman, who is retired, said the letter’s assertion that she was aware of prior complaints of alleged sexual misconduct by McJunkins was “absolutely false.” Heideman also denied telling Shafer there were prior complaints.
The Rev. Martin Woulfe, minister of Springfield’s Abraham Lincoln Unitarian Universalist Congregation and a longtime social-justice activist, was president of the Faith Coalition when Shafer resigned. He said Shafer called him in early March 2023 and “told me she had been sexually assaulted by an African American minister, without naming who it was.”
“When I find out a couple of days later that McJunkins is the man that she’s accusing, I was shocked, in part because he’s a pastor known for social justice,” Woulfe said. “He’s someone I’ve done some things with over the course of the years, and it was just incredulous that this would have happened to Emma, of all people.”
Woulfe said he met Shafer for coffee before her resignation, and she described what she later would recount in her resignation later as McJunkins’ misconduct.
Woulfe said Shafer spoke to the Faith Coalition board in a Zoom meeting the day she sent her resignation letter.
“She was one of the most prominent activists in Springfield, she was our activist, and she was saying this happened to her on Faith Coalition business,” Woulfe said. “And so I felt that the only responsible thing to do is bring everyone in so they can hear this and we can all rally around her and support her and decide what she wants to do and how do we get there.”
During the Zoom meeting, Shafer described what happened to her and her interactions with Heideman and wanted to make sure the coalition adopted policies on how to deal with sexual harassment in the future, according to Woulfe.
“Emma talked to all of us, and then she said that she didn’t want to pursue anything publicly against McJunkins even though she had sent this out,” Woulfe said. “She had decided she was going to move on and move past that event, and… she was just ready to put this whole chapter behind her.”
Woulfe said he and the Rev. Silas Johnson, pastor of Calvary Missionary Baptist Church and a Faith Coalition member, met in April 2023 with McJunkins, at the request of the Faith Coalition board, to hear his side.
Both Woulfe and Johnson said McJunkins denied doing anything inappropriate with Shafer.
According to Woulfe, McJunkins said: “It's true that she did come here and that she asked me to consider rejoining Faith Coalition. And I told her … I was not interested at this time, and at the end we both got up, and she initiated a hug. And so I hugged her, and then she left.”
Woulfe told IT that McJunkins “said that he was grieved to hear” that Shafer “had gotten the impression that he was groping her.”
When asked whom he believes – Shafer or McJunkins – Woulfe, who is white, said: “It has been impressed upon me both during seminary and during the #MeToo period that we must listen to any person who confides that they are the victim of sexual harassment or abuse with a heart filled with compassion and to assume that they are being truthful. During my years both as a staff person at a shelter for youth and as a parish minister, I have tried to keep that training in the forefront of my responses.”
Johnson, who is Black, said he came away from the meeting with McJunkins convinced that McJunkins didn’t touch Shafer inappropriately. “I don’t think it is something he would do,” Johnson said.
Johnson said Shafer’s allegations “shook me to the bone.”
Johnson added: “I wouldn’t say she fabricated it. Emma was a sweet and friendly person that was very open. We may never find the real truth because it’s her word against his word.”
Johnson said hugging is a common form of hospitality in the Baptist tradition.
Woulfe said he and Johnson told McJunkins how they never meet with someone of the opposite sex behind a closed door. Woulfe said the Faith Coalition later adopted policies on sexual harassment that included requirements that female staff members meeting with men on coalition business never do so without another person present.
McJunkins said he has changed his own dealings with other people since the incident and now shies away from hugs and sometimes avoids shaking someone’s hand.
