Calvary Spokane’s pastor covered years of abuse by his son, then promoted him

By Rebecca Hopkins | The Roys Report

Editor’s note: This is the first of a 2-part series.

This story describes graphic sexual abuse.

As one of eastern Washington’s largest churches in the Inland Northwest, Calvary Spokane has been led by one pastor for nearly all its 45 years.

He is Ken Ortize, 77, overseer of the congregation in a metro area of 470,000. Parked next to Idaho, the city draws those who neither identify with its conservative eastern neighbor nor with ultra-liberal Seattle 300 miles to the west.

At the center of Calvary Spokane is a human binary star system: Ortize and his oldest son Ben, 53. Earlier this year, the elder Ortize elevated his son to second-in-command at the 2,000-member church.

But the faithful are revolting. After Ben Ortize’s first 12-year tenure at Calvary, elders planned to fire him. Their plans were foiled when the father shipped the son off to a connected Calvary Chapel in Idaho.

But things were rocky there too. Ortize’s wife accused him of porn addiction and rape, ending in a messy divorce. A remote Bible college the son started in Montana got a reputation for spiritual abuse and ultimately shut down.

Nevertheless, Ken Ortize brought Ben back as an administrator to the Spokane church last fall. Accusations of sexual harassment, staff resignations and firings followed.

His promotion in January as associate pastor over all staff created havoc, former volunteer Lizzy Sartin told The Roys Report (TRR).

“They knew his transgressions, they knew his history, they knew his past … then plac(ed) him in a building with families,” she said.

The father-son dynamic is akin to a contact binary star system where the two stars are so close, they eventually collide. The result?

A supernova.

Early signs

In 1983, Ken Ortize, his wife, Jamie Ortize, and four kids, ages 1 to 12, moved to Spokane to take over a two-year-old church plant in the growing city.

Ben was the second child and the oldest of three boys. For most of the previous decade, Ken was marriage pastor at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, the legendary California church Chuck Smith founded. Preaching Calvary’s verse-by-verse method, Ken grew the Spokane church. By 1995, the Associated Press was calling Calvary Spokane the city’s largest church at 3,000 attendees.

By then, Ben, in his 20s, was Calvary’s youth and young adult pastor.  Even then, said former elder Dan McMahon, it was clear to the board Ben was being groomed to take over when his father retired.

In 1998,18-year-old Tawni Atherton started attending Calvary Spokane two weeks after her high school graduation. Ben, then 26, asked her on a date. Three weeks later, he proposed. She accepted.

“I thought every pastor was a good person … They’re going to be the best husband ever,” she told TRR. Their eight-year age difference raised eyebrows at the church and among family members.

“I remember saying to my brother, ‘You’re a cradle robber. What are you doing dating somebody that young?’” said Beth Thompson, the oldest of the Ortize children. “She was a baby, very naïve.”

They married eight months later, on Feb. 5, 1999. Once home from the honeymoon, Ben allegedly commanded his teenage wife to prove his love for him by kneeling and barking like a dog. Tawni recalled this later in her September 2024 divorce proceedings, a 15-hour recording.

“I begged … ‘Please, please I don’t want to do this,’” Tawni said in court.

Things got worse when, despite preaching against porn, he demanded his wife view pornographic films so she could learn to please him.  Two years in, he engaged in “excruciating” anal sex with Tawni she didn’t want, once forcing a banana into her.  

In her divorce proceedings, she revealed she got rectal surgery in 2002 —while her husband was out of the country on a missions trip — because of painful scar tissue from anal sex.

She lived in fear of his anger, enduring names such as “whore of Babylon.” She said in court she learned to comply like a “caged animal.”

She got pregnant two months after their wedding. Her second child was born in 2001, 18 months after the first. They had three more children in 2005, 2012 and 2014.  

She told the court she didn’t tell anyone about the abuse because she didn’t understand Ben’s behavior wasn’t normal. Besides, she said, he monitored her phone and computer use.

At the church, Ben required assent to whatever he taught and long work hours from his staff, according to former church members, staff and leaders. If anyone countered him, former elder McMahon said Ben would make up false accusations and hurl “veiled shots” from the pulpit.

“There’s this self-destructive nature of his that will always blow up a relationship,” McMahon said.  

TRR has contacted Ken and Ben Ortize for comment about this story but received no response.

By the 2000s, Ken’s influence had expanded. He became regional director for the Calvary Chapel Association (presently at 1,800 churches) in the Pacific Northwest and his church was known for conservative causes.

Meanwhile, Ken promoted Ben to executive pastor despite elders’ concerns.

“Ben was always, in a sense, fighting us in the board meetings,” McMahon said.

Ben also led Heart for Ministry (HFM), an intense Bible study, discipleship and volunteer intern program.

Rebecca Lionberger, member of a 12-person 2005 HFM, said Ben required total submission and 10 hours a day with the program.

“I’ve never seen that kind of control,” she said.  

The move to Idaho

In spring 2009, Calvary Spokane volunteers Ray and Rhiannon Masters told TRR they were honored Ben invited them to move with him to Sandpoint, Idaho. Ray became a volunteer leader for Grace Sandpoint, the name Ben gave the Calvary Chapel he was taking over in this ski resort town 72 miles northeast of Spokane.

However, the Masters didn’t know the real reason Ben was making this move was because Calvary Spokane’s board planned to fire him. Both McMahon and Craig Leone, an elder from 1998-2022, told TRR the elders insisted to Ken that Ben must leave — permanently.

But before elders went through with the firing, Ken and Ben Ortize hatched a plan later revealed in the divorce proceedings. As regional Calvary Chapel leader, Ken knew Calvary Sandpoint’s pastor was resigning due to marriage problems. Ben had filled in preaching at the church at times over the years and wanted the job.

Ken told the court he withdrew three months’ worth salary from Calvary Spokane funds to help Ben get started in Sandpoint.

Neither McMahon nor Leone remember Ken telling elders about using Calvary money for the Sandpoint start-up, they told TRR.

Tawni heard Ken and Ben discussing the move.

“Ken saw it as a way to get rid of the problem,” she said. “Ben saw it as an escape route.”

No one in either congregation was informed about Ben’s disciplinary problems, former members and staff of both congregations told TRR.

Shortly after Ray and Rhiannon Masters arrived in Sandpoint, Ben let the Masters borrow his computer for work. After Rhiannon came across a nude photo of a woman, Ray confronted Ben.

“He went ghost white,” Ray told TRR. “He preached against pornography on a regular basis … as if it’s a cardinal sin.”

The next day, Ben wiped the computer clean.

Working with Ben was rocky. He was quick to fire people, often requiring Ray to do the dirty work of kicking out people on the pretext they’d sinned in some way. 

Despite elders’ prohibition against Ben returning to Calvary Spokane, Ben regularly drove back to Spokane to teach the weekly HFM. However, when members of a 2009 HFM class challenged Ben’s teaching, he harshly chastised them, said Brett Erdman, then Calvary Spokane’s executive pastor.

Deputized by Ken to investigate, Erdman said he witnessed Ben “shredding” various staff and the HFM class, threatening to fire several people. Erdman reported the outburst to Ken and his wife Jamie.

Erdman said Ben called him, accusing him of trying to destroy his ministry. The next thing Erdman knew, a church usher told his wife, Jody, that rumors were flying that her husband was an adulterer.

Soon after, Erdman said he told Ken he was concerned that 19 staff had recently resigned but got no response. But when Erdman mentioned the turnover to an intern, Ken fired Erdman for gossiping. Jody, a worship leader, was dismissed as well.

An outside perspective

“While Ben was splitting his time between Calvary Spokane and Grace Sandpoint, things became so dire in Spokane that outside help was called in.”

Scott Douglas, pastor of Cabinet Mountain Calvary Chapel, 100 miles northeast of Spokane in the rural town Clark Fork, Idaho, investigated Ben’s abusive leadership.

Relying on the testimony of elders, staff and Ken, Douglas wrote a 15-page letter to Ben, whichTRR obtained. In it, Douglas concluded Ben exploited people and retaliated with false accusations, citing Erdman as an example of a false accusation Ben made. Douglas wrote that Ben had falsely called Erdman a “job-stealing adulterer” to Douglas.

But much of the blame lay with the elder Ortize, who would protect Ben from getting fired, Douglas wrote.

“(H)aving spoken to (your father), I’m not convinced that he’s sorry,” Douglas wrote. “When I asked him how you ended up as a senior pastor of a church plant, and why his church put so much money into your start-up costs, his reply was as simple as it was touching: ‘Because he’s my son.’”

However, Douglas also described a recent rift between father and son so serious Ken’s board prohibited the two to speak alone.

Such toxicity was baked into the Ortize family DNA, said Beth (Ortize) Thompson, adding all four children have been cut off by their parents at some point.

“If you cross a line on anything or question anything …  you’re cut off,” she told TRR. “Then they will go out and do everything in their power to destroy your reputation.”

In 2024, Tawni’s divorce attorney presented Douglas’ report as evidence of Ben’s abusive behavior. However, Ken, who had long since reconciled with his son, refuted its legitimacy on the stand. He didn’t remember speaking with Douglas for a report and said some of his quotes don’t sound like him. 

The content of Douglas’ letter, revealed in court proceedings years later, was news to staff and congregants at the Spokane and Sandpoint churches.

“We had no clue,” Rhiannon Masters said.

‘Cultish’ Bible school

In 2013, Ben raised money from his under-100-member Grace Sandpoint church to buy property in remote Blue Creek, Montana, 35 miles from Sandpoint. The Bible school for young adults had no cell phone reception or Internet, said Kyle Huffman, former Grace Sandpoint member.

Aaron Kuchenski was one of Blue Creek Bible College’s first students in 2014. Ben required the six-person class to commit to hard volunteer labor, Kuchenski said, adding turnover was high and the school became “cultish.”

In 2018, the school and Ben’s family reached a crisis point. Tawni said the sexual abuse had gotten to a point where Ben would choke her until she nearly passed out.

“I eventually thought I was going to die,” she said in the divorce recording.

She disclosed the abuse to Kuchenski’s parents, members at Grace Sandpoint. TRR obtained one of Tawni’s emails to them on Jan. 3, 2018, explaining her attempt to confront Ben about abuse. In response, he lectured her for hours about her selfishness, accusing her of listening to an evil spirit, she wrote.

That same day, the Kuchenskis took Tawni and her kids to a shelter. She only stayed a week because her kids struggled with the move. Besides, she said marriage counseling with Altar Church Pastor Tim Remington of Coeur d’Alene blamed her.

“It was just a process of, ‘Now tell me what he did. Now this is why it’s your fault, Tawni,’ … over and over again,” she said.

But when she went home, the abuse worsened, Tawni told the court in 2024. During this time, Tawni told a couple Bible school students, including Aaron Kuchenski, about the abuse. Church elders put Ben and Tawni on a “sabbatical,” Kuchenski said.

Kyle Huffman said Ben put him in charge of the school during the sabbatical. The dean of women reported Ben’s spiritual abuse and manipulation to Huffman, who reported it to Grace Sandpoint’s elders. Huffman also wrote a memo to elders, an early draft of which TRR obtained, recommending closure for one year and an audit.

The school closed in spring 2018, but Tawni said she gave in to pressure from Pastor Remington and her husband and recanted her abuse allegations.

TRR emailed Remington, a Republican and former Idaho state representative, for comment, but he didn’t respond.

Both Kuchenski and Huffman said they remember how Tawni explained to the congregation why she’d lied about her husband’s abuse.

“She told everybody that she was being possessed or led by a demon,” Kuchenski said.

Huffman said he didn’t believe Tawni’s public statement and warned a church elder that abused women often return to abusers when they face enormous loss by leaving. After several meetings with elders and a meeting with Ben, Huffman resigned, citing unresolved spiritual abuse.

Not long after, Ben’s elders kicked Kuchenski out of church.

“The elders … told me, unless I repent of everything I believe about Tawni, that I am no longer welcome at the church,” Kuchenski said.

Ben and Tawni sold their house in Cocolalla, Idaho, near Sandpoint and moved to Blue Creek in June 2018 to care for the property and host retreats. In this isolated location, she later told the divorce judge, Ben sometimes raped her. She feared for her life.

Starting in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had slowed events at Blue Creek. Tawni told TRR she was exhausted from caring for the 160-acre property and pushed the church to sell.

In January 2022, Ben sold the Blue Creek property for $3.4 million. The church, as Grace Sandpoint Inc, immediately bought a $1.4 million parsonage in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, specifically for the Ortize family, records show. Coeur d’Alene is a half-hour drive east of Spokane but an hour’s drive south of Sandpoint.

The following month, when Ben was on a trip with their children, Tawni made her final break. With the help of an ex-police officer — whom she would later marry — she escaped. Unable initially to afford an attorney, she filed her hand-written petition for divorce on Feb. 15, 2022, offering Ben sole legal custody of the children.

She said in court proceedings she believed Ben would willingly share custody without a court order, as to do otherwise would hurt his reputation as a pastor. She said she hadn’t seen Ben abusing the kids and planned to stay close to keep an eye on them. She also hoped this would facilitate a quick divorce to ensure her safety and freedom.

Instead, the case dragged on for three years with Ben and his witnesses slinging accusations in court she cheated on him, neglected the kids’ schooling and endangered them once while driving. Tawni denies these allegations.

In February 2025, the court dissolved the marriage based on irreconcilable differences and gave Ben full legal custody, but allowed the couple to share physical custody.

Also in 2025, Grace Sandpoint changed hands and names to Bridges Sandpoint with a new pastor. The church is not affiliated with Calvary Chapel Association.

And thanks to his father, Ben, now single in his million-dollar parsonage, has a new job back at Calvary Spokane.

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