Ken Paxton built ties to a Baptist power broker accused of abusing 8 men, and donations allegedly continued after the lawsuit

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton spent more than a decade building a political alliance with Paul Pressler, a once-powerful figure in Southern Baptist circles who was accused by at least eight men of sexual abuse. 

Reports have also connected Pressler to two men described as closely involved in covering up the allegations. Even after the claims became public, Paxton continued to accept their financial support, rely on their endorsements, and maintain his political ties to them.

Pressler helped lead the conservative shift inside the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1900s and served as a mentor to Texas Republicans such as Ted Cruz and Paxton. A Texas Monthly investigation said “abundant suspicions” about his dealings with young men had circulated for decades. Those concerns were said to date to the late 1970s, when he was quietly removed from a church youth ministry after an alleged incident at his home.

Texas ethics filings list Pressler family gifts after the 2017 case became public

According to Meidas Touch News, the claims reached the public in December 2017, when Duane Rollins sued and claimed Pressler began raping him in 1979. Rollins was 14 at the time, and Pressler was then a sitting justice on Texas’ 14th Court of Appeals. 

The suit claimed the abuse continued two to three times a month for about 25 years. The Houston Chronicle reported that the filing alleged the abuse occurred in Pressler’s home study with his wife, Nancy, “usually on the premises.” After the case was filed, at least seven other men came forward with similar accusations.

Paxton’s political connection to Pressler was already in place before the lawsuit. In November 2013, Paxton’s campaign presented Pressler’s endorsement as coming from a “respected conservative icon” across Texas. 

Paxton himself said he had “admired and respected” the judge “for so many years.” After he won the attorney general race the following year, he placed Pressler on his transition advisory team.

The connection did not break once the allegations were public. Filings with the Texas Ethics Commission show Pressler and his wife gave to Paxton’s campaigns in 2016 and 2017, then again in 2018 and 2022. 

The 2018 and 2022 gifts came after Rollins’ lawsuit was filed and drew national coverage. Nancy Pressler also donated to Paxton’s campaign in 2022 and to the “Stand with Paxton” PAC created to defend him during his 2023 impeachment. Records show the couple gave Paxton about $1,600 across those two accounts.

The case against Pressler settled in December 2023. Defendants named alongside him included the Southern Baptist Convention, its Executive Committee, and First Baptist Church of Houston. In a statement on the confidential settlement, SBC attorneys cited “the horrendous nature of the abuse allegations” as a main reason they resolved the matter instead of going to trial.

Weeks later, SBC outside counsel Gene Besen called Pressler a “monster” and a “dangerous predator” whose “actions are of the devil.” Pressler died in June 2024 at age 94. The Associated Press covered his death, and the New York Times ran the headline “Paul Pressler, Disgraced Christian Conservative Leader, Dies at 94.”

Paxton’s associations also included others tied to the case. In 2022, the Texas Supreme Court voted 5-2 to allow the Rollins lawsuit to proceed and rejected an effort to dismiss it on a statute-of-limitations basis. 

Two justices stepped aside because their former law firm had represented Rollins. Justice John Devine did not recuse, even though he had earlier worked at the small Houston firm of Woodfill and Pressler. That period overlapped the years when Rollins, then Pressler’s personal assistant, said the abuse occurred. 

A Texas Tribune investigation found Devine listed as an attorney or guardian ad litem for the firm at least 27 times from 2002 to 2008, including nine cases filed while Rollins worked there. Devine told the Tribune he had “no basis” to recuse because he had “no personal knowledge of the facts.”

Devine’s 2024 Republican primary opponent used that history against him and accused him of “trying to help Woodfill and Pressler out.” Paxton left his endorsement in place. According to the Tribune, he attended a Houston fundraiser for Woodfill and “without prompting praised Devine and blasted what he said were smear attacks” against him.

The event supported Jared Woodfill, Pressler’s longtime law partner. Rollins’ lawsuit described Woodfill as the person who enabled the abuse for more than a decade. Woodfill testified under oath that in 2004, he learned Pressler had been sexually inappropriate with Rollins as a child. 

The firm still paid a rotating group of young male personal assistants to work from Pressler’s home rather than paying Pressler a salary directly. A Texas Tribune report on a later-surfaced email indicated that the arrangement lasted until at least 2017. 

The email, sent to Pressler’s family by one of those assistants, described Pressler bragging about being naked with young boys and pressuring a young, financially desperate man into giving him a nude massage.

Paxton still backed Woodfill after that reporting. In a 2023 campaign ad for Woodfill’s Texas House bid, Paxton praised him as someone who “has defended religious liberty, opposed mask and vax mandates, and is challenging election fraud in Harris County.” 

Paxton has also faced scrutiny over his own disclosures, such as when he was asked about reports on his properties and voting address, but walked out without answering. He also declared that “true conservatives need to take control of the House” and that “Jared Woodfill can lead the way.” 

In February 2024, weeks after the email became public, Paxton attended a Houston reception for Woodfill’s campaign and released a video calling him “an amazing conservative fighter” he had known for “over a decade.”

Support also flowed the other way. During Paxton’s 2023 Texas House impeachment over separate corruption and abuse-of-office allegations, Woodfill was among his most active defenders. 

He joined a political action committee formed to defend Paxton at trial and sat with a small group of Paxton “loyalists” in the Senate gallery, according to the Texas Tribune. Woodfill also represented plaintiffs in a federal suit seeking to lift the gag order the Texas Senate imposed during the trial, arguing it violated lawmakers’ First Amendment rights, a case covered by the Houston Chronicle. The Senate later acquitted Paxton.

The reporting described a decade-plus pattern in which Paxton built part of his political career on support from a man later called a “monster” and “dangerous predator” by the Southern Baptist Convention’s own lawyer. 

He kept taking money from that man and his wife after the allegations were public and maintained ties with both the justice who declined to recuse from Pressler’s case and the law partner accused of supplying Pressler with victims for more than a decade. Neither Paxton’s office nor Woodfill has publicly explained why those relationships continued after the allegations became known.