Pineville, USA - The Eplings and the Lamberts seemed as close as families could be.
They shared a 100-acre rural southwest Missouri homestead, built their own houses as families grew, taught their children at a school on the property and formed a Baptist church there.
No one paid much attention to the family on the hilly backwoods farm, and some neighbors didn't even know they had a church - though it had been on the property for 30 years.
But all that changed Aug. 15, when the McDonald County prosecutor charged the minister of the church, Raymond Lambert; his wife, Patty Lambert; and her brothers, Paul and Tom Epling, with a total of 22 felony counts of sexually abusing young girls from the farm as part of a "religious ritual or ceremony."
The Lamberts and the Epling brothers, who are church deacons, pleaded not guilty. But even their lawyer can see why the case has drawn national media attention and has people buzzing in the county seat of Pineville.
"You've got religion, you've got sex, you've got rituals, you've got a lot of things that make quite a story," said Robert Evenson of Pineville. "It really comes down to credibility."
The McDonald County deputy sheriff who investigated the case for three months said the victims gave in to Raymond Lambert, pastor of the family's Grand Valley Independent Baptist Church.
"They believe the pastor is a prophet, filled with the Holy Spirit, and as a result they offered this man their loyalty beyond what the average person does in a church," Deputy Michael Le Sueur said. He said the victims' stories are consistent and believable.
The four women making the accusations range from 19 to 35 and say the incidents happened between 1976 and 2005. They are scheduled to testify at a preliminary hearing Oct. 2, said McDonald County Prosecutor Steve Geeding.
The investigation is ongoing, Geeding said. "This has allegedly been going on since the '70s, so there are potentially quite a few witnesses and/or victims out there," he said.
The McDonald County probe led to a related investigation in Newton County, where pastor George T. Johnston, uncle of Raymond Lambert, was charged Aug. 22 with eight counts of sexually abusing a girl at an affiliated Baptist church in a rural Granby mobile home neighborhood between 1997and 2005.
Johnston pleaded not guilty, but a judge ordered 14 children living there to be placed in foster care. Johnston was charged Wednesday with one count of child molestation in McDonald County. His lawyer declined to comment on the cases.
In the Epling and Lambert case, some of the four alleged sex abuse victims said the offenders told them: "We are preparing your body for the service of God," according to charges Geeding filed based on affidavits by Le Sueur.
The allegations have surprised people in an area where religion runs deep.
"We were in shock that something even close to that (could happen)," said Donna Muehlebach, who owns Sims General Store, about five miles from the Lambert and Epling farm. "I've talked to people who've been here for many years who did not have a clue."
The charges also proved unsettling for the extended Epling and Lambert families. All but about 25 of nearly 100 people who lived on the family farm have moved away since May, said one relative who lives nearby but wanted her name withheld to guard her privacy. The four people charged left the state last week after posting bond, Le Sueur said.
A family business, Southwest Kennel Supply in nearby Wheaton, is in the process of being sold. At least a dozen people from the family worked there, according to a company catalog.
Former company manager Tim Amey, a cousin to the Lamberts and Eplings who lived on the family property, moved his family to Oklahoma, said Eric Dake, now manager of Southwest.
"I know this was devastating to Tim," Dake said. "These are people he grew up with. They were a very close family. The whole family worked together."
They also were musicians, with several of them playing in a country band called Centrefire that produced CDs and performed across the country, according to the band's Web site.
The young people who lived at the family farm and worked at the kennel company seemed bright and well adjusted, Dake said.
"They were not the radical religious group you'd expect," Dake said.
The family was unique from the time Cecil Epling bought the 100-acre property in 1975 and built a house, school and church. Relatives moved to the farm, and hardly anyone left.
"As the family grew, instead of deeding them off a piece of property, they just built a house, and this kind of spread to other relatives," Evenson said.
Cecil Epling was married twice. He and his second wife, Juanita Epling, had children from prior marriages and children together, and most of them lived on the farm, said people familiar with the family.
"Virtually everyone who lived at the compound was related by blood or marriage." Le Sueur said. Cecil Epling died in a motor vehicle accident in 1982, and Lambert took over as church pastor.
People lived communally, said Le Sueur, basing his information on interviews with the alleged victims and others who lived on the farm. All money made in outside jobs was donated to the family church, and then church funds would be used to pay everyone's living expenses, he said.
The apparent purpose was to gain tax benefits, he said. A church registered as a nonprofit entity with the IRS can accept tax-deductible donations. Public IRS records do not show either the Lambert or Johnston churches registered as nonprofits, but churches by law do not have to be listed publicly.
To become a Baptist minister, a person must be ordained by a registered church, said Robin Hadaway, associate professor of missions at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City.
"Anyone can say, `I'm a Baptist,' and start a Baptist church," Hadaway said.
But he said the Lambert and Johnston churches sound unusual.
"Most Baptists don't get into the communal thing," he said. "A real Baptist would not believe a pastor is an apostle or prophet."
John Lambert, who lives on the farm and is a brother of Raymond Lambert and a stepbrother of the Eplings, declined to discuss the family's church or finances but said they did not live communally.
"It's not a commune, it's a family farm," John Lambert said. The farm, posted with no-trespassing signs, is sometimes gated, but that is mainly to keep horses in, not people out, he said.
The rift in the close-knit family apparently began in May when eight people left the farm after they began to question the conduct of church leadership, Le Sueur said.
"When they left, they literally left on foot with no money and nowhere to go because they had lived communally all their lives," Le Sueur said. "They ... left with the clothes on their back."
One of the departed men returned to the farm to get legal guardianship of his wife, who had been paralyzed in 2004 by a stroke after giving birth. Le Sueur was asked to serve papers in the case and went to the farm.
"In the process of serving that paper, one of the victims began telling me about abuse she suffered at the hands of church leadership," Le Sueur said. "As I began to investigate, other people were revealed to me who had been abused. This has been a domino situation."
Evenson, the lawyer for Raymond and Patty Lambert and the Epling brothers, said the alleged victims are motivated by revenge and the hopes of getting a financial settlement.
"A lot of facts will come out that have not come out," Evenson said. "This case is just starting."
In Newton County, a probable cause statement in the abuse case against Johnston alleges that he told the victim "he was ordained by God to fulfill her needs as a woman."
Johnston's home and church are in a group of mobile homes in rural Granby, where he and some relatives and other residents raise livestock and boxer dogs, neighbors said.
"It's pretty much a community project," said Newton County Chief Deputy Sheriff Chris Jennings, who investigated the case. Jennings said the property is a "series of trailers" with no signs on the road indicating a church.
None of the buildings on the grounds looks like a church. A woman who answered the door at one of the mobile homes had no comment and asked a reporter to leave the property.
A woman who lives near the property but who did not want to be identified, said Johnston and two of his sons recently helped her birth a calf.
"He was just being a good neighbor," she said.
Cristel O'Neal, who lives just down the road from the Johnston property, said she was surprised to hear of the alleged abuse and will not let her children play outside anymore.