ANTIGO — In the Langlade County Courthouse Tuesday morning, Travis Huse — the man who last month pled guilty to a slew of sexual assault charges including multiple counts of 1st degree sexual assault of a child and child enticement — was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In May 2022, five different victims accused Huse, now 44, with sexually assaulting them while teaching them piano lessons and working as a teacher’s aide at the Apostolic Worship Center in the Town of Evergreen in the late 90s when they were all under 13 years old. A sixth girl accused him of assaulting her in a car when she was 17 years old in the mid-2000s.
The sentence came following impact statements read by Huse’s victims, the first of whom described the Evergreen church, part of the International United Pentecostal Church, as a “cult” in which the pastor is viewed as “an oracle of God.” She said the church’s culture made even confronting Huse — the son of the church’s then-pastor Scott Huse, who is scheduled for a jury trial in October for sexual assault charges he too is facing — nearly impossible.
“I will never forget coming to this realization and wishing I could go back in time and give my younger self the knowledge that I didn’t gain until I was an adult about what grooming looked like,” the victim said. “I wish I could tell my younger self that all the inappropriate comments, unwanted touches, extremely vulgar and sexually explicit text messages were not OK, and I needed to tell an adult.”
“But my indoctrination kept me from doing so. He was my authority figure.”
The same victim continued to say that Huse’s actions made her realize “how sick humanity can actually be.”
“He was trusted until he broke that trust, broke my spirit, broke my perspective of the church, and those in it being a safe space,” she said. “My whole world came crashing down, and I no longer have safe spaces anywhere in my life. My faith in God was shaken to its very core. My pastor was no longer a safe space. My parents were no longer a safe space. I was left alone, so very alone.”
Another victim said because of the abuse, she had nightmares into adulthood.
“These nightmares consisted of Travis visiting me and trying to sexually abuse me once again,” she said. “As many know, nightmares and dreams can seem very real, and these were definitely those types of nightmares. I would frequently wake up in a heavy sweat or shaking.”
Huse’s attorney Kevin Musolf called Huse’s sister to speak to his character. She said he had never behaved in a sexually inappropriate way with her growing up, and, completely to the contrary, had proven throughout her life with him to be generous, hard-working, and family-orientated.
“From my perspective, Travis is an incredibly loving and devoted father and husband,” she said. “I never saw him behave in any way around his wife or daughter that gave me cause for concern. He displayed patience, gentleness, and fairness in his parenting. His wife and daughter seem to me to love him and be bonded to him, and want to continue to share their lives with him. They continue to talk to him at least once every day. His four year old daughter expresses sadness at his absence and asks to call him and share the important moments in her life with him.”
Musolf said Huse deserved leniency for admitting his actions.
“I recently had a hearing in front of Judge Kelly in Brown County, and he said something that really stuck with me,” Musolf said. “He told the defendant, ‘I put a great deal of weight in accepting responsibility, because you do have the right to put the state to their proofs and in a sexual assault case like that case was — and actually very similar, it was a 24 year old allegation — he said, ‘That’s very difficult on the victims, having to relive it on the stand in front of 12 people, having their credibility challenged by the defense, which is your constitutional right to do.’ So Judge Kelly — and I completely agree with him — he puts a great deal of weight on not making the victims do that, and Travis has done that: he has accepted his responsibility.”
Hays, though, said that in fact, Huse had minimized his guilt in official statements he had made by continually mentioning that he too was young when the assaults occurred. She also emphasized that the victims still face backlash today.
“They are still hearing people say, ‘If this happened,’ or ‘That he held a hand too long, and that’s what we’re saying is sexual assault.’ It is no longer ‘if.’ It is no longer, ‘This could have happened,’” Hays said. “He pleaded and admitted to these charges. These are not alleged victims. They are victims. And they are people that are still suffering the consequences of his actions 20 to 30 years later, consequences that, until recently, he has not had.”
Several of the victims, likewise, expressed frustration that Huse’s parents apparently shielded him from the consequences of his actions, and later attempted to stop them from coming forward.
“Whether it’s the maximum sentence or not, he needs to know that with every action comes consequence,” said one of the victims. “Too many of us were lied to and put through things in life that no child or teen should ever have to be put through. Our families were lied to. Our churches were lied to. And there were so many opportunities for his actions to be halted and properly taken care of, but instead, he spent a lifetime of moving from one place to another seeking out new prey. Unfortunately for him, many of us grew up and realized that we still had a voice that needed to be heard, and finally, it was.”
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