COLUMBUS — After having dropped all the other defendants from a federal lawsuit over her childhood sexual abuse by family members, a former Athens County resident has asked for a hearing to set the amount of damages she should receive from the only remaining defendant, a Pike County church run by her uncle.
In February 2022, Serah Bellar, who would now be 20 years old, filed suit in U.S. District Court against defendants including Athens County; a former Athens County sheriff’s deputy; her parents, Robert and Deborah Bellar; her uncle, James Bellar; and the Dove Outreach Church in Waverly, Ohio. She filed the complaint under the pseudonym Jane Doe, because she has changed her name and wishes to keep her new name a secret.
In July of 2023, she agreed to dismiss Athens County and the former deputy as defendants, reportedly as part of a $420,000 settlement with the county; and then in March of this year, moved to dismiss her three family members as well, a motion the court granted on April 23.
In May 2022, the federal court’s clerk had found Dove Outreach in default because it had failed to hire an attorney to file a response to Bellar’s legal complaint, which as an “artificial entity” it was legally required to do. The default finding essentially means the church cannot contest the claims made against it in the lawsuit, but has not yet been found liable in the case.
On Monday, Bellar filed a motion seeking a default judgment assigning legal liability against Dove Outreach, and asking for a hearing to establish how much the church should have to pay her.
Bellar’s lawsuit alleges that her parents had forced her and their other children to attend James Bellar’s church. It claimed that the church had taught the doctrine that siblings should have sex and have children with each other, and that in accordance with this belief, she had been abused sexually by members of her family from age 5 to 12.
In April 2020 Bellar, then 16 years old, ran away from her home in Amesville. About a year later, she posted on social media using an assumed name, reporting that she was safe, and claiming that she had left home to escape ongoing sexual abuse by her family. After Athens County authorities investigated and confirmed that the Facebook post was by Bellar, they began looking it her allegations of abuse. This resulted in criminal charges being filed against her parents, two of her older brothers, and an Athens County Sheriff’s deputy, all of whom were ultimately convicted. Robert and Deborah Bellar pled guilty in March 2022 to endangering children and engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, and are both now in prison.
Athens County and the deputy were named as defendants based on Bellar’s claim that the deputy had helped cover up the sexual abuse.
In the motion for default judgment on liability against Dove Outreach, Bellar repeats her allegations that the “cult-like” church “facilitates sexual contact with children and charges fees to its members in furtherance of its ideologies that minor children should procreate,” and also that it “benefitted (financially and otherwise)” from the sexual abuse of Bellar.
In connection with the damages issue, Bellar’s motion says that she has suffered “deep and irrevocable harm both physically and psychologically” from the abuse she suffered, including post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression disorder, and will need large amounts of therapy on an ongoing basis. In support of this claim, she includes a declaration by a social worker who began providing her psychotherapy in 2019. The social worker reports that the fallout from the abuse for Bellar has included self-mutilation behavior (cutting herself), nightmares, a struggle with alcohol dependency, and difficulty in trusting other people and establishing close, healthy relationships.
The three family member defendants in the suit were dismissed without prejudice, meaning that Serah Bellar could potentially file a new complaint against them after the liability and damage issues are resolved in the case of Dove Outreach. One reason Bellar dismissed them was because when Bellar had filed an earlier motion seeking a default liability judgment against Dove Outreach, the court had refused to grant it, on the grounds that the church and Bellar’s family members were facing an overlapping set of claims that include civil conspiracy, sex trafficking of children, compelling and promoting prostitution, obstruction of justice and racketeering. If the church were found liable by default, and the other defendants then went on to win in court, this could create verdicts that were in conflict with each other.
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