Pastor, ex-officer who fled after sexual battery charge is back in custody thanks to Texas church

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Tuesday, April 09, 2024

Days after he fled prosecution in Florida for allegedly sexually assaulting an alcohol-impaired teenager, former police officer and pastor, Monte Lavelle Chitty, is now back in custody thanks to a quick-thinking Texas church.

Chitty, 62, who served as leader of First Baptist of Marathon, has been accused of getting a 15-year-old member of the church drunk and sexually assaulting her. He went on the run weeks after he was released on a $75,000 bond.

Officials from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office in Texas told 6 South Florida that Chitty was arrested around 5 p.m. in Woodville on Friday after he approached a church group working with the homeless. He was recognized by a church member who contacted police.

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The news comes as former members of a church Chitty led in Cold Bay, Alaska, recalled “immoral” behavior between him and another young woman who lived with his family that almost tore the church apart.

Church leaders were so disturbed by the situation, they all chipped in to purchase a plane ticket for the woman so she could get away from Chitty who they say exploited his position as a pastor and law enforcement officer to gain people’s confidence.

“He used the two safest, most trusted roles in a community,” Stephanie DeVault, who lived in Cold Bay when Chitty was a pastor there, told the Anchorage Daily News. In addition to his job as a pastor, Chitty also served as a village public safety officer in False Pass with the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association during a decade he lived in Alaska. He later moved to Florida in 2021.

Stephanie DeVault and her husband, Ty DeVault, who led the False Pass church where Chitty served prior to him taking over, said some of the stories Chitty had told them about his past were not adding up.

When “immoral” private messages between Chitty and a young woman who lived with his family in 2012 were made public it was a difficult time for the church.

“It was immoral, but it wasn’t illegal,” Stephanie DeVault recalled.

The only way they felt they could intervene was to get the young woman away from Chitty with a one-way plane ticket out of Cold Bay.

“We got her out because she was scared for her safety,” Stephanie DeVault said.

The couple said when Chitty used his influence to dismiss the young woman as troubled, many people believed him.

The incident with the young woman leaving town “completely tore the church apart,” former Cold Bay Mayor Candace Nielsen told the Anchorage Daily News.

Chitty, who had recently started a dockside ministry for a boating community in Boot Key Harbor, failed to attend a scheduled court hearing on April 1, and prosecutors said he fled the state in a white van with out-of-state plates.

The pastor was previously charged with sexual battery of a minor, lewd and lascivious conduct and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, the Monroe County Sheriff's Office said.

He was first reported by an anonymous caller who overheard the teenager telling an adult that she had been raped.

"The caller said the girl and her grandmother had boarded a dinghy and headed out into the harbor. As deputies attempted to find the victim, communications officers received a second call from the suspect, Monte Chitty, who is the pastor at the First Baptist Church in Marathon," the release said.

"Chitty said he believed he was about to be accused of something and he wanted to get ahead of it. He said a young girl at his church had been drinking and had passed out on a couch in the library of the church. He said he helped her to lie down on the couch but did not touch her after that."

Police contacted the teenager on a boat where she lives, and she told them that the pastor gave her alcohol, which might have been "spiked."

"She said she immediately began to feel weak and lost consciousness. She said when she woke up, she found Chitty sexually molesting her," the release said.

Investigators later found text messages between the teenager and the pastor where he "made reference to having sexual relations with the girl while she was impaired."