Crying in the Choir Was Misunderstood

Part of the Testimony & Affidavit Series — Survivor Records of Faith, Deliverance, and Justice

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DALLAS, TX —Stonebriar Church Choir member Victoria Cameron was removed from the choir for crying while singing on December 23, 2018.

Why was she crying?

She had just seen a child trafficked from the Stonebriar Church lobby, just two days before Christmas, by a man who referred to as “David in the choir” and by a woman referred to as “Debbie from Wisconsin,” in previous articles by DCN.

“David in the choir” and “Debbie from Wisconsin” figured out she knew what they were doing, and threatened to traffic her if she told anyone about what she saw that day.

The day this happened, no one asked her what was wrong or why she was crying. Instead, a group of people from the church got upset with her about it when they reviewed videos of the church’s Dec 23rd Christmas service, months later in March, right after St. Patrick’s Day.

They turned it into a really big issue.

“It makes me upset that our pastors didn’t care to try to find out why she was crying so much that day, and we have a church and a ministry built on family values,” said Tonya Wright.

“If these tears had been probed way back when this happened, we would have found out that child trafficking was happening at our church way back in 2018. Maybe we could have done something about it,” said Sam Walters.

DCN reporters, talked to Stonebriar Church Choir members who witnessed the conversation that happened when Stonebriar Church Choir directors Don McMinn and Francey Kelso removed Cameron from the choir.

The choir members we spoke with agreed to discuss the issue with us because they said they cared about what happened, and they wanted to help fix what they saw as a misunderstanding that happened in the choir. They also said they didn’t want their names used, which we are respecting for the purposes of this article.

McMinn didn’t see Cameron crying in the choir the day it happened, as he was leading the church congregation in singing holiday hymns. Neither did Kelso, as she was also singing in the choir that day, just a couple rows behind Cameron.

The issue was brought up by a church staff member three months later after the church received complaints about it, which were discussed with Cameron after a choir rehearsal on March 21, 2019.

These choir members explained that it looked like McMinn and Kelso were handling the issue as they were advised to handle it by the church staff member that discussed the matter with them, and that they were not aware of this issue until it was brought to their attention.

They said McMinn and Kelso had a discussion with Cameron about the continuation of her involvement in the choir, whether she would continue to be a part of the choir or not.

They said that McMinn explained that a church staff member had requested for them to talk to her about this issue, because the complaints they received about her crying while singing weren’t in regards to her having just a few tears that you can discreetly wipe away. The way Cameron cried that day was noticeable to a lot of people. She had a few moments where she started shaking and found it hard to stand.

They explained that members of their audience who were big tithers had contacted the church to complain about how she ruined the Dec 23rd Christmas service video, and how they couldn’t share it with their friends and relatives overseas because of it.

“I noticed the look on her face and thought to myself that I have seen the same look on her face on the faces of men I served with in Vietnam when they thought they were going to die,” said Frank Jenkins, United States marines military veteran.

That look on her face told me everything I need to know about what happened that day,” said Jenkins.

“I didn’t think it really could have been what I thought it was when I saw it, but now I know I was right,” said Jenkins.

We spoke to a church staff member who agreed to discuss the issue and the nature of the complaints that were received. He agreed to talk with us about the issue, but asked for us not to mention him by name. He explained that the people who were complaining were saying that nobody wanted to look at the video of the Christmas service because you couldn’t look at it without seeing her cry.

The complaints stated that Cameron brought public embarrassment to the church for the way she conducted herself. Others allegedly stated that they were withholding their donations because of the way they said she ruined this video.

They wanted the church to understand how bad this video made them look as an organization.

The church staff member DCN spoke with explained that the way the church staff member who fielded the complaints decided to handle the issue to get the complaints to stop, is that he hired a cameraman to recut the video of the service to get as much of Cameron’s crying out of the video as possible.

He explained there was a cost involved in paying the cameraman to re-edit the video.

He stated that the church staff member who handled the issue expected her to pay back this cost to the church, due to the fact the church had to pay an unnecessary expense to fix the video of the service, because of complaints that were made about her.

He further explained that the church staff member who handled the issue, referenced a clause in the participation agreement that she signed to be a part of the choir to advise that Cameron be put on a leave of absence from her volunteer position.

He made it a mandatory requirement for her to pay the bill for recutting the video, which was a $2000 bill, before she returned to the choir.

This is a link to the choir’s handbook, and we didn’t see anything in it about fines or mandatory leaves of absences. https://www.stonebriar.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Sanctuary-Choir-Handbook.pdf

When the choir directors discussed the issue of the complaints and the video with Cameron, she was polite and told them she would not be paying this bill.

The choir members we spoke with said it looked like the choir directors felt bad that they had to talk to her about this. They heard them tell her that no one had really noticed this or thought there was a problem until the complaints started happening.

“It bothers me as a Christian that Victoria was told that she was bad for crying, and that it was bad for the church’s image that she cried like that,” said Ben Adams. “That’s the time to reach out and love a person. I want to see our church reach out to Victoria and fix what happened.”

Cameron said about the day she cried while singing in the choir,

“I started thinking about the words I was singing about God, and my heart responded to what I was singing and started asking him for help while I was singing, just in my heart, underneath the words I was singing, and I just started crying because I couldn’t handle the thought of falling back into the hands of traffickers. All of that emotion just hit me at once, and I didn’t expect that to happen.”

Cameron is the daughter of a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. She had been the victim of a domestic violence situation involving her estranged former husband, and had started attending the church at the request of her father-in-law to reconnect with his son and try to mend and heal the marriage, which was unsuccessful and a source of great pain.

On top of that, while she was visiting Stonebriar church, she was micromanaging dollars and struggling to make ends meet.

Yet, the church wanted her to pay a $2000 bill because she cried during a service.

Were they trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip?

The bottom line about this issue, is that it was grossly mishandled.

“Church is the place to go to talk to God, and cry to him,” said Cameron, “So that’s what I did when I was at a church, and I was just singing in the choir in front of people on camera when it happened instead of sitting in a pew.”

The choir members said they watched as McMinn explained to Cameron that there is an expectation from the church’s international audience that the services are delivered to them in a professional manner. He told her his job was to manage and maintain the professional representation of the choir.

He told her they can’t have a problem like this in the choir and that it makes the church look bad and they have to uphold a standard of professionalism in the church’s music program.

He told her that the bottom line is that this is a business and they have to do what is in the best interest of the business.

They said that Cameron politely listened to him talk to her about this, and didn’t argue with him, but just listened to what he had to say.

One of the choir members said, “I have known Don McMinn for years. He is a good Christian man. The bottom line in this situation is that he did what was he was told to do by the church staff member who handled the complaints, and I think that if he had been able to get all of the information about this situation and talk to Victoria with the heart of the pastor I know he is, this whole thing would have been handled differently.”

Another choir member stated,

“I can’t handle that this girl felt rejected by us because of how this happened.”

Another choir member who said she also stood there and watched the conversation, said she heard Kelso tell Cameron that she should know better than to break down like that and cry like that during a public performance, and that Kelso asked her if she was in therapy.

Cameron told us she didn’t realize they saw a person who was singing in the church choir as a public performer, as she was an unpaid volunteer.

The choir members we spoke with said it was explained to Cameron that before the church staff member who reviewed the complaints advised that she be removed from her volunteer position in the choir, they had someone check to see if Cameron had ever tithed to the church.

When no one was able to find a donation record, they said if there WAS a donation record, it was too small and too insignificant to matter.

Then, they dismissed her from the choir.

The choir members we spoke with mentioned another situation that had happened with a different member of the choir, where there had been some complaints about that person, but didn’t discuss the details of it. They explained that when that happened, because that person donated a lot of money to the church, they talked to the person about the issue, and didn’t make an issue of it, and told that person that because they made a lot of donations to the church, and regularly tithed to the church, that they were going to just let that problem slide away. That person had been a member of the choir for a long time, and they just seemed to forgive them for whatever that was about.

However, in Cameron’s case, it looked like the church staff member who handled this issue, used the fact that they were unable to find a donation record for her against her. It looked like it caused them not to value her in the same way that the other choir member had been valued.

Another thing that factors into this equation, is that it was known that Cameron was micromanaging dollars and struggling to make ends meet when she was attending Stonebriar Church.

She wasn’t capable of making the kind of donations that this church staff member expected of her, and she certainly wasn’t able to pay this $2000 bill he suddenly required of her.

But, what about the donation she made of her time and talent by singing in the Stonebriar Church Choir? That was a year long commitment and she was never paid one cent for it.

Cameron had made financial contributions to other organizations such as World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization.

Why did the Stonebriar Church staff member who handled the video issue think she was obligated to make those donations to their organization?

One of the choir members said,

“Why does what money I give or choose not to give to the church determine if the church chooses to care about me or not?

I thought what I give and who I give it to was between myself and God. That’s what Pastor Swindoll preaches in his sermons.

Another choir member said,

“Why didn’t our pastors reach out and hug her and pray for her and show her the love of God when she was seen crying at his church? I expect them to show love and mercy. That’s the kind of church I thought I was following when I’ve been here every Sunday singing in this choir,” said one of the choir members.

Another choir member said,

“When Victoria was singing in the choir, I always looked at her like she was my granddaughter. You don’t tell your granddaughter she isn’t valuable to you because she didn’t give you her tithe. Shame on them. I know they know better.”

But there was another issue that was also brought up that day where a man in the choir also complained about Cameron for other reasons.

The man who complained is the person she identified as “David in the Choir” in other articles by DCN that discusses alleged child traffickers operating at the church.

“David in the choir” complained to the choir directors about Cameron.

He confided his complaints about Cameron with a fellow choir member who spoke with DCN about the matter.

He said David was furious with Cameron because “she ignored him and refused to speak to him and said she would not even give him the time of day.”

David made a really big deal about this and said Cameron needed to be dismissed because of the way she would not take responsibility for her actions towards him as a choir member.

These actions were defined as her refusal to associate with him and the ways he listed that he was sure she was blatantly ignoring him.

The choir members we spoke with explained that at the time this happened, they didn’t know what David was involved in, but thought that if she didn’t want to associate with him, that there was probably a good reason for it.

One of the choir members said she heard McMinn and Kelso address the complaint that was made about her by David, but thought the issue was more about the complaints that were being made about the video.

THEN when she found out that the church staff member who handled the issue about the video of the service was friends with David, it just looked like David called his friend and complained and had some kind of direct involvement in how this issue was handled.

Another member of the Stonebriar Church choir said,

“What I found out from talking to people about this issue is that David and some of his friends were the ones who stirred up all of these complaints against Victoria, and turned this into a big issue. They were the ones calling the church and complaining about this.

This is why nobody even thought about this incident that happened in December until three months later.

”I think what happened is that he manipulated a bunch of old people into supporting his side of what happened because he had something against her, and the way this was handled is proof of that, because I know this church in their right mind would have supported Victoria if they had all the information. I’d like to see them reach out to her and make this right,” said the choir member.

Another choir member said,

“I know this sounds petty, but… there was a smear campaign against Victoria that David put on social media.

I saw it and some of my friends saw it too.

David made a lot of posts on Facebook about people he was having fights and disagreements with, and he said bad things about them when he was venting to his friends about whatever he was upset about.

Then he went back to his posts and edited them and changed them so it looked like Victoria said those things.

She was oblivious to it… she didn’t even know a lot of the people he was making these posts about.”

“I know that there were some people who saw David’s edited posts and thought she was the one who said those things when she had nothing to do with it, and I know that was something Francey was upset about,” said the choir member.

Cameron explained that the day McMinn and Kelso talked to her, it looked like the way this incident was going to be handled had been decided before the conversation happened and that attempts to explain herself were futile.

Cameron also stated that she had a positive relationship with McMinn and Kelso when she sang in the Stonebriar Church Choir, and was surprised by what happened that day.

Kelso told her she could set up a meeting with Pastor Swindoll to talk to him about keeping her choir position if she wanted to, but that she would just get referred back to them because they are the ones who he put in the position of pastoral leadership over the choir.

She was told by Kelso that it can take up to three months to get an appointment with Pastor Swindoll, and that is what she is looking at if she wants to pursue this issue. Kelso also told her that they’ve worked for him for years and that they know as members of his staff how he handles things and that she most likely isn’t going to get a different outcome.

Cameron said she decided not to pursue the matter. She said that though she sang in the choir, she didn’t have a relationship with Pastor Swindoll. She said she had always thought of him as the pastor of her church as, “her friend at a distance,” but didn’t know him personally.

She said she felt overwhelmed and alarmed with how she was being attacked at the church, not just in regards to the controversy over her choir position, but about how she had been targeted by traffickers who had been operating in her church. All of this reached a boiling point when the choir directors sided with David, someone she suspected of trafficking, and it made her feel unsafe and uneasy. This resulted in her choosing to leave the choir and then the church.

“I think leaving was for the best, because I didn’t need to be going to a church where traffickers were working, said Cameron.

“I felt like I needed to remove myself from the line of fire and protect myself from being a target, and that God may have used this incident of how I was fired from the choir to help encourage me to do that,” said Cameron.

She explained she thought she should have be able to stay at the church, and that the people involved in trafficking should have been forced to leave. She thought it was imminent that they would be arrested any day, which was why she stayed at the church so long, but it kept not happening, which was a major cause of concern.

She said, “It should have been, I stay, they go. But church entertained them, shielded them, and protected them instead. It made me so nervous and so uneasy when I saw whose side they were on. I just couldn’t speak.”

“She shouldn’t have had to feel bullied out the door, and should have been supported by her church,” said Jim Tucker.

When DCN reporters contacted the church to find out more about this incident, Stonebriar Church reinforced their policy about how they do not speak publicly about incidents that happen at the church or in regards to a staff member or a member or volunteer of the church. They also explained that when complaints are received through phone or email, they are forwarded to the appropriate department.

“Really what I think happened is that David was involved in something and she knew about it, and he did something sneaky to get her out of the choir because he wanted to make her uncomfortable at the church, and he wanted to cause emotional pain and damage, and the issue with her crying in the Christmas video was the excuse he used. He knew she was the one that was talking to the officers about things she saw him doing that she suspected had something to do with trafficking, and this put him in the hot seat and he didn’t like being in the hot seat for what he was doing,” said Fred Martin.

”What David did to Victoria at Stonebriar Church with this choir position is a classic example of how traffickers manipulate people to turn them against victims and alienate them from social groups and resources of support,” said Benjamin Simmons, an advocate for victims of human trafficking.

“This can be used as a case study to help bring awareness to the issue.”

We reached out to Stonebriar Church for questions and comments when we worked on this, as well as the staff members that are mentioned in the article, and we were ignored. 

How Readers Can Respond: Next Steps For Those Who Wish To Engage Thoughtfully

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Support Victoria’s Restoration Fund

Learn more about how you can stand with Victoria: Standing With Victoria

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Read about The Trafficking Issue at Stonebriar Church

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Stonebriar Church in Frisco, TX

Stonebriar Community Church is an Evangelical traditional style church located in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex at 4801 Legendary Dr, Frisco, TX 75034. The pastor of Stonebriar Church at the time of this incident was founding pastor Chuck Swindoll, who retired in October 2024. Chuck Swindoll is an evangelical Christian pastor, author, educator, and radio preacher. He founded Insight for Living, and is chancellor emeritus at Dallas Theological Seminary. Jonathan Murphy is the current senior pastor of Stonebriar Church. The church website is: https://www.stonebriar.org

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