Sex Arrest Shocks Man’s Friends

Bob Rohdenburg was not prepared for what he heard over the phone Saturday night.

His longtime friend Jeff Devore, an Orange County pastor, calmly told Rohdenburg that FBI agents were searching Devore’s Fullerton apartment and had arrested him on suspicion of trafficking in child pornography.

Rohdenburg and others who know Devore, 53, expressed shock Tuesday over his arrest. Calling him “creative” “quiet” and “well-liked,” they said there had been no indication he was involved in child pornography.

“This has just come completely out of the blue,” said Rick Marshall, head pastor at Brea Congregational Church, which recently hired Devore. “You can imagine how devastating it is.”

After attending services at the 120-member Brea congregation for eight years, Devore became an assistant pastor last month, Marshall said. Considering Devore’s musical talents, Marshall said, he had hoped his new assistant would develop youth programs for the church, a branch of the liberal United Church of Christ.

Marshall said there had been no indications that Devore had abused any of the congregation’s minors. Devore has been suspended from the church staff.

On Saturday, Devore was one of eight men arrested in Southern California as part of a sting operation. The seven others are accused of seeking sex with boys; they were arrested in California after allegedly arranging a trip to Mexico for sexual rendezvous with boys there.

Devore is not suspected of seeking to join the others for the Mexico trip. But 15 months ago, say court documents, he befriended an undercover FBI agent at a convention of the North American Man Boy Love Assn., which promotes sexual relations between men and boys.

The documents state that Devore told the federal agent about his extensive computer archive of child pornography and about sexual relationships he had had with teenage boys.

In December 2004, the documents state, Devore gave the official a compact disc filled with child pornography and described having sex over the Internet with an 11-year-old boy. Earlier, he had allegedly described bringing a 16-year-old boy to a San Diego motel for sex.

The documents also state that in 2003 he voluntarily sought counseling in a program for sex addicts but later quit because he believed the group did not condone his homosexuality.

Rohdenburg and Rabbi Lawrence Goldmark, who have known Devore since the late 1980s when he was hired as pastor at a La Mirada church, recalled his struggle with his homosexuality. In 1996, they said, Devore tearfully announced his sexual orientation to a group of clergy. Shortly afterward, they said, he divorced his wife, with whom he had three children, and quit his pastor position.