Predators Gotta Pre-Date — or Dave Gass and the sordid saga
By: Relief Belief
Tags: Betrayal, Pastor, Dave Gass, Abuse, Atheism

Dave Gass erstwhile pastor, cheater and ‘Daddy’ BDSM “trainer” to apparent “teens”

Update: Recovering From Religion has banned Dave Gass from their spaces and leadership roles with their organization.

[You can find Relief Belief on twitter here. Thanks for reading.]

This is meant to be a thumbnail sketch, updated to the end of 2020, of the events surrounding Dave Gass the pastor-turned-atheist-turned-cheater-turned-therapist-wannabe-turned-… you get the idea. All judgements here the considered opinion of the author, and some or all may be wrong in some way or all ways. Make up your own mind. For more in depth reporting, check the bottom of this article for references.

April 30th, 2019: Dave, using a twitter account with his real name and drawn portrait of his face, comes out as a sometime “mega church” pastor that has left the church and the faith.

And this is important: he gives the impression that he leaves — and he tells you he was kind of an important guy — as a matter of his choice, a matter of conscience and health. This is the difference between an atheist hero walking out with his head held high, and a despised pathetic figure kicked out of his hiding place into the light. Dave gets invited to and goes on some podcasts, enjoying adulation. He’s building a following pretty fast.

A short while later, more information emerges. People in the church let it be known that Dave isn’t known to be a mega church anything, that he was having an ongoing affair with a woman who belonged to the church he pastored, and that his exit was precipitated by being caught and confronted as a cheater. Dave protects his account, goes silent, ignores questions, including from the author.

Oh, there were also some claims the gist of which is that he ran up credit card debt his wife didn’t know about, ran off leaving her without support — including the kids. How much of that is true and to what degree is hard to ascertain. At some point, Dave deletes his account and retreats back into the shadows, refusing to substantively address anything. It’s worth noting that reportedly Dave was telling people he did this “because he was doxxed” but this seems like an awfully thin excuse considering he used his real name and likeness and was trying to build a following, going on podcasts? I believe at this point in history Dave had deleted his account, but further accusations come to light:

So ends Chapter 1 of the liar pastor who lies.

Chapter 2 begins almost exactly a year later, in April of 2020. The author encounters a new account that talks like the old one. As it turns out another intrepid citizen unbeknownst to the author [Anna, from No Eden Elsewhere, cited below] had noted his re-emergence and asked him about it, only to be ignored. Under the impression this is the first time he’ll be questioned, I put the question to Dave [having yet not admitted who he is, but nevertheless doing his atheist-anthem build-a-following schtick.] He ignores the question, but 2 minutes later starts a new ‘Story time’ thread admitting he’s come out before. Then seemingly lies quite baldfacedly that the questioning tweet was not the prompting factor. This likely dishonesty — and such a pointless, reflexive dishonesty — was food for much thought on the part of the author.

It should be noted here that Dave was now operating under his apparently legally changed name, of which the author will only provide the first: “Jack”. Although this attempt at anonymity seems a little incongruous with the fact he starts up a YouTube channel talking about dating. A theme that runs through Dave’s interactions is that he is as thirsty as a man can be. If your profile picture is that of a pretty woman, all the better if you’re showing yourself to be vulnerable, you can expect Dave to pop up in your DM’s.

Some time after this point, Dave is waxing eloquent about how relationships end and I confront him with the fact that he is giving the impression he is speaking about his own relationship, which as we have seen, he’s previously lied about. He claims these are the lies of his ex-wife. When confronted with the youth group impropriety instead of addressing the accusation, he blocks me. This seems like it is probably an admission of guilt, following Dave’s pattern of ignoring, blocking, then re-imagining and massaging a new truth to be presented later. If true, this would be another serious breach of using his authority to sexually or romantically take advantage of women under his care.

Dave continues to seek out positions of authority, with the spine-tingling addition of it being vulnerable women in therapy-ish contexts. Does this seem like a good idea, with someone who has never owned up or dealt with the fact that he uses authority to manipulate and take advantage of those under his care?

Some weeks later, Dave deletes his account for the 2nd time and retreats into the shadows. Too many questions, not enough answers. So ends Chapter 2.

Chapter 3: Everything that happens, happens again.

In going around up and down on the earth (bonus points if you get the reference) the author encounters this disturbing — yet familiar visage and schtick. Here’s Dave inserting himself into religious-trauma therapy-ish circles, again, with the vestiges of some authority. He is listed as “Co-organizer” for Recovering From Religion support group meetings as you can see:

In the opinion of the author — knowing really nothing about therapists except that they are unregulated in many places this seems like putting the Wolf in charge of the Sheep. Spoiler, for the moment at least, Dave is not listed as a “co-organizer” anymore, however there’s been no statement unofficial or official on this topic. There is, however the evidence that seems to have precipitated that change. Enter, Dave’s BDSM tumblr blog where he speaks about having sex with teenagers, “18 year olds”, approaching “blushing college girls”, “brainwashing” and “forcing” teenagers to endure painful anal sex whether they “fight” or not. Sorry for what is not fantastic formatting here. Note the archive links, they blend in.

Dave Gass BDSM tumblr blog where he muses about forcing teenagers into painful anal sex

It should be noted that contemporaneously with these events, Dave was changing the name and URL of his blog, and creating a backup since he had blogs removed from Tumblr at least twice before. This is an archive of the newly renamed blog: [Of which there is quite a few other urls stored if one is conversant with archive.is, the Wayback Machine, and uses the included URL’s in the images up above. An exercise left to the technical reader.]

Now, it’s a complicated line to draw between what’s kink and what’s kink mixed with abuse. That is an exercise left to the reader. However what is clear here is an established pattern of dishonesty and abuse of authority, to which this seeming penchant for very young women seems to fit like a glove. And, by the way, it’s apparently encouraged for them to keep their sexual escapades with Dave a secret:

What has the atheist community done about this? Virtually nothing. The author has contacted several atheist organizations and many prominent atheists and most or all have remained silent. Is this a case of a community always has a difficult time taking out it’s own trash? A case where professionals in seeming authority-ish positions don’t want to be embarrassed? There is only so much one can do, it would seem. But this is the right thing.

Thank you for reading.

Update: Literally at press time, this came through from Recovering From Religion. I commend them for taking action:

Recovering From Religion bans Dave Gass

Catching you up on the details:

For a past overview of Dave Gass’ first twitter coming-out from the Christian Post. An article detailing much of what transpired at Dave’s second repackaging and coming-out from Anna at No Eden Elsewhere. A twitter thread by Relief Belief, your author, detailing further err details not covered in this article: here.

Taking the lonely road less traveled.