(Photo via Orange County Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook)
ORLANDO | A former leader of an Orlando-based Exodus ministry that claimed for years it could cure homosexuality has been arrested in an underage sex sting, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
Alan Manning Chambers, 54, was arrested May 19 in Winter Park. Chambers is charged with solicitation of a minor via computer, transmitting harmful material to a minor and unlawful use of a two-way communication device, according to the arrest affidavit.
He was booked into the Orange County Jail with no bond listed.
Investigators said an undercover detective operating a Snapchat account began communicating with a user in February of this year. According to the affidavit, the detective identified himself as a 14-year-old boy living in Orlando.
The user identified himself as a 50-year-old man named “John David,” and told the undercover detective he lived in Orlando and later moved the conversation to text messages and Telegram, investigators said. Chambers would allegedly send sexually explicit language and pictures to the detective while attempting to arrange a meetup. Chambers repeatedly expressed concerns over getting in trouble and occasionally deleted the chats, the affidavit states.
According to the affidavit, Chambers told investigators he works at John Craig Clothiers in Winter Park and lives with his wife and two children.
Chambers is the former leader of Exodus International, an Orlando-based organization that promoted so-called conversion therapy and claimed for years that people could change their sexual orientation. Chambers apologized to the LGBTQ+ community and announced Exodus International would shut down in 2013.
At the time, Chambers said he was sorry for the pain the organization had caused and acknowledged that he had masked his own attraction to men. Chambers said in 2013 that he was “very, very sorry” for the group’s role in that pain.
Anyone with information about any additional victims should call the agency’s non-emergency line at 407-836-4357, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook.
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