The former president of a now-shuttered, anti-LGBTQ organization was arrested Tuesday for seeking sex from an undercover deputy posing as a 14-year-old boy, according the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
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Alan Chambers, 54, of Winter Park, was booked in the Orange County Jail without bond on charges of soliciting a minor, transmitting material harmful to minors and unlawful use of a two-way communications device. An affidavit obtained from the Sheriff’s Office describes lewd text messages exchanged with the undercover deputy through the social media app Snapchat and later through text-messaging service Telegram.
Chambers led a “pray-away-the-gay” ministry until 2013 when he shut it down and apologized to those he said had been hurt by the organization.
From Feb. 10 through May 4, Chambers is accused of repeatedly seeking to meet with a teenager for sex, according to the affidavit. On Tuesday morning, detectives said they interviewed Chambers during a traffic stop on Aloma Avenue and Strathy Lane, where he confirmed the accounts he was messaging from were his but stopped the interview when he was asked about the conversations.
A Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said investigators are working to find out whether there are other victims. Chambers is slated to appear before a judge on Wednesday.
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Chambers once helmed the Orlando-based Exodus International as part of the so-called “ex-gay” movement and was a fervent proponent of conversion therapy for LGBTQ people. He also served as associate pastor at Calvary Assembly of God in Orlando until 2005.
He previously said he reached out to the ministry at 19 as he sought to “feel about women the way I felt about men.”
Exodus International closed its doors in 2013 after 37 years and 260 affiliated ministries across North America, with Chambers, a father of two, apologizing to the LGBTQ community for years of “undue suffering and at the hands of the organization and the [Christian] church as a whole.”
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