Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, one of the country’s largest and best-known evangelical congregations, doesn’t just aim to fix souls, it also fixes vehicles through what’s called the “C.A.R.S. Ministry.”
Vehicle owners in financial need can qualify for low-cost repairs through the program, which stands for Christian Automotive Repair Service and involves mechanics working in an auto shop on church property.
Donated vehicles are also accepted, fixed up and sold or given away, with eligibility for a freebie “based on but not limited to income level, intended use of vehicle and involvement at Willow,” according to a church website.
A man named Robert John Condon was working there in the 1990s when a girl, 15 or so at the time, was hired by the church to handle clerical tasks for the C.A.R.S. Ministry.
A resident of the northwest suburbs, she and her family attended Willow Creek, at the time run by the charismatic founding pastor Bill Hybels.
What started out as an exciting job — and somewhat challenging, as she was told she would have to learn to drive stick-shift vehicles — quickly turned dark, as Condon began allegedly grooming her over a number of months and eventually sexually abused her.
That’s according to a recent lawsuit the woman filed in Cook County court against Willow Creek, in what’s the latest in several troubling misconduct allegations involving the church over the last decade.
In 2017 and 2018, Willow Creek agreed to pay more than $3 million to resolve other lawsuits alleging another man, church volunteer Robert Sobczak Jr., molested special needs children at the church, according to court records, interviews and published accounts.
Church leaders were accused of ignoring red flags that could have prevented at least some of the sexual abuse.
Also in 2018, Hybels left his position amid accusations of sexual misconduct against women at the church, though he denied wrongdoing. He couldn’t be reached for comment. Nor could Condon.
Willow Creek leaders declined comment beyond a written statement that said: “Because this matter is now in litigation, Willow Creek Community Church is limited in what it can say publicly and will respond to specific claims through the appropriate legal channels. We continue to pray for truth, healing, and the well-being of all and remain deeply committed to the safety, dignity, and care of all who are part of our church community.”
The accuser in the new lawsuit, who is now an adult and asked to remain anonymous, said of Condon: “I was in the car alone a lot with Bob.”
She didn’t know it at the time, but she said Condon was saying and doing things that, in retrospect, were clearly designed to disarm her and normalize sexual advances.
“It started with comments he’d make, ‘You look so pretty today,’ ‘You have such a great laugh,’” she said. “It’s so slow you don’t realize what’s happening.”
“You’re also in this mind frame of men are up here, and women are down here, we’re subservient, we listen to what they say,” she added. At the time, she thought, “nobody would be there to hurt you because it’s a church.”
The place she worked, adjacent to the mechanic garage, “was very tiny, there wasn’t a lot of space in the office,” she said, adding it was often just her and Condon.
That part of the grounds was “very isolated.”
Because she was in high school, she usually was there only on weekends. In summer she was there more often, and at times she worked after classes.
“I handled a lot of the paperwork,” she said. “If a donation was going to happen, there was handling the titles and making sure all the paperwork was in order. I did a lot of that. And there was the excitement of handing over a car to a family in need.”
The Willow Creek accuser recalled that while she was learning stick shift with Condon in the passenger seat, “there was touching of the knee.”
Once in the summer time, she was wearing a tank top with spaghetti straps, and he said, “You’re so pretty, I wish my wife was more like you.”
“I had no experience with men or anyone my age, so it was quite daunting to hear comments like, ‘I’ll bet you would like this in bed,’ or ‘I guess you’d be good at this.’”
He’d walk by and brush against her bottom, she said, adding it evolved into him touching her breasts over her shirt, then under. The final time this occurred, “we were in the office together and he was coming on to me, and I was trying to leave and he took my car keys and wouldn’t let me leave.”
“There was this threatening nature,” she recalled. “He was standing in the doorway.”
When she got out and got home she went to her room “totally hysterical.”
“Then he showed up to my house, and he demanded to see me,” she said. “My dad was at work. My mom said, ‘If you don’t leave, I’m going to call the cops.’ He wouldn’t tell her what was going on and eventually left.
“I didn’t give them a lot of information about what had happened … with the mind frame of how we grew up and how we were taught, it’s shameful to share something.”
But she said she told her parents enough they knew the basics.
Read the new lawsuit below
The lawsuit states between “approximately 1997 and 1998, Condon sexually harassed, sexually touched, sexually abused, and/or sexually assaulted Plaintiff, including touching her in a sexual manner while at Willow Creek Church” without “any consent.”
The accuser said her parents had “gone to someone else they knew in the church, he was an elder, and they told him what they thought had happened. I really think my parents trusted that, they were so indoctrinated into that.”
She believes Condon told someone, too — Willow Creek leaders, though it’s unclear whether Hybels was among them. She said she knows this because during one service, she heard her name mentioned by the pastor, who handed the microphone to Condon, who was also in attendance.
“They gave him a platform … he stood up, and he never denied what he did, he admitted what he’d done,” she said. “It fell to the excuse that he’s a sex addict, and he was repenting and he was very sorry that he did this to me, and they announced during that time that he was going to be put on leave to get some therapy, treatment, whatever, and he’d be on that leave for a year.” It’s unclear if a video of that service exists.
“They let him have his job back” well before then, she said. “I was never spoken to, my parents were never spoken to.”
“I was basically never acknowledged.”
Her lawsuit says: “Upon information and belief, Willow Creek did not report Condon’s conduct toward Plaintiff to law-enforcement or child-protection authorities” even though she was a minor.
South Barrington police could find no records involving abuse allegations against Condon from that period, though the department is allowed to destroy certain older documents.
Clergy in Illinois were not considered to be mandatory reporters for sexual abuse of a minor until 2002. That’s the year the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” series rocked the Catholic church by detailing years of sexual abuse by priests and subsequent cover-ups by leaders in New England — something that’s since been proven to be a national scandal.
More recently, evangelical congregations have had to answer for similar accusations of misconduct with their ministers and volunteers, including in the Chicago region. In another pending lawsuit, a man said he was molested as a boy at the Chapelstreet Church based in far west suburban Geneva.
The Chapelstreet suit claims a pastor at the megachurch was told the child was abused by a youth leader, but nothing was done and another child was then molested.
The Willow Creek suit explains how its accuser’s accusations surfaced: “Prior to August 2024, the memories of the childhood sexual abuse and the injury caused by Condon were psychologically repressed and suppressed by reason of the great pain and anguish created by the abuse.”
“The repression of these memories, the psychological effects that caused her to repress, block out, and not be aware of them, until such time as they returned to her in August 2024, was also the direct result of the nature of the sexual trauma committed by Condon when she was a child.”
As an adult, she said she came forward to the church, seeking an acknowledgment of what she believes was their failed responsibility to keep her safe — leaving her alone with an alleged sex predator, never apologizing, then letting him return to the fold.
Her Chicago attorney, Kevin Golden, said: “The church refused to do that and dug in,” so he filed the suit, which is seeking monetary damages of more than $50,000.