LEAWOOD, Kan. – The sex offender whose alleged crimes at the Church of the Resurrection’s camp in Linn County, now a focal point in the heated U.S. Senate campaign of church leader Adam Hamilton, went on to offend against other children – culminating in two prosecutions and one conviction before a final incident that ended in his apparent suicide.
Scott Preston Moore, who was permitted to return to a church youth camp in 2006 despite allegations of inappropriate sexual touching the previous year, was later prosecuted in Kansas and Massachusetts for offenses involving teenage boys.
In Kansas, Moore was convicted in 2013 of misdemeanor sexual battery involving a 16-year-old boy at his Overland Park home in 2010. He received the maximum one-year jail sentence and was required to register as a sex offender.
In Massachusetts, Moore was charged in 2011 in another case involving a teenager. That prosecution ended without a conviction after jurors failed to reach a verdict.
It’s not immediately known how many additional victims Moore may have had outside of the court actions, after Hamilton and other camp staff chose to initially handle claims at the camp internally rather than involving law enforcement. The criminal cases have renewed scrutiny of Hamilton over how his church handled allegations against Moore years before the conviction.
According to court records,, two teenage boys reported inappropriate sexual touching during a November 2005 retreat in Linn County sponsored by Church of the Resurrection, which Hamilton founded and continues to lead. One 15-year-old reported that a man entered his sleeping quarters and touched his genitals. Another boy, 14, reported that someone reached inside his sleeping bag.
Rather than immediately report the allegations to law enforcement or child protective services, church officials said thery conducted their own investigation. The boys provided detailed accounts but when pressed could not positively identify Moore because their encounters occurred in darkness. Church investigators consequently concluded they could not establish the perpetrator’s identity.
A Kansas appellate court later characterized camp officials as having been dismissive of the boys’ complaints.
Despite the accusations, Moore returned to the church’s youth retreat in November 2006 as a cabin leader. Further reports surfaced that Moore had entered campers’ sleeping quarters at night, although court records do not establish additional sexual touching during that year’s retreat.
Church officials then contacted the Linn County Sheriff’s Office, reporting allegations from both 2005 and 2006. County prosecutors declined to file charges, and the church barred Moore from further involvement with children and vulnerable adults.
The failure to report the original allegations immediately — and the decision permitting Moore to return the following year — has become a prominent issue during the 2026 Senate campaign. Hamilton has since said the church mishandled the situation.
During an Oct. 21 debate, moderator John Holt questioned Hamilton about why he had not personally overridden the church’s internal-investigation procedure and ensured that police were contacted in 2005. Hamilton acknowledged that authorities should have been notified immediately and admitted failing to verify that Moore would not return to camp the following year.
“I did not sign off on him going back. I should have checked to make sure that he wasn’t going back,” Hamilton said. “That was a mistake on my part.”
Years following the camp incidents, Kansas court records show a criminal prosecution stemmed from an incident in 2010 when Moore was accused of inappropriately touching his son’s 16-year-old friend during a sleepover at Moore’s home. Testimony concerning the earlier church retreat allegations was introduced during the proceedings that resulted in Moore’s 2013 conviction.
The separate Massachusetts case arose in 2011. Moore was prosecuted on a similar sexual misconduct charge, but the jury could not reach a verdict.
Another allegation surfaced in 2010 when an adult man told Hamilton that Moore had sexually abused him in 1979, when the man was approximately 5 years old. According to court records, Hamilton encouraged him to contact law enforcement, although the statute of limitations prevented prosecution of that decades-old allegation. There’s no record of Hamilton himself making a report of any kind on the man’s allegation.
Hamilton’s campaign has defended the church’s actions after the second retreat, emphasizing that officials contacted authorities in 2006 and prohibited Moore from working with children.
Moore died in 2015 after police reportedly found him partially undressed in the backseat of a vehicle with a teenage boy. He fled that encounter and was discovered unconscious several hours later at a relative’s residence. The publicly available reporting does not establish an official cause of death, though In an October 2026 interview, Jason Gant, a former youth ministry director at Adam Hamilton’s Church of the Resurrection, told the New York Post Moore “took his life.”
