The Case of Clay Hopkins

Warning: This article contains graphic text and images

Background

On June 23rd, 2022, Lawrence Clay Hopkins (hereafter "Clay") was arrested in Montgomery County for Online Solicitation of a Minor. At the time of his arrest, he was an Associate Pastor at Rollingbrook Fellowship Church in Baytown. Prior to that, he was an associate pastor at First Baptist Church in College Station, an associate pastor at Lakeside Baptist Church in Dallas, a youth pastor at First Baptist Church in Midlothian, a youth pastor in Midland, and a youth pastor in Orlando, Florida.

Clay was my youth pastor growing up, so learning of his arrest absolutely gutted me. I felt betrayed, disgusted, and saddened. My mind was flooded with questions that the news reports couldn't answer. Was he a monster? Did he ever actually believe the things he taught me, or was it just a ploy to gain access to young girls? Did he prey on any of my classmates? During the years it took for the wheels of justice to turn, I was left with no answers.

For this reason, I submitted FOIA requests to several departments in Montgomery County to collect all the information I could. I firmly believe every one of his former students should have the same opportunity to hear the facts of the case and perhaps find some closure. I scoured through all the documents and hours of video footage and have done my best to compile it into a succinct summary. All the information below is from public records, which you can find attached at the bottom of this page.

The Sting

In July of 2021, Detective Jerry Serratt of Montgomery County was running an undercover account on the messaging app Kik. His persona was a 13 year old girl that we'll call Sofia. On July 8, 2021 at 4:10 pm, after finding Sofia in a group chat on Kik, Clay messaged her privately, "hey how's it goin?"

On September 15, 2021, at 9:42 am, Clay struck up a conversation with Sofia.

The full message transcripts are not subject to open records requests, so I'm forced to rely on what is provided in the offense report by the detective. As a result, some messages are paraphrased and others are missing

Clay

*informs Sofia he is 54 years old*

Sofia

*tells Clay she is 13*

Clay

*asks to see a picture of Sofia*

Sofia

*sends an undercover image of herself*

Clay

Clay

Let's just say this might go in a different direction if you were 18

Clay

I would def be interested

The detective continued communications with Hopkins. In October of 2021, Clay affirmed multiple times that he was aware of the girl's age. Saying "But you're 13 and full of life!!" and "9th grade and only 13?? Impressive." He also asked Sofia for another picture of herself.

On April 12, 2022, Clay and Sofia were having another private DM conversation.

The next day, on April 13th, they continued their conversation

Further along in the conversation that day, they continued:

On June 22nd, 2022, the day before his arrest, Hopkins messaged the girl on Kik and had the following exchange

Clay

Hey girl. HRU?

Sofia

*undisclosed*

Clay

Not bad. Just working. How's the summer? Bored yet?

Sofia

Always bored

Clay

What should we do about it?

Sofia

Im open yo suggestiond

Clay

You're in Conroe right?

Sofia

*advises him that she's watching the aunt's house in The Woodlands for several days while the aunt is out of town*

Clay

Ah gotcha. By yourself??

Sofia

*answers that she is by herself*

Clay

Nice

Clay

14?

Sofia

Yes

Clay

Been a good girl?? Or naughty?

Clay

You'd let me fuck you?

Clay

Bet you are tight.

Clay

Would you climb on my lap back there?

Clay

Hey how's Thursday?

Clay

Should I come over? Lol.

Clay

When does you aunt get home

Clay

Might head up that way tho.

Sofia

Annnnd whaaa we going to doooooi

Clay

Anything you want

Sofia

Ohhhhh what is on you prevy mind

Clay

Let you suck me

Clay

Or you can ride me

Clay

*states that he is fixed and could not get her pregnant*

Clay

Clay

*asks if he would be picking her up at the Aunt's house and if the she would walk to a bowling alley. He asks what she will be wearing*

Clay

If shorts are loose enough you don't even have to take them all the way off

Clay

I can just slide up the leg and pull panties over to side

The Arrest

On June 23rd, 2022, around 6:40 pm, Clay was stopped by at least 4 police vehicles in the parking lot of Woodlands Bowlero, the bowling alley where he was expecting to pick up Sofia. He was ordered out of his car with several officers' guns aimed at him. He complied and was handcuffed and placed into the police car with no incident. While being arrested, he asked several times what was going on and was told that the detective would explain everything once they got to his office.

The Interrogation

Clay was brought to the police station where he was interviewed by Detective Jerry Serratt and who I believe to be Investigator Pamela Minchew. In this interview, Clay confessed to speaking to 3 underage girls on Kik, including Sofia, but he denied ever meeting up with a minor before that day. Serratt and Minchew did an excellent job of convincing Clay they were on his side and just wanted to get things sorted out. This led Clay to not only waive his 5th amendment right and talk to them, but to sign a form allowing the police to perform a forensic download of both his cell phone and his laptop and to take full control of his social media accounts. After their conversation, they convinced Clay to again waive his 5th amendment rights and submit to a polygraph test. The polygraph interview lasted almost 3 hours and consisted of thoroughly examining every bit of Clay's sexual history. The interview doesn't make any attempt to go in chronological order, but I've done my best to piece it together into a coherent timeline. Whether or not Clay is to be believed, this is his story, according to him:

Around 2003 or 2004, Clay's wife caught him in a sexual internet chatroom on Yahoo Chat called "Married and Flirting." They moved past this as Clay built back trust and several years passed by with Clay remaining on his best behavior. There are some vague mentions of a porn problem that his wife was aware of, but it's unclear when that took place.

While Clay was the youth pastor in Midlothian, there were a couple older students that he was attracted to and that he thought about while masturbating. One was 16 or 17, the other had just graduated and was no longer underage. For the former, he describes a time where he hugged her in the church while she was in distress, in full view of others, and later revisited the memory in a sexual manner. The other student "looked good in a bikini" on a mission trip to Hawaii.

Around 2013, while living in the Dallas area, he met a woman who was a few years younger than him on a chat app. They had an affair that lasted a couple years. Clay said this was his first time to experience things like oral sex or multiple positions, and this essentially opened the floodgates of him looking outside his marriage for sexual gratification. Around this time, when Clay was 46 years old, he met a woman that was 23 years of age on a website called FetLife. They met roughly 5 times and had a sexual relationship that Clay described as "dominant/submissive."

Clay and his wife moved to the College Station area where Clay served as Associate Pastor for a First Baptist Church for roughly 5 years. While there, Clay began looking on Craigslist for sex. He would eventually meet a married couple and have sex with the wife with the husband watching and sometimes participate in threesomes with both of them. Clay was introduced to the Kik messaging app by this couple, which would become his app of choice for daily inappropriate chats in groups and with individuals, as well as meeting people for sex. Clay mentions meeting another couple from Craigslist as well.

Around 18 months before his arrest, Clay moved to Baytown. Before his wife also moved, he met with a woman in her 40s from Kik and they had sex at his home. Clay also had sex with a 29-year old woman in Baytown he met from Kik. He described these women as "a pretty big black woman and a pretty big latina." (The context of this was establishing that he wasn't targeting women that looked like underage girls.) Clay estimates that he had sent nudes of himself to other people 2 or 3 times a week over the preceding 4 or 5 years.

He acknowledged that he has had sexually explicit conversations with three 14-year old girls on Kik (one of which was the undercover officer) since moving to Baytown. He maintained that those were the only 3 minors he's ever had sexual conversations with, although he admitted to being in various "teen" groups on Kik.

He said he's never had any sexual contact with a minor, his arrest was the first time he ever tried to meet with a minor for sex, and he denies ever watching child pornography. He was also adamant that he's never had a sexual or inappropriate relationship with anybody at any church he's worked at, minor or otherwise. He also denies ever sending or receiving nude photos with a minor, although he acknowledged that he did send a clothed picture of his penis to the undercover officer, as seen above.

He gave the police complete access to his Kik account and to forensic downloads of his phone and his laptop. If they found evidence conflicting with those denials, they didn't mention it anywhere in the documents released to me. One would assume they would've pursued additional charges had they found any evidence of child pornography.

Outside of the timeline, here are a few points that stood out to me from his interviews:

• Over the course of the 4 or 5 years that he was using Kik, Clay would install the app when leaving the house and uninstall it when he got home, every single day
• Clay displayed a curiosity for "daddy/daughter" groups on Kik. According to him, that's a dominant/submissive relationship wherein the "dom" takes on a nurturing role and encourages the "sub" to see herself for what he sees her as. It's unclear if any of Clay's affairs had this dynamic
• Clay told the polygraph administrator that he didn't bring condoms that day "probably because in the back of my mind I knew I wasn't gonna go through with it." However, the detectives state that he told the girl he didn't need condoms because he was fixed and couldn't get her pregnant
• He says he's never used a prostitute, but that Kik is full of them
• He says he loves his wife and they have a great relationship, but he's been unhappy with their sex life for a long time
• When asked if he's "fishing" in Kik teen rooms, Clay responds "Yeah..... Fishing for connection"
• He says he's missed the excitement of his previous affairs

Aftermath

On June 24th 2022, the day after his arrest, Clay posted a $30,000 bond and was set to return to court on July 11th. Due to an enormous case backlog, his court date would ultimately be postponed by the court 8 times. He was finally brought to court on March 18th, 2024, nearly 2 years after his arrest.

Clay pleaded guilty to the charge of Online Solicitation of a Minor and was sentenced to 120 hours of community service, 90 days in county jail and eight years of probation. His jail sentence ended on June 20, 2024. He is also now required to register as a sex offender. The terms of his probation include:

• Avoid injurious or vicious habits
• Not use alcohol or controlled substances
• Never leave Texas without first obtaining permission
• Report to his probation officer monthly
• Permit his probation officer to visit him at his home
• Not use or possess any substance that creates a high, low, or mood-altering or mental effect
• Submit to regular drug and alcohol tests and pay the associated costs
• Register with local police departments in any area he begins to live, work, visit, or attend school
• Successfully complete a program designed for sexual offenders
• Submit to a polygraph test at least once every 6 months for the duration of his probation
• No contact with anyone under the age of 18
• Not go within 1000 feet of anywhere children commonly gather
• Not possess or use any material that is obscene, pornographic, or sexually oriented. This includes magazines as well as digital mediums
• Not use any device to access or view pornography
• Submit to unannounced searches of all devices and hard drives
• Not possess any obscene device designed for sexual gratification (sex toys)
• Submit to periodic and random searches of his home to search for obscene material
• Avoid sexually oriented businesses like adult-only book stores, topless clubs, sexually oriented novelty shops, and massage parlors
• Not possess any firearm
• Not use the internet to access obscene materials
• Not use any social networking sites
• Allow the installation of a monitoring software on his computer
• Not possess any unapproved or unmonitored internet devices
• Not use the internet for any purpose but work and counseling

According to court documents, Clay and his wife stopped living together "on or about June 27, 2022," just 3 days after he posted bond. She officially filed for divorce 2 months later, after 32 years of marriage.

Clay moved into the spare bedroom of a couple that attended the church in Baytown for which he was the associate pastor. According to the couple, he became part of their family and immersed himself in Bible studies, counseling, an intervention program, and daily sponsored meetings.

In July, Clay got a job working for a local automotive shop owned by an Egyptian immigrant. His boss wrote him a character reference that was submitted to the court, stating that Clay was very upfront and honest about his situation and that they had become good friends despite different backgrounds and religious beliefs. (You can find the entire collection of character references attached at the bottom of the page.)

In September of 2022, Clay attended the Gateway to Freedom Workshop, a workshop intended to help men with sex addictions. He would subsequently receive private counseling from an on-site counselor at the workshop, Maurice Crane. Maurice also wrote a character reference for Clay explaining how, in his opinion, Clay's sex addiction led to his increasingly risky sexual behavior. He describes Clay as a "very faithful client," who always completes assignments and attends his sessions.

On September 23, 2024, Clay took a scheduled polygraph test as required by his probation conditions. It was determined in this interview that Clay had violated his probation terms in 3 ways:

• Have no contact with persons 17 years of age or younger: Clay admitted to the examiner that he visited his employer's residence and his 2 nephews, aged 4 and 7, were present
• Do not go in or within 1000 feet of premises where children commonly gather: Clay admitted to the examiner that he ate at Chick-Fil-A with his mother one time
• Do not go in or within 1000 feet of premises where children commonly gather: Clay admitted that he picked up food near a child safety zone

On the following October 29th, an order was put out for Clay's arrest due to his probation violations and he was brought to the court on November 5th. There is also a document from a judge ordering his release from jail effective December 3rd, so I believe he served 1 month in jail for his probation violations.

Files

Below you will find all the relevant documents and materials that I was able to find. I've made my best attempt to redact any information that could identify innocent bystanders.

• Arrest Report

  PDF • 1.2 MB
  Download
• Bodycam View of Arrest

  Video • 142.8 MB
  View
• Character Letters

  PDF • 2.6 MB
  Download
• First Interview

  Video • 2.4 GB
  View
• Post-Polygraph Interview

  Video • 86 MB
  View
• Dashcam View of Arrest

  Video • 267.7 MB
  View
• Divorce Filing

  PDF • 428.4 KB
  Download
• Letter to Parents

  PDF • 19.4 KB
  Download
• Mugshot

  Image • 237.2 KB
  View
• Offense Report (Arresting Officer)

  PDF • 106.6 KB
  Download
• Offense Report (Serratt)

  PDF • 235.1 KB
  Download
• Polygraph Interview

  Video • 241.3 MB
  View
• Probation Violation Order of Arrest

  PDF • 57.6 KB
  Download
• Release from Custody After Parole Violation

  PDF • 201.3 KB
  Download
• SPURS Report

  PDF • 328.2 KB
  Download
• All files

  ZIP • 3.3 GB
  Download