Key points:
- United Methodist leaders learned that an ordained elder from Missouri worked briefly as a property manager for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
- For now, the Missouri Conference’s Bishop Robert Farr has suspended the elder from clergy duties while an investigation moves forward.
- The conference also pointed to the United Methodist Commission on the Status and Role of Women as a resource.
Bishop Robert Farr has suspended a United Methodist elder from clergy responsibilities after learning this week that she worked for Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender.
The Rev. Stephanie Remington, a member of the Missouri Conference that Farr leads, worked for Epstein first as an administrative assistant from August to December 2018 and then as a temporary property manager of his private island from January until May 2019.
That was when he was already a convicted sex offender, but before his second arrest in July 2019 on charges of sex trafficking minors. In August that year, Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in what authorities ruled a suicide.
The Missouri Conference said in a statement that in accordance with church legal procedures, “the individual has been placed on suspension while the episcopal office reviews the matter.”
The conference and United Methodist News both got a tip this week from the Rev. Elizabeth Glass Turner, a writer and editor who has been reviewing the Epstein files.
At this point, no one is accusing Remington of any crime. She told United Methodist News that she never saw Epstein or anyone else on the island abuse anyone. In the Epstein files released by the U.S. Department of Justice, her name appears in more than 1,800 records. Many of her emails deal with the day-to-day running of facilities on the island, including travel arrangements for guests and the kitchen renovations she was overseeing.
“I never saw anything,” she told UM News. “I knew him for the last nine months of his life, well after he served time for the things that he was accused of doing.”
Nevertheless, given the denomination’s commitment to address sexual misconduct and stand with victims of abuse, Missouri Conference leaders are taking steps to investigate matters further.
“Clergy are called to uphold the highest standards of spiritual and moral leadership,” the conference’s statement said. “Concerns of this nature are taken seriously and require careful review. We recognize the deep harm connected to Mr. Epstein’s crimes and remain in prayer for survivors who deserve healing and justice.”
Support for victims
The United Methodist Commission on the Status and Role of Women wants to be mindful that with continuing news coverage, abuse survivors often experience renewed trauma as stories resurface.
“The church must respond with transparency, accountability and a pastoral presence that is grounded in trauma-informed care and centered on those who have been harmed,” said the Rev. Stephanie York Arnold, the agency’s top executive.
The agency’s mandate, she added, is to challenge the church toward the full and equitable inclusion of women. “That includes ensuring that the church is a safe space where women and all people can grow spiritually and exercise leadership free from sexualization, discrimination, harassment and abuse,” she said.
Anyone who has experienced sexual misconduct within the church is encouraged to contact the agency’s confidential toll-free hotline at 1-800-523-8390 for support, resources and guidance.
Farr, who leads the conference, is also board president of United Methodist Communications, which includes United Methodist News.
The conference pointed to The United Methodist Church’s Commission on the Status and Role of Women as a valuable resource. The agency, established in 1972, has long worked to combat sexual abuse, harassment and assault. In 2024, General Conference approved a statement, submitted by the United Methodist agency, that apologizes to all who have experienced sexual misconduct in the church.
Status and Role of Women “takes any report of potential sexual misconduct extremely seriously and believes all allegations should be thoroughly and transparently investigated,” said the Rev. Stephanie York Arnold, the agency’s top executive.
“We grieve the devastating harm caused by Jeffrey Epstein and those who enabled his abuse,” she said. “Survivors deserve more than acknowledgment of harm; they deserve justice, accountability and a community willing to confront wrongdoing wherever it exists — even within the church.”
In a July 2025 memo, the Department of Justice identified more than 1,000 victims of Epstein’s sex trafficking.
Remington said she also takes sexual misconduct seriously. Earlier in her ministry, she helped write an online curriculum for sexual boundaries training to be used in churches.
Still, she acknowledges that she knew Epstein was a registered sex offender when she accepted a job in his employ. At the time, Epstein had already completed an 18-month sentence after pleading guilty a decade earlier to one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18.
In 2018, Remington was looking to move back to the U.S. Virgin Islands after living there a few years earlier. In a July 2019 post on her personal blog, written under the pseudonym Jerusha Moon, she wrote that she relished the chance for a job in an air-conditioned beachfront office that would allow her to work with numbers and organize information all day. Still, she wrestled with whether she could ethically accept the position.
In her blog post, she wrote that she reflected on how Jesus ministered with people considered undesirable. “And I felt that if I withheld relationship from this man because of his past, then I would be turning my back on every message of hope I have ever preached, every invitation to God’s unconditional love I have ever extended, and my calling to be a healing presence in the world for all people,” she wrote in 2019.
Remington shared the same sentiments again with United Methodist News in an email this week.
“Jesus got into a lot of trouble for the company he kept, but he didn’t let that trouble pressure him into rejecting the people who, by their standards, did not deserve to be human,” she said. “Social death is just another kind of murder. He opened his heart and his mind to them, and they opened their tables and alabaster jars to him. Is Jeffrey not among their kind?
“Of course he didn’t deserve a second chance. None of us do,” she continued. “But that’s not how grace works.”
Remington said her relationship with Epstein was strictly professional — with him being her boss and she the employee — though she credits the consideration he showed her when her father received a cancer diagnosis. She left her job with Epstein to care for her father.
Remington, 50, served as a pastor at a series of United Methodist churches in Missouri for more than 15 years. She took leave in 2016 after she and her husband, a fellow United Methodist pastor, divorced.
In 2017 and 2018, during part of the time she lived in the U.S. Virgin Islands, she worked remotely as research manager for the Lewis Center for Church Leadership — part of United Methodist-related Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.
“We appreciate the work Stephanie Remington did for the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary,” said the Rev. David McAllister-Wilson, the seminary’s president, who is retiring at the end of this academic year.
However, Remington does not recall talking to anyone at the center about working for Epstein. She told UM News that she has since done independent contract work with the Lewis Center, which the Lewis Center confirmed.
But she explained that her work with the center has been part-time, which is why she needed to apply for other work on the Virgin Islands.
She now faces a complaint under church law that she failed to adequately keep the conference informed about her work and ministry setting.
“The Missouri Conference had no knowledge of the individual’s association with Mr. Epstein,” the conference statement said.
The United Methodist Church’s connectional system is supposed to provide for regular contact between conference leadership and their clergy — even those working outside of congregational contexts.
The Book of Discipline, The United Methodist Church’s policy book, details the rules guiding what the denomination calls extension ministries. These include positions outside conventional church walls, such as chaplains, nonprofit directors, general agency staff and seminary instructors.
Paragraph 344 of the Discipline says clergy in extension ministries must annually submit a written report to their bishop, district superintendent and board of ordained ministry. These reports are meant to help evaluate how clergy are serving the mission of the church and fulfilling their ordination. All clergy in extension ministries also are to maintain membership in and send annual reports to a local church in their home conference.
Clergy in extension ministries, the Discipline says, “remain accountable” to their conference and “shall be given the same moral and spiritual support” that their conference gives to clergy in pastoral appointments.
Remington said she did file a report last year and later told her district superintendent through Zoom about her time in the Virgin Islands, including her work with Epstein. She said she was unsure if the district superintendent fully understood her mention of Epstein.
The conference said in its statement that no information indicating this association was disclosed in any of her reports.
“The Bishop or district superintendent were not contacted about the individual’s interest in or acceptance of the Epstein-related position,” the conference said.
Remington acknowledged that she went for a period without submitting any reports and said she never received any follow-up from the conference. She also said no conference leader contacted her to see how she was doing after her divorce.
For now, the conference’s review is just beginning.
“Because this is an active matter, the Missouri Conference will not comment further while the supervisory response process is underway,” the conference statement said.
Remington worries that her brief employment under Epstein will lead to smears against both her and The United Methodist Church. She also prays for Epstein’s victims.
“The world is full of so much hate,” she said, “There are many powerful men who have done despicable things with their privilege. They come and go in the news.”
She added that the reason why Epstein’s story became internationally known is because of his ties to political leaders. These include Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former British prince who has been arrested in connection with the Epstein case; former President Clinton, who recently told Congress about his Epstein connections, and current President Trump.
“Half of America wants to tie him to the Clintons. The other half wants to tie him to Trump,” Remington said. “Their hunch is correct. Jeffrey was very proud to have direct lines to all his presidents. If association with sinners makes one guilty, then the church is in an awful state. I have heard the confessions of the people in my pews. I know their stories. We’re just people. The human kind.”
Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or [email protected]. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
