Known for writing melodic, sing-along worship songs, Ed Conlin was like a “rockstar” inside the covenant Christian communities he worked with.
“People would casually refer to him as ‘Saint Ed.’ Like they saw him as someone who is holy, and was virtuous, and kind, and generous,” Noelle Lynn said of Conlin.
Lynn said she got to know Conlin when she was involved in missionary work in Detroit beginning in 2005. Lynn said Conlin took an interest in her and a few other young women she served with.
“We would say things like, ‘Oh, I'm Ed's third girl,” Lynn recalled.
By then, The Servants of the Word brotherhood had already removed Conlin from youth work in Northern Ireland for his "improper relationships" and "misdeeds" and restricted him from working in youth programming. A decade later, the brotherhood would acknowledge it failed to both fully communicate Conlin's boundaries with people in Detroit and "maintain the separation" through oversight.
Conlin's relationship with Lynn wasn't sexual, she said, but he’d take her and other young women out individually, to a game, on walks. “I could have been an Ed Conlin victim,” she said.
Conlin worked as a substance abuse counselor at a well known soup kitchen in Detroit, and in youth activities run by various unsuspecting non-profits.
“Looking back, it's so inappropriate,” Lynn said. “But he was known for these special relationships with women and girls. And we know now that he wasn't supposed to be interacting with us that way. He actually wasn't supposed to be having anything to do with our youth's work, but he was involved in it all.”
For decades, Conlin was part of The Servants of the Word brotherhood based in Michigan. About 60 celibate men are in the ecumenical brotherhood, living communally in homes throughout the state and around the globe.
In 2005, the brotherhood allowed Conlin to move to Detroit to work after about 3 years of “discipline and recovery” at The Servants of the Word’s main home in a rural area west of Ann Arbor.
In the late 1990s, two members of a group for at-risk youth had reported Conlin’s grooming behavior and sexual abuse in Belfast. The brotherhood has said police in Northern Ireland were notified but didn’t bring charges.
Nearly three decades later, Conlin’s been extradited from the United States and faces seven counts of indecent assault against a female.
"Ed Conlin maintains his innocence to these charges.” his attorney wrote in an emailed statement. Court records show Conlin pleaded not guilty to the charges this month. His attorney said he expects “to clear his name by being exonerated of these accusations."
The leaders of The Servants of the Word acknowledged to members in 2020 it failed to communicate “robustly and clearly enough” to people working alongside Conlin in Detroit about the sexual allegations against him and the self-imposed boundaries he was supposed to follow around young people.
When Michigan Public reported allegations of sexual abuse against another member of the brotherhood in 2020, people inside or familiar with the covenant communities started talking about Conlin too.
An Ypsilanti woman alleged Conlin raped her when she was a teenager in a civil lawsuit she and others brought against The Servants of the Word in 2023. The law firm that filed the cases said most of the lawsuits were settled and the terms weren’t disclosed.
Conlin was “terminated” from the brotherhood the same year.
U.S. Marshals arrested him in South Bend, Indiana in May. He petitioned a federal judge for release because he said he was taking care of his disabled adult brother and he has his own health issues. He said he’d been working in food service at a hotel chain.
Lynn and others have been working for years to expose the abuse and systems in the covenant communities that allowed it. She’s been frustrated it’s taken so long.
“Through all of this, there's been these moments of just - how in the world could this not have a consequence?” Lynn reflected.
So she was “completely shocked” when she heard Conlin was arrested.
“I was just so over the moon to see that the Belfast authorities took this really seriously and that these women in Belfast, who have just been so brave and so strong, have been willing to weather this storm and keep with it,” she said. “I'm so proud of them.”
Conlin’s next court date is August 28.
