By Kalena Reynolds | Editor-in-Chief
An independent investigation found credible allegations that Dr. David Pooler, a professor in Baylor’s Diana R. Garland School of Social Work, engaged in sexual misconduct and violated professional boundaries. The allegations involved survivors of adult clergy sexual abuse, the same population at the center of Pooler’s research and clinical work.
Former School of Social Work staff and students have called for Pooler to be held accountable for his actions by the university. As of Sept. 1, he is still on faculty at Baylor. According to Pooler’s faculty profile, his “advocacy work focuses on creating spaces where people’s needs for safety and accountability are prioritized.”
His profile further states his involvement in the field, addressing that his “passion over the past 15 years has been studying Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse. As director of the Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse: Advocacy and Research Collaborative (ACSARC), Dr. Pooler works to advocate for policies and practices that make religious systems healthier and safer.”
Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE) conducted the investigation. The organization performs abuse investigations for churches and faith-based institutions.
According to the report, which was released in July, Restored Voices Collective commissioned the investigation after several survivors reported misconduct by Pooler. The organization supports survivors of adult clergy sexual abuse. Pooler was serving on its advisory board at the time.
The RVC is a non-profit that serves as support for women “who were each sexually abused by a person with spiritual authority who had the fiduciary duty to care for us.”
GRACE interviewed 18 witnesses and received 41 survey responses as a part of its investigation. The report cautioned that its findings were not exhaustive and “should not be considered a comprehensive articulation of relevant information.”
The Diana R. Garland School of Social Work is named for founding dean Dr. Diana Garland, whose pioneering research examined adult clergy sexual abuse.
After Garland died in 2015, Pooler continued her line of research. The GRACE report said he became “widely recognized” in the field and held a “position of high stature” among survivors. One witness said Pooler was treated like a “celebrity” and “seemed to enjoy the attention.”
The GRACE report also said that Pooler “was viewed as ‘God-like’ because he was a rare male advocate who cared about their experiences.”
On Aug. 6, an open letter was sent by current and former students to the School of Social Work deans requesting that Pooler be held accountable for his actions. The letter, which The Lariat has reviewed, was signed by 30 individuals within the School of Social Work.
“As social workers, mental health professionals, researchers, students, and carers, we are obligated to stand up for justice, particularly when we see that a bad actor has gained a foothold in our hallowed space,” the letter said. “Dr. David Pooler clearly used his position of power as a tool for his manipulative and harmful behavior. We request accountability, change, and space to heal.”
Baylor alumni and former adjunct professor Dr. Bianca Smith also signed the letter.
In an interview with The Lariat, she said the Garland School’s silence and inaction regarding Pooler conflicts with both social work ethics and Baylor’s Christian duty to protect people from abuses of power.
“I had current students, who explicitly told me and some of my other colleagues that they were too afraid to sign due to fear of retaliation,” Smith said. “So, when an institution’s culture breeds that level of fear amongst its own students, I believe the academic system is failing them.”
Smith also said that Baylor continuing to retain Pooler on faculty leads to professional risks.
“The decision to keep a faculty member in the classroom amid credible misconduct findings directly contradicts the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics, particularly our standards on integrity, power dynamics, and client/student protection,” Smith said. “It also compromises the core competencies that CSWE expects accredited institutions to model for their students.”
Current Baylor Ph.D. student Courtney Haworth, who signed the letter, said it gave former faculty and students a platform to share their concerns with the university.
“We just wanted them to be clear on where we stood on this matter, which was with the courageous people who came forward to share their stories, one of whom is a colleague of ours,” Haworth said.
Haworth notes the juxtaposition of Pooler’s behavior and career as a social worker makes the situation especially concerning.
“We’re social workers,” she said. “When we see harm or something that is unjust, we’re supposed to be part of that voice of change and making it right.”
Haworth said the university’s lack of public communication has affected both students and graduates.
“The silence from the school and from the leadership is confusing; it’s concerning … it’s isolating for students and alumni alike,” Haworth said.
A statement released by Baylor to The Lariat confirmed the university is reviewing the matter.
“Baylor University is aware of recent reports regarding Dr. David Pooler’s academic research,” the statement reads. “We take any allegations of this nature very seriously. We are in the process of looking into this matter in accordance with our institutional policies and procedures. Baylor is fully committed to supporting responsible research practices, in addition to adherence to internal and external policies. The university will continue to monitor the situation, and we will decline to comment further.”
Pooler is also a licensed clinical social worker in Texas who provides therapy to survivors of adult clergy sexual abuse.
In an email sent from his Baylor account and obtained by The Lariat, Pooler wrote, “You are receiving this email because you are a current therapy or coaching client of mine (David Pooler) or have a minor who sees me … What I want you to know is that you have no obligation to respond to this email, and I am not looking for emotional support from you.”
His email addresses the GRACE report, stating that “I want you to know that I deny that I have ever engaged in a sexualized conversation with any survivor … If you have any questions or concerns, I would prefer not to respond via email, but would rather answer them during a session or in a phone call.”
On Aug. 17, an email obtained by The Lariat that Pooler sent to his therapy clients said he would no longer be practicing in his office at Baylor and that all sessions would move to a “telehealth/virtual format.”
When The Lariat asked for a response, Pooler declined to comment.
Dr. Marie Griffith, the John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, was originally invited to serve as an outside faculty affiliate working with the Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse Advocacy and Research Collaborative.
Despite the collaborative being two years old, Griffith said she has not been aware of any work being done.
“Nothing ever came of it, at least that included me,” Griffith said. “I never got a single phone call from David about it. … As far as I could tell, it was just a website.”
She said she was already thinking about withdrawing her name from it because it seemed untruthful to say it existed.
“When all of this blew up around Pooler, and I learned about what seemed to me credible accounts of his behavior, I contacted Baylor and said, ‘My name’s on this research collaborative that doesn’t seem to exist. I would like my name to be removed.’ And they did it,” Griffith said.
Despite the lack of progress on the collaborative, Griffith said Pooler’s conflicting professional behavior is most concerning.
“I’m very careful about holding professional boundaries with students, with other colleagues, in any setting,” Griffith said. “And so, to be unaware of that and maybe if you’re a mathematician and you don’t spend your career thinking about those things, OK, that’s its own thing, but when you’re spending hours and hours of every day thinking about boundaries and abuse prevention, then it is perplexing if you can’t see your own behavior.”
The Lariat spoke to three survivors of clergy sexual abuse under the condition of anonymity. Each experienced sexual misconduct from Pooler.
One source, a Ph.D. student who was formerly supervised by Pooler, said that he had proposed asking clergy abuse survivors about masturbation and how often they were having sex as part of his research study.
When she expressed concern about the questions being “unnecessary and invasive” and could possibly “retraumatize survivors,” she said Pooler asked if her concerns “stemmed from her own sexual behaviors.”
Another source attended a conference called “Restore” for clergy abuse survivors where Pooler was a keynote speaker.
The conference attendee sought his advice on an uncomfortable situation that had occurred with another attendee.
According to the source, Pooler responded that the other person “wanted to (expletive) you” or “wanted to have sex with her.”
She said Pooler knew her abuse history and that his language mirrored statements made by her former abuser.
During a conference, GRACE reported that Pooler had also been sitting very close to a victim and “called her sexy.”
According to a source who knew Pooler through the adult clergy sexual abuse survivor community, Pooler had also approached her at a conference for survivors and began “rubbing her back.”
“I was sitting in my chair, but slanted so at a diagonal …. and I was talking to a group of people that were surrounding me … he rubbed my back, knowing that my abuser had done that to me,” she said.
The source also recalls Pooler drinking heavily at the conference after the sessions were over. However, Pooler was not intoxicated during the time of the incident.
Former students of Pooler said that he lacked professionalism in his classroom.
Dr. Heather Deal, Baylor alumna, former adjunct professor in the school of social work, took a class from Pooler while pursuing her Ph.D.
“One of the things that I was really struck by with him … we would come to class and the first big portion of class, to me, felt like a trauma dump,” Deal said. “It felt like he was processing a lot of things, and he would come to class and process it.”
Deal mentioned a large portion of Pooler’s “trauma dumping” included “processing about academia” and his personal life.
At the end of the semester, Deal spoke with the Ph.D program directors, expressing that “what he was doing was inappropriate.”
“I even wrote about it in my end of course evaluation that I thought ‘he just came and just verbally vomited for an hour,’” Deal said.
Baylor’s 2026 Sexual and Interpersonal Policy, first adopted in 2015, states that employees are held to a standard consistent with the Christian mission.
“Given that the University is operated within the Christian-oriented aims … Baylor prescribes standards of personal conduct for employees and students consistent with its religious mission and values [that] are integral to its Christian faith mission, and employs individuals whose values and conduct align with Baylor’s mission,” the policy reads.
For Griffith, Pooler’s allegations contradict this.
“For those of you at a Christian institution, it’s really disillusioning … where you think, ‘Well, things are different here, people really do care about integrity and doing the right thing, but there’s still this institutional instinct for self-preservation and reputation management,’” Griffith said.
Letter from the editor: If you are a victim of sexual assault, Baylor has resources available. Anonymous reports can be made through the Title IX website.
