Gillispie Law Firm

Gillispie Law Firm Gillispie Law Firm: a Little Rock-based firm dedicated to providing justice to the people of Arkansas

Green & Gillispie is a Little Rock law firm dedicated to providing justice to the people of Arkansas.

Almost every survivor who calls me about a residential treatment facility says the same thing in the first five minutes....
08/11/2026

Almost every survivor who calls me about a residential treatment facility says the same thing in the first five minutes. It's my word against theirs.

That fear makes sense. It's also usually wrong.

These places are licensed institutions, and they document themselves constantly. Licensing requires it. Insurers require it. Shift schedules, incident reports, personnel files that record the actual reason somebody left.

The people who ran the building wrote a lot of it down at the time.

Records don't sit there forever, though. They get cycled, overwritten, and lost when a company changes hands.

I wrote about how these cases get built in Arkansas. What gets pulled before a lawsuit is ever filed, who ends up named, and what the law allows you to recover.

If something happened to you or to your child inside one of these places, read it. Then call me.

It costs you nothing and puts you under no obligation.

https://gillispielawfirm.com/blog/residential-treatment-facility-abuse-lawsuits-in-arkansas-how-these-cases-are-built-and-what-compensation-may-be-available/

A church can be sued for what it did, not only for what he did.That surprises almost everyone who calls us. People assum...
08/10/2026

A church can be sued for what it did, not only for what he did.

That surprises almost everyone who calls us. People assume the matter closed when the criminal case closed, or that too much time has gone by, or that it's their word against an institution nobody will question.

Here is what Arkansas law says right now. If you were under 21 on July 28, 2021, there's no statute of limitations on a civil child sexual abuse claim in this state. None. If you were older than that, the Delayed Discovery Statute gives you three years from the point you understood what the abuse did to you, which for most people is decades after it happened.

There are cases moving through Arkansas courts right now that name congregations, associations, and conventions as defendants. Those complaints don't only describe one man's conduct. They describe what the people around him wrote down, filed away, and never acted on.

If you've been carrying this quietly, you don't have to decide anything today. Reading is enough for now.

And when you're ready, the call costs you nothing and obligates you to nothing. Tap the link to read the whole thing.

https://gillispielawfirm.com/blog/southern-baptist-church-sexual-abuse-how-survivors-in-arkansas-are-holding-churches-accountable/

If you survived abuse in a Southern Baptist church in Arkansas, you've probably already spent hours on law firm websites...
08/07/2026

If you survived abuse in a Southern Baptist church in Arkansas, you've probably already spent hours on law firm websites that all sound alike. Not one of them tells you how to tell the lawyers apart.

So let me give you three questions. Ask who he has named as defendants in past cases. Ask what he does when a church says no to a records request, because every institution says no the first time. Ask whether he sends a preservation notice, and how quickly. The answers will tell you whether you're talking to someone who has litigated against an institution or someone who handles car wrecks.

And if somebody told you years ago that too much time had gone by, that may no longer be true. Arkansas law changed in 2021, and a lot of survivors still don't know it.

I wrote up what to look for, what to ask, and what a first conversation actually involves. Read it before you make the call. Asking questions costs you nothing.

https://gillispielawfirm.com/blog/southern-baptist-sexual-abuse-cases-in-arkansas-what-to-look-for-when-hiring-an-attorney/

Your child came home from the program and told you everything was fine.Years later, you found out it wasn't.If that is y...
08/05/2026

Your child came home from the program and told you everything was fine.

Years later, you found out it wasn't.

If that is your family, here is something worth understanding. Your child's silence was not a failure of trust. Inside a residential program, every ordinary path a kid uses to report harm gets closed off. There is no teacher who works for a different employer. There is no car ride home where they can talk freely. Phone calls are supervised and timed. Visits have to be earned by good behavior.

And in a place built around therapy, a child who keeps insisting something happened gets written up as resistant. Speaking up extends the stay. Going quiet is what gets them home.

That is why disclosure so often arrives years later, sometimes decades later. Research on institutional settings shows it is the norm, not a red flag.

Parents ask why their child never told them. The honest answer is that telling was never really available.

Read the full breakdown of how these programs silence children, what the research on institutional abuse actually found, and what a long delay does and does not mean for your family.

https://gillispielawfirm.com/blog/why-children-in-residential-treatment-settings-face-elevated-abuse-risk-and-why-disclosure-is-so-rare/

Most people assume a child who was abused would tell someone right away.The research says the opposite. More than 70 per...
08/03/2026

Most people assume a child who was abused would tell someone right away.

The research says the opposite. More than 70 percent of survivors say nothing for at least five years. The average person does not speak until age 52. Among abused kids between 10 and 17, about two thirds told no parent and no other adult at all.

If you grew up in an Assemblies of God church and have never said a word about what happened, there is a reason, and it is not the one you have been telling yourself. It was not weakness. It was a child doing math about what telling would cost his family, his church, and every friendship he had.

I put together what the research and published survivor accounts actually show about why disclosure takes so long, what happens when a child tells and nothing changes, and what parents should know if their child just came to them this week.

You are not late. You were never late. Read it when you are ready.

https://gillispielawfirm.com/blog/assemblies-of-god-abuse-survivors-and-delayed-disclosure-what-research-and-survivor-accounts-reflect/

"I don't have proof."That one sentence stops more survivors from ever calling a lawyer than anything else does.Here is w...
08/03/2026

"I don't have proof."

That one sentence stops more survivors from ever calling a lawyer than anything else does.

Here is what almost nobody explains. In a civil case against a church, the evidence that carries the most weight was never yours to hold onto. Personnel files. Board minutes. District correspondence. Complaint records that got handled quietly and filed away. It sits inside the institution, and a lawsuit is the tool that pries it open.

Your account is evidence. Sworn testimony is evidence. You do not need a police report, a photograph, or a witness who wrote everything down that night.

If you were abused inside an Assemblies of God church, school, or camp in Arkansas, or your child was, read this before you decide your case is impossible.

Confidential conversation. No cost. No pressure. Nothing gets filed because you picked up the phone.

https://gillispielawfirm.com/blog/assemblies-of-god-sexual-abuse-evidence-how-survivors-build-a-civil-case-against-a-church/

You looked up the name of the place they sent you. Nothing came up.No news stories. No lawsuits. No attorney pages. Just...
08/03/2026

You looked up the name of the place they sent you. Nothing came up.

No news stories. No lawsuits. No attorney pages. Just a listing and a phone number, like nothing ever happened there.

So you closed the tab and told yourself there was nothing to find.

Here is what I have learned handling these cases in Arkansas. A facility with no headlines is almost never a facility with a clean record. It is a facility nobody has opened up yet. Licensing complaints do not make the news. Incident reports never leave the building. Personnel files sit in a cabinet until someone has the legal authority to ask for them.

Everything I find in these cases was already there. It just took a case to pull it into the light.

If you were placed in a residential treatment center, group home, or behavioral health facility as a child in Arkansas, this article explains who is filing these lawsuits right now, who gets named as a defendant, and why coming forward years later does not end your claim.

Read it. Then call me. The first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

https://gillispielawfirm.com/blog/child-sex-abuse-in-residential-treatment-centers-who-is-filing-lawsuits-in-arkansas-and-why/

You were told it was too long ago.Whoever told you that probably did not know Arkansas law changed.If you were born on o...
07/31/2026

You were told it was too long ago.

Whoever told you that probably did not know Arkansas law changed.

If you were born on or after July 28, 2000, there is no filing deadline on a childhood sexual abuse claim in Arkansas. Not three years. Not ten. None.

And if you are older than that, the clock is tied to something different than you think. Arkansas gives survivors three years from the point they connect what happened to them with what it did to them. For people abused inside a church, that connection often arrives decades late, in a therapist's office or the week their own child turns the age they were.

Most survivors who call an attorney are already convinced they have no case. Many of them are wrong about that, and they only find out because someone finally looked at their facts instead of their calendar.

Read what Arkansas law actually says before you rule yourself out. The link is below. The conversation is confidential, and it costs nothing to have it.

https://gillispielawfirm.com/blog/statute-of-limitations-for-child-molestation-in-arkansas-what-assemblies-of-god-survivors-need-to-know-in-2026/

If your child disclosed abuse at a Baptist church, or you have finally put a name to something that happened to you year...
07/30/2026

If your child disclosed abuse at a Baptist church, or you have finally put a name to something that happened to you years ago, the order you report in matters more than most families realize.

Report to the Arkansas Child Abuse Hotline and law enforcement first. The church is not your first call. An internal church report cannot preserve records or protect your rights the way the state and an attorney can, and it hands information to the same institution that may later be a defendant.

This guide walks you through who to tell, when to tell them, how a civil case works alongside a criminal report, and why calling an attorney early protects the evidence. Reporting Baptist church abuse in Arkansas starts with knowing the sequence.

Read the full guide: https://gillispielawfirm.com/blog/reporting-baptist-church-abuse-in-arkansas-what-to-do-who-to-tell-and-when-to-call-an-attorney/

When survivors of church sexual abuse come to us, one of the first questions is whether a case can reach past the indivi...
07/27/2026

When survivors of church sexual abuse come to us, one of the first questions is whether a case can reach past the individual who caused the harm.

In Arkansas, that answer depends on structure. Denominations like the Assemblies of God credential ministers through district and national bodies, not through the local congregation that hires them. The body that grants a credential is the body with the authority to suspend it. That authority is what plaintiffs examine when deciding which defendants belong in a complaint.

Our newest article walks through the legal theories involved, the categories of evidence that matter, and how the Refuge Church litigation illustrates the approach. Every allegation described is attributed to the filed complaint and remains unproven.

If you were abused inside an Arkansas congregation, a confidential conversation costs nothing.

Read the full article: https://gillispielawfirm.com/blog/what-it-takes-to-name-a-denomination-in-a-church-sex-abuse-lawsuit-in-arkansas/

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