In McLennan County court on Thursday, Daniel Savala, 70, was sentenced to 30 years in prison without parole after pleading guilty to one count of continuous trafficking of persons, a felony charge that applies to offenders who repeatedly sexually exploit several victims over time. Savala’s sentence came after he agreed to plead guilty to that charge, per NBC News, which first reported the news of Savala’s sentencing.
“I don’t expect he will ever see the light of day again,” McLennan County District Attorney Josh Tetens said after the sentencing, per NBC. “And that is justice in this case.”
Savala, from Houston, worked with Chi Alpha, a campus ministry group that states its mission is to “reconcile students to Christ”to “transform the university, the marketplace and the world.” He was the subject of an NBC News investigation last year, which found that leaders of the Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination, repeatedly ignored multiple red flags about Savala and refused to stop Savala from accessing young men.
Referred to by Assemblies of God pastors as “the holiest man alive” and known as “Papa Daniel” to the young people he worked with, Savala repeatedly brought students to his Houston home to purportedly minister to them. There, he ushered them into a backyard sauna where Savala would preach that “nudity is unity” and quote scripture to get the boys and young men to undress.
The charge that Savala pleaded guilty to on Thursday stemmed from a 2021 incident. One of Savala’s closest devotees, Christopher Hundl, was a pastor with Chi Alpha at Baylor University in Waco. Hundl told police he saw Savala as a “spiritual mentor” going back to Hundl’s college days. The two would masturbate each other, per arrest warrants obtained by NBC, because Savala told Hundl this counted as a “spiritual activity.”
Despite accusations against him, Chi Alpha ministry leaders repeatedly backed Savala. Nine years before the 2021 abuse incident, Savala was convicted of sexually abusing boys while working as a youth minister in Alaska in the 1990s. Instead of cutting its ties with Savala, ministry leaders in Texas reportedly flew a Chi Alpha employee to Alaska to pay Savala’s bail. Chi Alpha spearheaded a letter-writing campaign to urge the judge to give Savala leniency. Savala ultimately was sentenced to just 90 days and, according to NBC News, went right back to bringing students to his Houston home through Chi Alpha.
Per NBC, one such accuser, Joseph Cleveland, choked back tears in court on Thursday as he described how Savala groomed and abused him for a decade, starting in 2004 when Cleveland was 15.
“You’re not the ‘holiest man alive,'” Cleveland said in a victim impact statement in court. “You’re not a ‘guru.’ You’re not even a man of God. You’re a charlatan.”