The Man Who Led Exodus International for 12 Years Was Just Arrested in an Orlando Sheriff's Sting. He Allegedly Tried to Meet a 14-Year-Old Boy for Sex.

According to the arrest affidavit as summarized by WFTV Channel 9 and FOX 35 Orlando, the operation began in February 2026, when an undercover Orange County Sheriff's Office detective established a Snapchat profile presenting as a 14-year-old Orlando boy. Investigators allege the defendant initiated contact under the alias “John David,” self-identified as a 50-year-old Orlando man, and over the following four months moved the conversation onto text messaging and the encrypted-messaging app Telegram. Per the affidavit, the defendant allegedly sent explicit images of his genitals, allegedly described what sheriff's deputies characterized in their release as “forbidden love,” and allegedly proposed meeting in person on multiple occasions — including, in April 2026, allegedly suggesting that the “teen” take an Uber to the defendant's office.

“The suspect initiated contact, identified himself as a 50-year-old man, and over the course of approximately four months exchanged messages with our detective — who was at all times identifying as a 14-year-old boy.”

Orange County Sheriff's Office · Arrest affidavit summary · Per WFTV, May 19, 2026

On the evening of May 19, 2026, sheriff's deputies executed a traffic-stop arrest in Orange County. The defendant was booked into the Orange County Jail. On Wednesday, May 20, an Orange County judge found probable cause on all three counts, and the defendant was released later that day on a $15,000 bond ($5,000 per count) with conditions: zero contact with minors and no access to social media. The agency that ran the operation, the Orange County Sheriff's Office, is headed by Sheriff John Mina (D-Orange County). The case will be prosecuted in the Ninth Judicial Circuit, where State Attorney Andrew Bain (R) — appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023, elected in his own right in 2024 — oversees the Orange-Osceola office. Neither has publicly commented beyond the standard arrest release as of publication.

Exodus International was founded in 1976 in Anaheim, California, and grew, through the late 1990s and the early 2000s, into the largest umbrella organization for the “ex-gay” movement in the United States — a network of more than 250 affiliated ministries promising that prayer, counseling, and what the organization at the time called “reparative therapy” could change a person's sexual orientation. Chambers became president in 2001 and moved the headquarters to Orlando. For 12 years, he was the most prominent public face of conversion therapy in American evangelical life. He testified at Congressional hearings, appeared on Oprah, and anchored an annual conference that drew thousands.

Then, in June 2013, Chambers held a press conference, read a public apology to the LGBTQ community, renounced conversion therapy as ineffective and damaging, and shut Exodus International down. He has subsequently acknowledged his own continuing attraction to men, written a 2014 memoir titled My Exodus, and stepped back from ministry work. The Religion News Service piece anchoring this story is the religion-beat reckoning with what the arrest does to that public narrative.

“The arrest of the man who shut down Exodus International — who in 2013 told the LGBTQ community he was sorry — is going to land hard on every side of the conversion-therapy fight. The presumption of innocence is real. So is the public record.”

Civic Intelligence · Editorial framing · May 21, 2026

The successor organization to Exodus on the still-active “ex-gay” side of the movement is the Restored Hope Network, founded in 2012 in Colorado Springs by a group of Exodus dissidents who broke from Chambers's reformist direction in the year before the shutdown. Restored Hope Network's current Executive Director, Anne Edward(formerly Anne Paulk), was a long-standing public critic of Chambers and of Exodus's 2013 dissolution. Neither Edward nor Restored Hope Network is implicated in the Orange County Sheriff's investigation in any way, and we identify them here only to disambiguate the historical-ministry record. The arrest is about one man and the affidavit's allegations against him — not about either organization.

The three counts on the booking document are Florida state felonies, not federal charges. Count one, solicitation of a minor via computer, is charged under Fla. Stat. § 847.0135(3)— a third-degree felony for each act of solicitation, punishable by up to five years per count under standard Florida sentencing. Count two, transmission of harmful material to a minor, is charged under Fla. Stat. § 847.0138. Count three, unlawful use of a two-way communication device, is charged under Fla. Stat. § 934.215. Per outlets including Protestia and MinistryWatch tracking Florida sentencing exposure, the cumulative maximum on all three counts, if a conviction were obtained on every count and run consecutively, is roughly 30 years. That number is the statutory maximum, not a prediction; we include it for scale, not as a forecast.

The procedural posture as of May 21, 2026: probable cause has been found by an Orange County judge on all three counts; bond has been set at $15,000 total ($5,000 per count); the defendant has been released on the standard zero-contact and no-social-media conditions; no plea has been entered; counsel has not been publicly identified; no case number has been published in any of the available outlets. Arraignment will schedule the formal plea entry — until then, the presumption-of-innocence rule governs every paragraph above.

The Park Avenue District business association — where Chambers previously served as president and where his current employer, Current by John Craig, operates a flagship luxury menswear store — issued the standard arms-length statement when contacted by ClickOrlando: that the situation is unrelated to the organization, that they take allegations of this nature extremely seriously, and that they cannot comment on a pending criminal matter. We reproduce that framing without endorsement.

“While this matter is unrelated to the organization or its work, we take situations involving allegations of this nature extremely seriously.”

Park Avenue District (Winter Park, FL) · Statement to ClickOrlando, May 19, 2026