Local nonprofit and religious leaders who have collaborated to restore St. Augustine’s African Orthodox Church in the heart of Cambridgeport have succeeded in reimagining it as a place for congregating not just around faith, but also “arts, community knowledge, and connection.” But now, they are dealing with shocking allegations about the man who has led St. Augustine’s as its minister for more than a decade. 

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In the last six months, board members of the nonprofit tasked with the church’s preservation, Black History in Action Cambridge (BHAC), have learned that its long-time minister, Charles Eccles, had been accused by at least three individuals of sexually abusing them as minors. They’ve also come to question whether he is an ordained minister at all. In December, Eccles was voted off the BHAC board, and was recently also removed from the St. Augustine’s Corporation, which oversees the church. 

A draft statement shared with Cambridge Day announcing these changes references Eccles’s parting ways with the church, which it says was due to “false representations and other serious and disturbing matters,” in reference to the allegations. “Those concerns were brought to Mr. Eccles’s attention, and the St. Augustine’s Board determined that new leadership was necessary to heal and move the church forward,” the document also said.

Cambridge Day investigated the claims against Eccles. Interviews of alleged victims and extensive review of legal documents appear to validate a pattern of troubling behavior spanning 50 years. 

Through the first half of 2026, Eccles continued to lead services at the church. But on Wednesday, July 1, he was served a no trespass order informing him that he is banned from the property. 

The next day he was caught on the grounds by the church’s security camera footage.

Cambridge Day reached out to Eccles for this article. He declined to comment, saying he was “busy.” Cambridge Day also emailed Eccles a detailed list of questions concerning the allegations that appear in this article. He did not respond.

St. Augustine’s – the birthplace of a movement

The church has been at 137 Allston Street in Cambridge since the 1880s. Rev. George Alexander McGuire, an Episcopalian priest who later became chaplain-general of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), re-christened the building as St. Augustine’s in 1926, making it the first outpost in his effort to create an African Orthodox Church governed by and in the service of Black people. It was a center for Cambridge’s West Indian population for decades, at a time when redlining maps show Cambridgeport was as much as 70 percent Black. (The neighborhood now has a Black population of around .)

Eccles has longstanding ties with St. Augustine’s. His mother, Miriam, became its leader in the 1970s, retiring in 2001. (Miriam Eccles died in 2007 – Cambridge City Council passed a resolution upon her death acknowledging her decades of service in the Cambridge community.) Another minister ran the church in the intervening decade before Eccles took over around 2010. By then, the congregation had dwindled. The African Orthodox Church as a denomination had 30,000 members at its height in the 1930s but now has an estimated 5,000 members globally. The congregation in Cambridgeport had less than 10 people regularly attending services by 2019, in a building with a roof so porous rain would fall directly into parts of the sanctuary. 

That’s when BHAC formed to help restore it. “The church had really been a center of that community, and it no longer was,” said Penny Outlaw, who joined the BHAC board in 2020.

Kris Manjapra, a history and global studies professor at Northeastern University, had taken an interest in the church, and helped it apply for a grant to replace its roof. Outlaw, a former human resource professional, lived in Cambridge from 1978 to 2004 and once led the Cambridge Public Art Commission. She now lives in Medford, and serves as vice president of the Royall House and Slave Quarters.

  “I wanted this little church to be saved for some reason. she said. “There was something that was connecting in me about the community aspect of it.”

BHAC, with Manjapra as director, Outlaw as board president, and other board members including Eccles, obtained state, city and private funding to renovate the building, which received landmark status from the Cambridge Historical Commission in 2021.

By 2025, the refurbishment of the church’s exterior was complete. In addition to its religious services, the building also began hosting a series of music and dance performances sponsored by BHAC called “Heart of Culture.” “St. Augustine’s has always been a place that has stories to tell, that wants more stories to be told in it,” Manjapra told The Boston Globe in an article about the events. 

But as BHAC board members spread the word about the improved space and new programming to neighbors and former churchgoers, they heard troubling things. Two of them agreed to speak to Cambridge Day under the condition of anonymity.

One board member said she invited someone who responded: “‘As long as Kit (Eccles’s nickname) is at the church, I will not be attending St. Augustine’s.’” In December 2025, several people reached out to BHAC board members, alleging Eccles had sexually abused them as children.

“That’s when all the closed doors opened,” the board member said. “All the news about him rolled out, and it was unbelievable.”

Trouble, and a tragedy

Eccles was born in 1953 and raised in Cambridge. Court documents show he had three criminal convictions by age 20: two for larceny and one for drug possession.

In the fall of 1973, tragedy struck. Eccles, then a Boston College sophomore, stole a gun from a parked car with his brother Alfred and took it back to his dorm room. According to prosecutors at the time, the gun accidentally discharged while Eccles was examining it, the bullet hitting his brother, who died from his injury. 

Eccles was initially arrested for murder, but his charge was quickly downgraded to manslaughter. According to documents obtained at Middlesex Superior Court, he was convicted. It is unclear how much prison time he served, but eight months later he was convicted again, for possession of implements to commit a burglary.

According to court documents, Eccles was indicted seven more times between 1974 and 1987, three of these leading to convictions: for breaking and entering (1974), dangerous operation of a motor vehicle (1977), and stealing a bike (1978). He faced three separate charges of assault and battery but was not convicted although one of his victims did sue him in civil court for the physical injuries they maintained in the alleged attack. The civil case settled for an undisclosed amount.

In 1985 he was tried for kidnapping and the indecent assault and battery of a 15-year-old who had attended St. Augustine’s prayer meetings led by his mother. The first trial, in December 1985, resulted in a hung jury, but at Eccles’s retrial nine months later, another jury found him not guilty. 

Disturbing allegations

Two people who knew Eccles as children agreed to speak to Cambridge Day. 

William Louviere now lives on the west coast, but in 1980 he was 13-year-old living in Cambridge. He said he and his friends from Martin Luther King Jr. School (which was K-8 until 2012) would hang out at an arcade on Massachusetts Ave. called 1001 Plays. Eccles, who was about 28 at the time, worked there, and befriended him. 

“He just kind of buddied up to lots of young kids,” Louviere said. 

Louviere said Eccles would take him to services at St. Augustine’s, or sometimes pick him up in his car and the two would just drive around. But he said Eccles could have a short temper – Louviere said he once saw Eccles pull over and attack a woman during one of their drives, punching her in the face repeatedly. On another occasion, Louviere said he saw Eccles severely beat his own dog in an incident he called “one of the most horrifying memories of my life.” 

Not long before Louviere’s family was going to move out of state in early 1981, he said he was hanging out atEccles house when Eccles assaulted him. “Thank God he didn’t rape me, but he molested me. It could have been a lot worse,” he said. 

He didn’t report the incident at Eccles’s home to police at the time, but like many victims of sexual assault, he considered coming forward later in life. “By the time I looked into him and started looking back on it, the statute [of limitations] was up,” Louviere said. “I didn’t have a case, but I would have followed through.”

(While there is technically no statute of limitations for the sexual assault of a minor under the age of 16 in Massachusetts, prosecutors must provide independent corroborating evidence beyond the victim’s testimony to bring charges more than 27 years after the offense.)

One of Louviere’s childhood friends also agreed to speak to Cambridge Dayabout his experiences with Eccles, but asked to remain anonymous. 

He confirmed Eccles was friendly with their group. “He would buy us liquor, buy us weed, bring us camping,” he said. He added that as boys they were aware that Eccles was significantly older. 

In mid-1981, he said he was hanging out at Eccles’s house when Eccles asked for a back massage. Though he said he was immediately uncomfortable, he also felt “intimidated and trapped.” He gave Eccles the back rub and then bolted out of the house. He also did not report the incident. Later that year, he also happened to be moving out of state. The day before he was scheduled to leave, he saw Eccles at the 7-Eleven in Central Square and said Eccles asked him to come over the next day and help him clean out his closet.

“I knew what that meant,” he said. He told Eccles he would see him but knew he would be on a flight and didn’t show. 

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Cambridge Police Department confirmed that Eccles had been arrested again for assault and battery in 2001, but Cambridge Day could not find any court records associated with that particular case – they may have been sealed. According to CPD, the case went to trial, but Eccles was again found not guilty. 

It’s not the only case of Eccles’s that may have been sealed (or is otherwise inaccessible for public viewing). Attorney and former Cambridge District Court Judge Severlin Singleton recalls Eccles appearing before him in court at least twice during his tenure on the bench between 1989 and 2014. Cambridge Day found an instance of Eccles appearing before Singleton’s court for a misdemeanor violation of a municipal ordinance in 2004, but Singleton recalls Eccles facing charges for the sexual abuse of minors in cases he was assigned (he does not remember the years in which they occurred). He said Eccles was never convicted in these cases, either because the prosecutor decided to drop the charges or because the victim didn’t appear to testify. 

When asked why prosecutors might drop charges in such an instance, Singleton said “usually the victim has said something to the prosecutor to make it go away or is not cooperating.”

Louviere said he saw the risks of associated with testifying against Eccles firsthand saying that Eccles had told him that the woman he saw him beat had “snitched” on him in one of his criminal cases. 

Eccles did receive one conviction for inappropriate behavior with a child. Cambridge Day found court records from a 2015 case where Eccles was found guilty of open and gross lewdness for exposing himself in front of a child he had hired to do yard work. Eccles was sentenced to nine months at the Middlesex House of Correction. According to Massachusetts law, someone must be convicted twice for open and gross lewdness in order to require registry as a sex offender, which is why Eccles does not appear on the Commonwealth’s Sex Offender Registry Board list. 

Eccles faced other assault and battery charges in 2005 and 2017. He was found not guilty in a bench trial in the first case, and the second was dismissed, although his accuser, an adult, was given an abuse prevention order.

A year later, Eccles was arrested and charged with violating that order by threatening his alleged victim after running into him on the street. According to the police report for the incident, Eccles allegedly shouted at him “Your day is coming.”

Charges were again dismissed when prosecutors failed to conduct a show-cause hearing in which Eccles could defend himself, which applies to cases involving alleged violations of court orders. But a police report for that case notes that Eccles had taken an interest in one of the grandchildren of someone who witnessed Eccles’s alleged violation.

“[Witness’s name] stated when he takes his grandson to the park next to Eccles [sic] house they are constantly harassed from Eccles on his back porch … Eccles asks where [grandson’s name] is and states he is going to get him.”

The park referenced in this statement is most likely Fulmore Park, which some in the Cambridgeport neighborhood have come to call “the chicken park” because pet chickens Eccles keeps frequently escape. Its playground is popular with area families.

In 2019, Eccles was again charged but acquitted at trial of indecent assault and battery, according to court documents. 

BHAC board members said they were not aware of these allegations or any of Eccles’s legal history until accusers started coming forward in December. “I was in total disbelief,” a BHAC board member said. Cathie Zusy, now a city councillor, was president of the Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association when St. Augustine’s was being renovated. She helped with fundraising, during which she said Eccles was a “fine partner.” She added that she had been “grateful that he was willing to reach out to the community and accept help,” and was also unaware of Eccles’s legal trouble.

A pattern of threats

In December, BHAC board members shared what they had learned from some of Eccles’s alleged sexual assault victims directly with then-Police Commissioner Christine Elow. Outlaw said they met with a deputy superintendent, but no new charges against Eccles have been filed so far this year.

A BHAC board member said that in conversations with victims, she’s come to understand “The trauma and fear of this man … because his family was prominent in the community, as well as the church.”

She said Eccles would use his position in the community to gain access to the children he victimized. “He would go after young kids in single female households. You know, the father was absent, so he was going to be the big brother or the spiritual father,” the BHAC board member said. In some instances, “that’s how he got his prey.” 

According to Outlaw, when Manjapra informed Eccles of what they had heard in December, Eccles became “combative” and threatened BHAC board members with bodily harm.

BHAC held an emergency board meeting on December 22, 2025, which Eccles did not attend (although he was an irregular attendee at these meetings anyways, according to Outlaw). The board voted to remove him a week later, but Eccles still maintained control of the St. Augustine’s Corporation. He began resisting the church’s partnership with BHAC – in early March, BHAC organizers arrived at St. Augustine’s for an event to find its entrances barricaded. BHAC has since shifted its community programming to Western Ave. Baptist Church and will be hosting events at a synagogue on Magazine Street in the fall.

 “We needed to constitute a new St. Augustine’s board,” Outlaw said. So, Outlaw and two other BHAC board members left to join the St. Augustine’s Corporation. They recruited two former church members they knew to join as well, which Outlaw said proved challenging due to people’s fear of Eccles.

A meeting was scheduled in April to dissolve the old board and elect its new members. Outlaw said she made sure Eccles knew the meeting was happening and had the opportunity to run for a spot himself, but he didn’t show.

Outlaw and two of the new members of the church’s board are also in the process of being added to the St. Augustine’s Mission Trust, which owns the church’s building at 137 Allston. The Trust’s original members died decades ago, and the document was never updated. Under the new trustee agreement, which will be finalized next month, St. Augustine’s must and will continue to function as a house of worship.

Those involved with the church, until that point, had been under the impression that Eccles was a trustee – he had not been. Cambridge Day confirmed via records obtained through the Middlesex County South District Registry of Deeds that Eccles was not named a trustee or a successor co-trustee of the church’s property. All the original trustees listed in the document have since died, and their obituaries do not list a relative in any of them.

“It seems like he just seized control on his own,” Outlaw said. 

Also coming into question is whether Eccles is ordained at all. According to Outlaw, Eccles has not responded to requests from the new St. Augustine’s Corp. to provide his seminary records.

“I don’t think Charles was ever ordained. I think he has made this up,” one BHAC board member said. The board member also said Eccles told him he was “privately ordained” by an African Orthodox bishop.

Cambridge Day searched newspaper archives for an announcement of Eccles’s ordination, typical in many Christian denominations, and did not find one. 

At the beginning of the month, the newly reconfigured St. Augustine’s Corporation issued a no-trespass order barring Eccles from the property.

By the time Eccles had been served the papers informing him he had lost control of the church, a security guard had been hired to prevent him from entering. Outlaw and BHAC board members also say they’re working closely with CPD, which a representative for CPD confirmed.

Despite the ban, Eccles arrived at the church on Sunday, July 5, with four parishioners in an attempt to hold a service but was turned away by security. 

When asked if she had anything to say to Eccles, Outlaw tried to strike a conciliatory tone.

“I’d say thank you for keeping the legacy of the church going as long as you have, but it’s time to fully step aside.”

Note: Evidence of Eccles’s legal history was obtained via documents accessed at Middlesex Superior Court and Cambridge District Court. Cambridge Day is not providing copies of these documents, as they contain personal information about victims.

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