Meet the Parent

"What can I pray for you about?" the chubby old guy asked.

Motley poured his heart out. His Sunday school class sucked. He didn't feel a spiritual connection to God. And above all, he cried, he wasn't sure that God even existed.

The man embraced Motley. Out of earshot from Betty, he whispered in Motley's ear, "Are you into pornography?"

"Yes, I am," Motley confessed for the first time. "And I hate it. And I want out."

Motley wept and prayed. He lost all self-awareness. And for the first time in his life, he says he felt God's love. A feeling of relief washed over him. And, he says, he experienced real intimacy with his wife for the first time.

Motley's salvation has turned him into a charismatic Christian who prays for an hour every morning and speaks in tongues.

And the Motley family expanded to include two foster children — Jesse, now 9, and Brian, who was 4 months old when the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services placed him in the Motleys' home. Brian's father was locked up in the Lansing Correctional Facility; his mother was an addict, Motley says.

Brian was thin, and a layer of dead skin made his scalp look white. (His head had never been scrubbed.) The Motleys nursed him to health. The boy grew strong — at 18 months, he could open the Motleys' double-pane sliding-glass door. He'd slip out of the house and wander into neighbors' homes. Most were kind to the little intruder. They'd seat him at the dinner table and call his parents.

"That was just Brian," Motley recalls.

Brian didn't know right from wrong. He could be mischievous and destructive. But Motley considered the strong bull of a child with the innocent smile to be his son. "I didn't view him any differently than any of my other kids," he says.

When Brian was 2 years old, the state of Kansas terminated the parental rights of his biological mother and father. The Motleys moved to adopt him. But Brian's father appealed the termination, stalling the adoption. Social and Rehabilitation Services assured the Motleys that everything would be OK. The judge in the case even signed an order green-lighting the adoption. However, nothing could be finalized until the appeal had run its course.

"We didn't worry about it," Motley tells the Pitch.

Soon enough, Motley had other things to worry about.

Feeling fatigued, Betty Motley went to the doctor in October 1997. She also had a persistent pain in her abdomen. An MRI, blood work and a biopsy all indicated the worst: colon cancer was killing her.

"Do you ever play the lottery?" the oncologist asked Betty. "You have a better chance of winning the lottery than surviving this."

The doctor recommended chemotherapy. At best, it would prolong her life a few days or weeks. Betty turned down the treatment — a decision her husband supported. She saw a nutritionist and took supplements to strengthen her immune system. She died at home in Overland Park on New Year's Day 1998.

Betty's death shook Motley's faith. Once again, he questioned God's existence. The intimacy he had finally achieved was lost. Gregg turned back to pornography for a short time.

Even worse, Betty's death set in motion another cruel turn of events.

When Betty was diagnosed as terminally ill, a state social worker told Motley that the SRS didn't think he could handle raising Brian and five other children by himself. Brian's adoption had never been finalized, so the SRS removed the boy from Motley's home.

"I was wounded and grieving, and so I didn't fight it," Motley says.

Brian was 4 when the state took him from the only real home he'd ever known. He bounced around the foster-care system — one couple adopted him but gave him up when he became too difficult to handle.

"That was just more of my grief and more of the questioning of God," Motley says. "If my wife were alive, Brian wouldn't be going through this stuff. Do you know what you're doing?"

Three months after Brian left Motley's home, Brian told a Douglas County caseworker that his foster dad had sexually abused him.

The Overland Park Police Department suspected Motley. Investigators interrogated Motley and interviewed his children, then cleared him.

"I knew Brian couldn't have made those things up," Motley says. "They really happened to him. So I was just broken that my son had been treated like that and I had guilt again."

Brian's new parents were Christy and Neil Edgar Sr., who adopted him in June 2000. The Edgars were pastors at God's Creation Outreach Ministry in Kansas City, Kansas. Christy Edgar claimed to be a prophet who could speak directly to God.

The Edgars preached strict discipline of children. At night, they frequently bound and gagged 9-year-old Brian and his three siblings. Brian reportedly earned the nickname Houdini for his ability to escape his restraints and sneak out for cookies. But on the night of December 29, 2002, Brian couldn't free himself from the tape.

Neil Edgar carried Brian's lifeless body into KU Medical Center at 4 a.m. on December 30. Brian had been dead for several hours, an autopsy would later reveal.