Craig Stump, a former youth pastor and reserve deputy sheriff who is challenging incumbent Sen. Todd Gollihare in Tuesday’s primary election, was confronted at a May 28 Republican Party forum by a woman who said he spoke lewdly to her when she was a minor babysitting his children.
“I haven’t painted my fingernails red since I was 10 years old. Because when I walked out of my grandparents’ room, the man I called my uncle, you, told me those red fingernails were sexy,” the woman said.
Stump replied: “Me? Who are you? Who are you?”
“Yes, you told me that it meant (…) I was good to go, sir,” the woman said. “Is that a God-fearing thing to do?”
Captured live on a Facebook stream, the confrontation has sparked other questions about Stump, whom family members and non-family members have accused of child sexual abuse for nearly 20 years. In a 2007 protective order, Stump’s then-wife accused him of sexually and physically abusing their children. In 2018, a separate woman filed a protective order against Stump alleging repeated sexual abuse and rape beginning when she was 12 in 2008.
“I have never done anything to any of the children,” Stump eventually fired back during the Drumright GOP community meeting. “I’ve never done anything to you. Never. Not once.”
But Stefanie Casey, the woman who asked Stump a question about his actions two decades ago, insisted that Stump had made sexual remarks to her as a child.
“When I was 15, I was at your house, babysitting your children,” Casey said to Stump. “You came home before your wife, who’s my aunt. You had adult items on your bed. You asked me if I wanted to use them.”
Stump interjected: “I’m sorry, you are — that, that — you are lying now.”
Contacted Sunday by NonDoc, Casey chose to tell her story again, offering additional details and timelines about her experiences with Stump and her understanding of other accusations he has faced.
“I don’t think that you should represent people when you have done that to children,” she said. “I am an advocate for kids. (…) I don’t think someone who hurts kids should represent my state. It irritated me that he was capable of even running because it wasn’t even proven that he did anything, and that is one of the reasons that I spoke up.”
Casey is the niece of Jodi Huff, Stump’s second ex-wife, who filed the 2007 protective order.
“My daughter [redacted] told me her father has been ‘touching her privates with his finger cause his pepe wouldn’t fit,'” Huff wrote in the Oct. 19, 2007, filing. “The other children said he hits and strangles them. My daughter [redacted] also said he touches her.”
Early Monday morning, Huff contacted NonDoc after learning that Casey had answered questions about Stump and the abuse allegations that have followed him for two decades.
“I never got justice for my kids — or me, for that matter, because I was his victim, too,” Huff said. “I’m tired of him just acting like nothing happened. I have tried to pick up the pieces that he destroyed for the last 20-plus years with my children, because the damage that he did to them has lifelong effects.”
When Stump announced his Senate District 12 candidacy in February, he was praised by some as a conservative champion who was righteously challenging Gollihare (R-Kellyville), whose vote against a bill proposing the total abolition of abortion in Oklahoma drew significant scrutiny.
“We will be praying for your success in this endeavor!” one man wrote on Stump’s campaign announcement Facebook post. “Gollihare needs to be replaced by a godly, abolitionist candidate.”
When Huff learned of Stump’s campaign for Senate District 12 in February, she said she “was sickened.”
“I was like, ‘This arrogant son of a bitch.’ That was my honest response,” she said. “How the fuck does he think he can just sweep it under the rug?”
While Stump initially did not respond to messages seeking an interview about his SD 12 campaign — requests first made before NonDoc’s journalists knew about the accusations against him — he answered a phone call Monday afternoon.
“It’s all a bunch of lies,” said Stump, who works for American Airlines and is running for SD 12 on a litany of conservative principles.
Stump said Huff had made up the allegations against him.
“The only thing that I’m going to say about the past is, if there was any evidence at all, I’d be in jail today, because there was no evidence,” Stump said. “The only thing that occurred ever at all was her accusing me of something to make certain that she got custody of my kids, and I’m talking about their mother.”
He also claimed Casey’s story about babysitting his children was false because he would not have needed her help.
“The other accusation, I had a 15 year old at that time. Why in the world would I use her as a babysitter when I have one that old to start with?” Stump asked.
‘I’m talking about traumatic things’
Huff said she is not sure why Creek County District Attorney Max Cook chose not to file charges against Stump, although she has theories. Among other things, she said, “Craig has a lot of connections in Drumright.”
“The thing that pisses me off is the arrogance that he has to think that he can just hurt people and nothing happen,” Huff said. “When I saw he was running, I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ My children are old enough now to tell their stories. Both of my boys have been very vocal on Facebook about him running.”
Two of Stump’s sons saw his Feb. 6 campaign announcement and shared it on Facebook with critical comments about the man they say abused them. NonDoc has named one of the two men because he responded to a message prior to the publication of this article.
“This is hard but I will stand with my siblings no matter what,” wrote one of the men. “When I was a child, I was abused by a man who was married to my mother. ( Craig William Stump) He was not my biological father, but he lived in my home and had authority over me. One of the most violent moments I endured was when he tried to drown me. I remember being held underwater, struggling to breathe, and realizing that my life was completely in his hands. That kind of experience changes a child permanently.”
The other man, who changed his name in an effort to disassociate with Stump, posted that, “Craig Stump has spent his entire life running from the truth he created.”
“He built a cattle company, a polished image, and a new life with the children he chose to keep close, acting like the rest of us were disposable,” Paul Watashe posted. “He lives comfortably now, pretending the evil he did to us never existed, while the children he abandoned were left to grow up in the wreckage he caused. He acts like our pain is imaginary. Like the years of fear, neglect, and cruelty were just misunderstandings. But I didn’t forget. I remember everything. Every moment. Every wound. Every time he chose himself over his own children. I don’t have one good memory with this man — not one.”
Asked about the Facebook posts by the two men, Stump pushed back.
“Those two sons are druggies, and I do not — well, one of them is not my son — but they’re druggies,” Stump said.
Noting that he is “two years sober,” Watashe called NonDoc on Monday afternoon and outlined the extreme abuse he endured growing up with Stump and Huff.
“I’ve got scars from him where he would put candle wax on my ass and burn me. Things like that, you can’t make up,” Watashe said. “I have 100 memories of this man I could tell you. I’ve got journals and journals of things I’ve wrote down that happened to me.”
Watashe said that the sexual abuse of him and his siblings continued even during divorce proceedings when Department of Human Services workers were supervising visits.
“I’m talking about traumatic things. I’m talking about I’ve been tied to a chair and beat because I walked in on him touching my sister,” Watashe said. “That was during the custody battle he was in with my mom.”
Stump denied his sons’ allegations.
“What happened was, I quit giving them money because they were using it for drugs,” Stump said. “So it’s turned that whole group against me because I don’t want to give them money.”
Asked about the 2018 protective order filed against him by a woman who designated herself as a “victim of rape” starting at age 12, Stump ended the phone call.
“I’m not talking to you anymore because this is just a fishing expedition,” Stump said before hanging up.
NonDoc has been unable to reach the woman who filed the 2018 protective order case. She is not related to Huff or Casey, and she is not being identified in this article. However, her protective order application was initially approved, and she would have been 12 years old in 2008 when she alleged Stump’s abuse began.
“In November 2008, [Stump] enticed [me] to become sexually engaged with him. This behavior continued throughout August 2017,” the woman wrote. “He would bribe me with money or materialistic items in return for sexual favors, including but not limited to oral and vaginal penetration.”
Cook, who has been Creek County’s district attorney since 1997, did not respond to a voicemail prior to the publication of this story.
But another of Stump’s daughters, Chloe, called NonDoc on Monday afternoon to support her other family members’ statements about Stump.
“This legit is real. This happened,” she said. “It’s not being made up. I’ve had to go to therapy a lot when I was younger. I have trouble remembering a lot of my childhood — not just bad moments, good moments too. They’ve told me the reason I can’t remember a lot of things is because of the trauma. But my brothers, they remember a lot more than me.”
Huff said she blames herself for the abuse her children sustained.
“Here he runs and acts like nothing even happened,” Huff said, fighting back tears. “It’s so angering to me, because I have to deal with it. I have to pick it up. I have to see [them] suffer.”
Chloe said no one has motivation to make up stories about her dad.
“Us older kids, we blame our mom a lot for what happened to us. Not necessarily because it’s her fault, but because it happened under her nose,” she said. “And after we weren’t involved with my dad anymore, we were very poor, so we didn’t have the best upbringing exactly. It did cause a lot financially, mentally you know.”
She said that Stump’s campaign announcement left many people unsure whether to speak up about his past.
“At first, when we saw he was running, a lot of people were scared to say something,” Chloe said. “He obviously has power to get away with things he has done and to run for something so big.”
‘I can’t wrap my mind around it’
In speaking out about Stump, Casey and Huff said they realize some people will not believe them or will think they are engaged in political activity ahead of an election.
But Anna Flowers, another of Huff’s nieces, also contacted NonDoc on Monday to support her family members and verify details about the statements made by Huff and Casey.
“He’s just a sick individual,” Flowers said. “I can’t wrap my mind around it, because I don’t see how people can do stuff like that — and then just get away with it like it didn’t even happen.”
Like Casey, Flowers was 15 when she said Stump asked whether they wanted to play with sex toys on his bed. Additionally, Flowers discussed a time where she believed Stump was attempting to pick her up after church so they could be alone. She also recalled a “pretty traumatic” moment when her aunt and Stump argued over the safety of their children, during which time she said she hid.
“I remember [my grandpa] spending his entire retirement trying to get him thrown in jail over the whole situation,” Flowers said. “I would want people to know what he did to his babies. It’s not OK. My grandpa tried to put him in jail. But he was a cop, so he got away with it. That’s how I feel. I know what he’d done, and I’m not making any of it up. They had doctors’ reports and everything saying they’d been touched.”
Huff said she knew Stump while she was a minor through church and married him after she turned 18, having four children with him in six years. At first, she thought he only abused her, but eventually one of her children disclosed sexual abuse. Then another did as well.
“I really just thought Craig was abusing me. I didn’t know he was abusing them,” Huff said. “He had me so under his thumb. I was young. I was oblivious to a lot of things that were going on.”
Huff said Stump was “very, very abusive” to his male children, and she said he “would beat the shit out of” one son, Eric Thomas Stump, who pleaded guilty in 2023 and was sentenced to 19 years in prison on one count of child sexual abuse in Payne County.
“It happened to him, and he just repeated the cycle,” Huff said. “What he did was taught to him.”
‘There’s a lot of predators in political positions’
Before he was confronted at the May 28 forum in Drumright, Stump said people reached out to him about running against Gollihare owing to his opponent’s voting record.
SD 12
The winner of the June 16 Republican primary will face Democrat Erica Watkins in November.
“I was asked to run because our incumbent, who’s in office, is spending money left and right that I can’t agree with, and then you can’t agree with it,” Stump said. “He doesn’t vote conservative, he’s not a supporter of the people. That he’ll disagree with me, but he’s not. I guarantee you that if you have questions, you come to me and I’ll try and answer them. If you have something that needs to take place, you come to me and we will try and work through it. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, if you’re a Republican, an independent, it doesn’t matter, because when you are elected into office, you represent everybody.”
Ironically, Stump’s campaign against Gollihare was boosted by the late-session Senate shenanigans that irritated members of the hardline conservative Freedom Caucus and blocked dozens of bills eligible for consideration.
Among the measures blocked by Senate Republican Caucus leadership were HB 4227 and SB 740, which ultimately contained the same language but never received a Senate floor vote. Passed unanimously in the House and through a Senate Committee, they proposed eliminating Oklahoma’s statute of limitations for prosecuting child sexual abuse cases, which currently prohibits prosecutions after a victim’s 45th birthday. The bills also proposed a ban against the use of non-disclosure agreements in child sexual abuse cases.
Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton (R-Tuttle) cited Floor Leader Julie Daniels (R-Bartlesville) and Gollihare, an assistant floor leader, as two of the Senate leaders who had concerns with the bill. But minutes after the Senate adjourned May 14, Gollihare said he did not recall the bill at all.
“I don’t remember that. I really don’t remember that,” Gollihare said. “My head’s just gone today. No idea. I don’t remember it.”
First elected in 2022, Gollihare did not return phone calls and messages seeking an interview about his reelection campaign. (As with Stump, NonDoc’s outreach to Gollihare began before learning of the accusations against his opponent.)
Huff said she does not know Gollihare, but she said that in February, when she learned Stump had announced his campaign for SD 12, she wrote a Facebook message to Gollihare’s campaign account about the dangerous nature of her ex-husband. She said no one ever responded.
“It was never even opened,” Huff said of the message.
Cindy Clemishire, a child sexual abuse survivor who advocated for Gollihare and other senators to hear HB 4227, told NonDoc on Monday that, while she knows nothing about the accusations against Stump, victims who speak publicly rarely fabricate their stories. Instead, she said it’s people in leadership positions who often do not want to hear inconvenient truths.
“From my experience, people in authority have a tendency to protect predators. If they have any type of leadership position or anything, they want to protect that role for some reason,” Clemishire said. “We’ve got to stop protecting predators and believe people. Believe children, believe adults who say something happened to them. Quit putting these predators on a pedestal.”
Thinking about her experience trying to find justice for her children, Huff offered what might be considered a cynical take.
“There’s a lot of predators in political positions, so he’ll fit right in with a lot of them,” she said. “He does fit the bill.”
Casey said she thought it was telling that the host of the GOP gathering in Drumright defended Stump.
“And then you wonder why people don’t speak up? That night, I got asked to leave because I was making people uncomfortable, and that was from the person that was running it,” Casey said. “I got told I was disrespectful and that it should have been brought out in private. I refused to leave.”
Huff said she is glad people will finally hear front and center what has been murmured about in the Drumright area for years.
“He’s a predator. He’s been a predator for many, many years, and if that is who you want to be making decisions for you, then it’s a sad, sad world that we live in,” she said. “It’s reopened all these wounds that I thought I had healed. But I haven’t really healed them, I’ve just tried to block them and tried to move on. But I really hope people see the truth before he gets elected into office, because he is not a good representation for Oklahoma.”
(Correction: This article was updated at 5:10 p.m. Tuesday, June 16, to correct reference to the year Todd Gollihare was first elected to the Oklahoma Legislature.)
