A former Ohio missionary who spent nearly two decades traveling to Haiti for mission work has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing boys there, entering his plea before a judge in Cleveland just months after walking out of an Ohio prison early. Jeriah Mast, 45, of Millersburg, admitted to federal charges involving a 2004 case and one of the 2011 cases, according to a plea agreement in which he and prosecutors agreed an appropriate sentence would fall between 25 and 33 years.
Mast entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Donald C. Nugent, who holds final sentencing authority in the case, as reported by The Hamilton Spectator. He was formally indicted in December 2025 on four federal charges of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place, with the federal indictment alleging he abused four boys in Haiti, each between 12 and 16 years old. As part of the deal, prosecutors agreed to move for dismissal of the two remaining charges. Travel records obtained by Homeland Security Investigations, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, showed Mast took more than 30 flights between the United States and Haiti from November 2002 through August 2018 during his mission trips.
A. Tysen Duva said Mast's conduct represented a profound betrayal of trust and that the plea was an important step toward justice, per the Spectator's reporting. Mast admitted the factual basis of the remaining charges in his plea agreement and reserved the right to appeal an earlier ruling denying his motion to dismiss the charges. That motion, filed by his attorney in May, argued that federal prosecution of non-commercial sexual abuse committed abroad exceeded Congress's authority under the Foreign Commerce Clause. Judge Nugent rejected that argument in August, relying on 6th Circuit precedent upholding the statute, according to CaseMine.
A Law Built to Close a Loophole
The federal charges rest on 18 U.S.C. § 2423(c), a statute established under the 2003 PROTECT Act that criminalizes illicit sexual conduct by U.S. citizens abroad regardless of whether intent was formed before travel — closing a loophole that previously required proving intent at the time of departure, per the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Affairs Manual. The law carries a maximum sentence of 30 years per count. Mast told police in 2019 that he had molested more than 30 boys in Haiti and four children in Ohio, according to the Spectator's report, and he allegedly abused boys in Haiti in 2004, 2007 and 2011. The U.S. Department of Justice's Citizens' Guide identifies 18 U.S.C. § 2423(c) as the federal provision covering illicit sexual conduct in foreign places, including illegal sexual conduct with a child such as rape or molestation. Congress.gov and the Congressional Research Service describe Section 2423 as establishing four sex-related travel offenses, including attempts and conspiracies, with the relevant provision carrying a maximum sentence of not more than 30 years.
Mast's path to federal court ran through a controversial state release. He was sentenced in 2019 in Holmes County Common Pleas Court to nine years in prison on Ohio charges of gross sexual imposition involving two boys. But retired Judge Edward Emmett O'Farrell granted him early judicial release on October 14, 2025, after Mast served less than six years of that sentence, basing the decision on what O'Farrell described as an exemplary prison record and Mast's remorse for his crimes, according to Detroit Legal News. The original sentencing judge had recused himself from the release proceedings because he had previously served as prosecutor on the case, prompting the Ohio Supreme Court to assign O'Farrell as a visiting judge, according to a post in a local Facebook group.
According to an Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction ten-year follow-up of 1989 sex offenders, 7.4% of sex offenders who returned to an Ohio prison did so for a new sex-related offense, with those returns occurring within a few years of release. An Ohio Legislative Service Commission report lists a 15.5% recidivism rate for adult offenders whose offense type was sex, compared with a 38.0% rate overall.
Federal Agents Moved Fast After Release Notice
The investigation into Mast's actions in Haiti had remained largely dormant while he sat in Ohio state prison, but Homeland Security Investigations and federal prosecutors reopened and accelerated it immediately after learning of his impending early release, arresting him on federal charges in November 2025 — shortly after he had already been placed on three years of supervised probation upon his state release. Mast lives in Millersburg, in Holmes County, which is the hub of one of the nation's largest Amish settlements, and he belonged to a church in a related Anabaptist movement.
Mast is a former missionary with Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries, a relief organization headquartered in Berlin and Millersburg that coordinates missionary activities supported by Amish, conservative Mennonite and related church groups. The ministry reported total annual revenues of more than $169 million in 2024, according to ProPublica. Christian Aid Ministries kept Mast on the job after learning of his confession, and managers at the organization knew as early as 2013 that he had confessed to sexual misconduct, according to the Spectator's account of the case.
Ministry Faced Its Own Reckoning
After that history became public in 2019, Christian Aid Ministries placed two top managers, Paul Weaver and Eli Weaver, on leave pending an investigation, according to Charisma Magazine Online. That same year, a court commissioner in Petit-Goâve, Haiti, issued a formal summons demanding that CAM leadership bring Mast to Haiti to face local proceedings, threatening to halt the ministry's operations in the country if it did not comply, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Mast had already left Haiti for Ohio by the time the summons was issued. More recently, investigative reporting in April disclosed that Christian Aid Ministries paid financial settlements to Haitian abuse victims while requiring them to sign nondisclosure agreements, according to The Roys Report, with legal analysts noting the agreements could complicate federal criminal proceedings.
Mast's case has drawn attention to sexual abuse issues within conservative, plain-dressing Anabaptist communities, where advocates say victims have been pressured to reconcile with abusers and avoid seeking prosecution outside largely closed religious circles, per the Spectator's reporting by Peter Smith. Christian Aid Ministries has also faced upheaval abroad beyond the abuse case: in 2021, 17 of the ministry's missionaries and their children were kidnapped in Haiti. The ministry has said most of the group escaped, some were ransomed by a third party, and the remaining captives were freed later that year.
Mast is scheduled for sentencing on December 15, when Judge Nugent will determine his final punishment within the range set out in the plea agreement.
