Will churches welcome registered sex offenders? In viral videos, many say 'yes'

A self-described lesbian pro-choice Army veteran in Kentucky is going viral for posting videos to TikTok in which she phones churches to ask if a registered child sex offender would be welcome at their Sunday family services. The key part of her request goes like this in one of her more than 60 videos:

After inquiring about what times services are held, Nikalie Monroe tells the woman answering the phone at Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, Idaho, that she's a mom and married to a man with a dark past.

"It's kind of embarrassing, so please don't judge me," says Monroe, matter-of-factly. "My husband is a registered child sex offender and legally not allowed [near] kids or whatever, so I didn't know if there'd be any issues if we just came to service."

The woman on the other end of their recorded conversation, who identified herself as "Deb" in this video, hesitates for just a moment before telling Monroe, "There is not, no."

This video is labeled number 49, and Monroe has been conducting what she calls on her GoFundMe "social experiments" like this since at least November 2025.

All fall and winter, she asked churches if they would help a family with a starving baby, or would help pay for a fever reducer for an infant. In one video, Monroe reveals she and her partner do in fact have two small nieces they are raising because, as of January, their parents are incarcerated. In another video, she phoned a mosque in Charlotte, N.C. with the same request for help. "No hesitation," she captioned the video, and one commenter wrote, "Notice how he didn't even ask if you were Muslim."

On June 17, Monroe followed up those videos with a series of new recorded calls, labeled "Testing Your Church PDF Files;" PDF is internet slang for "pedophile." Her TikTok playlist has 62 of these videos; they can also be viewed on her Instagram account.

Related: 20 Christian churches, ranked on LGBTQ+ support

So how many churches have told Monroe a registered child sex offender would not be welcome at their Sunday church service?

Of the 62 videos featuring Monroe's calls, so far only one has resulted in an answer of "no": The Roman Catholic Blessed Sacrament Church in Dallas, Texas, said she and her fake family could not attend Sunday Mass.

One person commenting on another video suggested, "Oh, but if someone's gay, they can't?" That's actually not the case for most of the 20 Christian and Christian-affiliated churches in The Advocate's ranking of LGBTQ+ acceptance.

Monroe takes requests as well, and wrote on her GoFundMe that she's received hundreds of them. She said while she cannot guarantee she'll get a response, she says she will at least try. And she says she's also been getting blowback.

"You just hate Christians," is the caption of one video, describing some reactions to her project. Her response: "No, I'm just exposing the bad seeds within the church. I love the good Christians!" And a follower told her, "As a Christian I'm on your side."

"The pastors keep hoping I'll disappear," she captioned another video. "The algorithm keeps saying, 'Absolutely not.'"

If you're wondering if what Monroe does is legal, Kentucky law says so. It's what is known in legal and journalism circles as a "one party state," which means so long as one participant in a phone conversation is aware it's being recorded, no law is broken, even if the state where the other party is located doesn't allow it.

What about the churches? Are they violating the law if they allow a registered child sex offender to attend services in the presence of children? One law firm in Missouri has a FAQ about this very question on its website.

AG Financial advises pastors that, to their knowledge, no church has been held liable for "unknowingly allowing a registered sex offender to attend services." And their advice is they can do nothing, exclude all known registered sex offenders, or require them to sign an agreement.

But the woman who answered the phone at Real Life Ministries suggested all Monroe needed to do was have a conversation with their head of security, even when she claimed their make-believe son had been sexually abused by her make-believe husband, that he had served four years in prison for that crime and that he was forbidden to be near children. Monroe even asked if he could visit the church's daycare, and Deb didn't have an answer. A two-second search on Google revealed Idaho law requires registered sex offenders stay at least 500 feet from schools and daycares.

Deb instead referred her to Gary, the head of security, and her call went straight to voicemail, leaving Monroe free to visit church on Sunday with her sex offender husband and their abused son, neither of whom actually exist.