From worship correspondent Kelsey Kramer McGinnis: The Newsboys is one of the few contemporary Christian music acts that have been able to sustain a decades-long career in the industry. In the ’90s and 2000s, they were a quirky youth-group rock band. Over the past 15 years, they have attached themselves to the God’s Not Dead franchise. They have reinvented themselves over and over. A lot of people in the industry have some connection with them.

When The Roys Report last month published allegations of sexual assault and substance abuse by Michael Tait, there was an online chorus of voices saying that, in the Christian music industry, “everyone knew” what was going on behind the scenes.

We don’t know if that’s true. It’s an open question of who knew what and when. But there is a story to be told about the Christian music industry and its inability to put up moral and spiritual guardrails, despite the implicit and sometimes explicit claims that it offers something that is safe for the whole family.

As I talked with individuals about their experiences with the Newsboys, I was struck by how nervous many of them were to speak on the record. Christian music is a relatively small, interconnected industry niche. That dynamic, it seems, has made it difficult to create any meaningful guardrails. It also makes it challenging to report on abuse and mismanagement.