Cara’s Testimony

Note: Cara is a pseudonym.

Cara shared some of her experiences with Jessica G in June 2025.  Jessica G wrote the following summary, which was then reviewed by Cara for accuracy and approved by her for public dissemination.

Cara began attending Scottsdale Bible Church in the early 2000’s and rededicated her life to Christ. She began to attend the young adults group called Crossroads and then Soma. Dave and Kathy attended. They were hard to miss, because they were decades older than everyone else. Dave’s hair was already greying. Dave invited her to attend his home group called Friday Night.

Cara began attending Friday Night in the mid 2000’s. She describes it as follows. The format of the gathering was that it began with songs. Then there would be a time of silence. Dave would share a word he had received or teach on a passage of scripture he had been contemplating. Sometimes others would share a word. She remembers Dave would sometimes stop, close his eyes and lift up his hands. “We’d be waiting for him to say something. I felt drawn into it, and was waiting, expecting the next thing would be really important.” Afterwards people would break into men’s and women’s prayer groups. Then people would often come back together to hang out or eat.

Cara remembers how Dave would ask people questions in order to determine their spiritual gifts. She was labeled as a prophetess. It made her feel special, like she was one of the cool kids. She saw Dave and Kathy engaging with the young adults and felt like they were trying to pour into people. She thought that Dave would be her mentor and guide. She said to herself, “I’m going to follow you.” She remembers Dave teaching that prophets saw things as black and white, they had discernment and could confirm if a word was from God. Dave invited her to what he called his “School of Prophets”, a group of mostly young men, who met at a restaurant near Dave’s house. Dave would have them purchase a specific sized binder with tabs for notes. Dave taught them the book of Romans. The study proceeded slowly. They met for several years without completing the study. 

It was during this time that Dave made inappropriate comments to Cara.

One occurred when she and Dave were at a restaurant. There were other people from SOMA there (SOMA was a young adults group at Scottsdale Bible Church). She ended up sitting alone with Dave. Dave said, “Your legs look good in shorts”. She replied and said that is not something he should say to her. He said that he was sorry her father never complimented his daughter. She got angry. She told Dave that her father would not have made a comment complimenting her legs. She also said that her father loved her. She remembers the interaction vividly because it was the first time she stood up for herself.

At another time she was walking with Dave outside his house after Friday Night. He said to her that he wished the church allowed polygamy so that he could have both her and Kathy as his wives. She felt both complimented and grossed out because he was so much older. She was not attracted to him at all. She did feel close to him, but then after a while she got the ‘ick’ from him and knew she had to be careful around him. Dave would also tell the group that he had always struggled with lust. Kathy seemed to take an attitude of pity / sympathy for Dave over the issue.  What made Dave palatable was Kathy. Cara thought that Dave could not be too creepy since his wife was often standing nearby in the room. 

According to Cara,while she attended Dave’s “School of Prophets”, Dave told her and the group about what would come to be known as the “Belarus Prophecy”. Dave looked sad. He had tears in his eyes. There were these pregnant pauses, building up the suspense, he says that he got a word from God. He had just come back from Belarus. He had a Friday Night like group in Belarus. The Lord had told him that Kathy was going to die. Everyone knew that Kathy had chronic medical issues and her health was delicate. Dave said God told him that God was going to take Kathy away. And that God had already given him a new bride, who was a young and beautiful woman from Belarus. He then shared that when he was in Belarus he proposed to this young woman, even though she was already engaged to someone else. Dave said the only people who knew were his sons. Everyone was shocked. Cara felt very uncomfortable about what Dave had said. But no one called-out Dave or told him what he had done was wrong. Months passed and nothing happened. Kathy did not die. Dave reframed his prophecy as a test from God, like what had happened with Abraham and Isaac. For Cara, nothing was the same afterwards, something felt off, but it didn’t stop her from going to Friday night.

Cara met her husband outside of Friday Night. He lived several hours away and would travel to Phoenix to spend the weekends with her.  They would attend church together, but not Friday Night. When they started thinking about getting married, they attended pre-marital counseling through SBC. But it did not get into any deep topics. Cara told him that before he proposed he needed to get permission from her mom and from Dave. Dave “checked” him out and gave the green light. Dave told her that when Dave married couples, he ties tight knots, that no one he had married had ever gotten divorced, and that she won’t be the first.

So she got engaged. Her fiancé took a job out of state. She moved to the other state and then married him. Shortly afterwards she discovered that he was cheating on her. He had a profile on Ashley Madison. She was furious. She told Dave and Kathy about it. She then found a local church to try to fix her marriage. She was part of a group called ‘betrayed hearts’, which told women to wait and forgive, while not providing any accountability for the cheating husbands. Her husband would not agree to have anyone hold him accountable.

Desperate, she reached out to Dave and Kathy. Dave and Kathy were attending a conference in a nearby city and invited her and her husband to visit them for the weekend, for a “counseling intensive”. Dave spoke to her husband. Her husband cried and said he was sorry. All four prayed together. Dave and Kathy said that what her husband did was wrong. But they also told her that she should not get a divorce for any reason.

After that weekend she fell into a dark place. She and her husband were having significant financial problems. She became suicidal. Because of Dave’s teaching, she believed if she divorced she would lose her church community, her friends, and that she would go to hell. But then she found new evidence that her husband was still cheating on her. She describes it as something snapped in her. She threw him out, and with him, God, the church, and Dave and Kathy. She never spoke to them again. It was too painful. She was certain that she would be judged for getting a divorce. This was because divorce in general had been discussed multiple times and at length at Friday Night. Dave taught that  divorce was wrong in all situations and that remarriage was not possible. If she did get divorced she would never be able to remarry and she would be alone for the rest of her life. If she did re-marry she would be committing adultery and living in sin. If she was living in sin she could not be around God, so she would go to hell. 

So she made one of the hardest yet best decisions of her life, and she divorced her husband. Immediately afterwards she received a large raise and was able to finally create financial stability for herself. She is grateful that she found help from her mother, who offered her love no matter what. There was no replacing the years she lost and she would end up not having the children she had wanted, but still she has rebuilt her life, made new friends and created truly loving relationships. 

Quinn reached out to Cara while researching past Friday Night attenders who had been hurt by Dave. She had moved on from Friday Night and had not thought about Dave and Kathy for years. She has decided to share her story because she wants to help stop Dave from harming other women. She stated that it is important to tell people that Dave Cottrell is simply a man, a very flawed man with serious issues and he is not qualified or certified to give any kind of counseling (premarital or otherwise).

Tyler’s Testimony

by Tyler (different from Tyler H)

When I first joined Friday Night, I met and talked with Papa Dave for a while and gained a high initial impression/opinion of him. We talked theology and life and seemed to connect and I felt there was respect between us. I attended FN pretty regularly for a few years after that. 

About 2.5 years in, I met and got engaged to a woman outside the group, spending a lot of time out of state. I did talk with Dave about some things regarding this relationship, to which some things were affirmed and some overall advice was given. Ultimately, this engagement got broken off, and although Dave was supportive initially to me at the time, I noticed a significant shift in the way he viewed/treated me from then on, as though I was lesser, unwise, immature. This was different from the way that other members of the group treated me after talking with me through things that had happened, that I had tried my hardest to make the best choices that I could at the time. It was noticeable in Dave’s body language, facial expressions, word choice and overall demeanor towards me from then on out. There was a notable disdain that I could tangibly perceive in my direction. It made me question my own spiritual positioning and things I had previously thought to be solid, which in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it’s always good to evaluate yourself and what you know to be true. But his words and actions towards me made me feel inferior and ultimately did not line up with what I found to be true. It was too long ago to remember exact words that were said (which were never direct), but it was as though he no longer viewed me as truly a Christian and treated me as such. At no point did he address anything specific with me to try to help anything that he may have viewed to be “off” with me, rather he began to give off an air that he did not like me, which again was different from before. He told me to get discipled, which I then did for a few years through the group. 

It’s worth noting, however, that during my time at FN, I noticed strange behavior from Dave towards women, particularly young women. Dave normally would give more embracing, strong/close hugs to everyone, but there were a number of times where I would witness this hug linger a bit long when hugging a young woman, and he would kiss her on top of her head, and sometimes a tight nuzzling type of action, where he would follow it up with a tighter hug and put his cheek on their head before letting go. Never did I see this asked for, and I always felt uncomfortable seeing it happen but told myself it was probably fine. The body language of the women being kissed on the head seemed uncertain, seemingly vulnerable and receptive initially but would appear to turn visibly uncomfortable. A friend of mine in the group also commented to me about this behavior and how it made her uncomfortable as well, as he would do this with her, which confirmed what I was observing and the effect it was having. There was a general uncertainty around it, because it seemed the assumption was that Dave’s actions were presumed to be normal in some aspect, despite it not being normal to those seeing and experiencing it outside of that group. I never presumed that there was a power dynamic to this, but I think my perception was a bit swayed by my view of Dave’s spiritual authority. He’s very knowledgeable about scripture and faith, and I believe that added to my view from early on that he could do no wrong. It’s a very common thing in the group to view whatever Dave says as the ultimate truth, and to essentially seek approval from him for final answers in many situations. So, the strange behaviors, both physical and psychological, get written off or dismissed because of his tenured headship and spiritual authority. 

I don’t doubt that Dave hears from the Lord, but we are all fallible and capable of hearing something that is not actually from the Lord. There were times regarding my situation that I did not believe that what Dave said came from the Lord, and there were other times where I knew what he said did indeed come from the Lord. The view in the group, however, is strongly seen as: Dave hears from the Lord in everything at all times. There have been several people I’ve known that were in the group for many years and left for various reasons involving strange, divisive and hurtful behavior from group leadership dynamics. I can’t speak to anyone else’s situation in great detail, but it’s clear these have been far from isolated incidents.