Holsworth (rear, center) on the bedroom set of an ad he produced for Museum of Flight, with his crew and their young star

In 2005, Youth Ministries leader James Galen Holsworth (now AKA ‘Jae MacAllan’) of Lake Burien Presbyterian Church – just south of Seattle – was arrested and charged with multiple counts of sex crimes against children, including molestation. The allegations were based on accounts given by victims and witnesses detailing his engagement in sexual activities with multiple young men from the ages of 15 to as young as 13 years old. He pleaded guilty to three of those charges (likely as a result of plea bargaining), served some jail time, and was placed on probation for three years.



Soon after his probation ended in 2009, Holsworth began using the alias ‘Jae MacAllan’, and founded the company YoyoString Creative, which has produced several high profile videos over the past ten years, some of which which have involved the use of child actors, and/or feature dozens of photos of kids and teens, taken inside schools.

The 2005 accusations and resulting conviction are well documented in public court records. The original docket gives the most complete and descriptive account of his abuse and manipulation of a group of boys while serving as a youth group leader at their church. Please be aware, it is graphic and harrowing. Below is a relatively light (but telling) excerpt from it:

Some of the least disturbing material found in the court documents

Holsworth also became co-founder of the shared workspace Collective Chemistry, which rents out desks to creative professionals in their hip office space in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. His business partner Adam Knight, who co-founded and works out of the same shared workspace, runs Red Element Studios, a video production company. Red Element has produced multiple videos involving children, for such clients as the YMCA, the Boys & Girls Club, private schools, and Bullwinkle’s family amusement park. Holsworth’s company YoyoString Creative has produced videos featuring children for The Museum of Flight and for The Bush School – one of the same private schools Red Element has also done work for.

It’s unclear to me how much Holsworth and Red Element Studios have collaborated on projects, but photos on social media show them working together as members of camera crews on locations such as a high school in Richland, WA, and Sasquatch Music Festival where Holsworth controlled the main stage’s remote cameras. The two have shared office space, including a video & photography studio, and equipment, for several years.

Knight apparently never ran a background check on his business partner. This might not have not seemed surprising to me, if it weren’t for a number of irregularities which must have been apparent, such as the fact that YoyoString Creative, LLC was even registered under Holsworth’s real name. Also, most close friends and business partners tend to see each other’s real names on paperwork, IDs, credit cards, etc. fairly often. Holsworth may have had a convincing cover story, because Knight apparently remained oblivious to his con for so long.

Anyone who learned his real name could easily have found out about his background: One Google search for “james holsworth seattle” today brings up mentions on background check sites about the existence of his criminal records, as the second result. On page two of those same results are the details of the LLC filing for YoyoString Creative, the one mentioned above. (Incredibly, though, it does not bring up any news stories about his case – even if you include ‘burien’. So far I haven’t been able to find any articles about it at all, save the very basic blog post you’re reading now, and the court docket.)

Archived copy of the notice detailing the release and location of level II sex offender James Galen Holsworth



The snapshot to the left is from an archived copy of the bulletin the King County Sheriff Dept. had on their Sex Offender Watch Map from 2006 through 2016. The Sheriff’s Dept. legally has to remove such listings after 10 years for level II offenders such as Holsworth, but private sites may make them available indefinitely.

I was able to find that bulletin within 5 minutes of learning his real name.

Another red flag was that Holsworth, when acting as MacAllan, purported himself to have been “a Presbyterian minister for 17 years” quite often, but there is zero reference to any ‘Jae MacAllan’ as such on the web. That is highly unusual for the name of any minister serving after 1990. After speaking with Elaine Jones Swigart, who was Interim Pastor of the Lake Burien Presbyterian Church at the time of his arrest, I learned that Holsworth was, and has never been, an ordained minister under any name. The few times I heard Holsworth make this claim myself, he never followed it up with any information about what church he was a “minister” at, where, or anything else about that experience.

Frankly, though, I usually did my best to avoid him – especially as his casual pats on my back turned into ever creepier rubs. That was my first motivation both to leave his office space, and to start digging into his past; something literally felt wrong.

Although never ordained, Holsworth was involved in youth ministries as a professional and as a volunteer for about 16 years prior to the arrest. His masters degree from SPU is in outdoor education, and for many years he was part of the group Young Life which is centered on forming close individual relationships between youth and adult church members.

“Kids want to hear the truth and have an opportunity to be candid.” – James Galen Holsworth (AKA Jae MacAllan), in his bio on Lake Burien Presbyterian Church’s website, 2005

Jones Swigart says that after his arrest, he wouldn’t allow her to visit him in jail. She says that by all accounts he became completely silent during that time. She speculates it was “probably because he felt embarrassed”. Personally, I hope he feels mortally ashamed.

People who experience sexual abuse early in life become much more likely to face a wide range of adversities, including substance abuse, unplanned pregnancies, and poor academic performance, and are statistically 2-3 times more likely to attempt suicide. There is also overwhelming evidence of the comorbidity of childhood sexual abuse and mental illnesses later in life, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Only Holsworth may know how many youth he has sexually interfered with and exploited over the years, if he has kept count.

Anyone affected by sexual assault, whether it’s happened to you or to someone you care about, can find support on the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (800-656-4673). You can also visit online.rainn.org to receive support via confidential online chat.

If you believe that a child has been or is being abused, please do not hesitate to call law enforcement. You can also contact the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children 24 hours a day at 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678) to seek advice and/or report abuse, past or present. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911.

(Personal note: Whatever you do, do not try and contain your suspicions to within your family, church, workplace, or social circle. Abusers are typically quite talented social engineers, who create a facade of trust around themselves. It usually takes someone from outside that framework to see through it.)