A former Greater Grace World Outreach pastor was arrested this week in Florida, four months after a Massachusetts grand jury indicted him for child sexual abuse.

Eric Anderson, 80, who once led the Baltimore megachurch’s Bible college, is facing two counts of indecent assault and battery of a child. The abuse is alleged to have occurred in 1980, when Anderson lived in and worked at the church’s former headquarters in western Massachusetts. The organization with offshoots around the world was known at the time as The Bible Speaks.

Massachusetts State Police detectives used license plate reader technology to find Anderson near the Gulf Coast. He was arrested on Monday.

“Upon his return to Massachusetts, the defendant will face long overdue justice for his heinous crimes,” Berkshire County District Attorney Timothy Shugrue said in a statement. He is seeking Anderson’s extradition.

Before being apprehended in Florida on a fugitive from justice charge, Eric Anderson had been living in rural Virginia with his son, Jesse Anderson, who was convicted of molesting a boy in the church but did not serve prison time for his felony offenses. Another son, Jonathan Anderson, has also been accused of abuse, though he has not been charged with a crime.

Eric Anderson’s arrest comes one year after The Banner exposed decades of child sexual abuse and cover-ups within Greater Grace.

Erika Slater accused Eric Anderson of ushering her behind his desk and groping her several times in the spring of 1980, when she was in first grade and he was her school principal. Last summer, following publication of The Banner’s investigative series, Slater traveled from her home in upstate New York to Massachusetts to file a police report.

“I’m thankful he’s being held without bail,” Slater said Friday. She also applauded the multiple state law enforcement agencies who were involved in Eric Anderson’s apprehension, saying they were undeterred by his evasiveness.

Members of The Millstones, the group of former church members who investigated the organization’s handling of abuse allegations, said Eric Anderson was one of the first alleged perpetrators they learned about.

“He’s been the source of immense pain and suffering across multiple generations,” they wrote in a statement following his indictment. “The justice he’s facing now is long overdue.”

Eric Anderson did not respond to a request for comment following his indictment. His wife, Joycelyn Anderson, previously told The Banner that her husband called the allegations “total garbage.” He’s now being held without bail by the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and has contested his extradition to Massachusetts.

Greater Grace Head Pastor Thomas Schaller released a statement Thursday with other church elders urging anyone with information about Eric Anderson to share it with investigators.

“The pursuit of justice is a command to believers,” the elders wrote. “We are grateful for law enforcement officers who pursue justice, and for the individuals who chose to speak to authorities, knowing the choice to engage the criminal justice process often comes at great personal cost.”

Long before Erika Slater described her alleged abuse to The Banner, she posted about it anonymously on a now-defunct website called FACTnet.

Using the pseudonym Preston, she wrote about being a young child in the church. Slater’s family, like so many early church members, moved from place to place, sleeping in dorms of shared housing with other families.

Slater’s posts alluded to being abused in one shared living space, in a narrative written from her perspective as a child. “I don’t like the top floor. Sometimes he locks me up there,” she wrote in a post from November 2005. “Sometimes I run for the door and he laughs at me because he is stronger. He touches me and I don’t like it.”

She later told members of The Millstones she was speaking about Eric Anderson.

Slater is now a paralegal and child abuse caseworker who helps other survivors of abuse. She previously said she hopes coming forward will encourage others to report sexual abuse to law enforcement, even if they’re not ready to speak about the allegations publicly.

Over the last year, she said she has communicated with nearly two dozen former members of the church who say they survived sexual abuse.

“I’m an example that it’s never too late to report,” Slater said.

“Contact the authorities where your abuse occurred and hold abusers accountable,” she added. “We are not powerless. It might prevent the next tragedy.”

Civil lawsuits are piling up that accuse church leaders of failing to protect former members from sexual abuse they say they suffered as children, and an independent investigation into the church’s handling of sexual misconduct allegations is ongoing. Church leaders also recently expelled two pastors accused of sexual misconduct.