Sexual assault scandal hits religion TV – again

The Trinity Broadcasting Network is under fire at the moment on account of a lawsuit going on. It involves a granddaughter of the network’s founders. Carra Crouch, age 19, is claiming she was raped by a 30 year male employee when she was thirteen and that TBN executives hushed it up rather than report it to the authorities.

“Jan (Crouch) became furious and began screaming at Ms. Crouch, a thirteen year old girl, and began telling her ‘it is your fault,’” according to the suit.

Carra Crouch then told John Casoria, TBN’s in-house counsel and her second cousin; he became agitated and told her that he didn’t believe her, it says. “He elaborated by stating he further believed she was already sexually active ‘so it did not really matter’ and he ‘believed she may have propositioned him,’ ” the suit alleges.

Unfortunately, that’s often the way rape reports are received. A fine upstanding man.. he must have been coerced by that Lolita!

“Ms. Crouch, a thirteen year old girl, had not been sexually active and was absolutely devastated about what happened and about how John and Jan responded to her.”

Both Jan Crouch and John Casoria are ordained ministers, and as such, are legally required to report suspected child abuse to authorities under the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act, the suit says. No report was made, and TBN “deliberately covered up the incident to protect Trinity Broadcasting from negative publicity,” it alleges.

I knew about this station, I think, but being Canadian and without cable or satellite (by choice), no surprise it never occurred to me to look into news about them. Apparently I missed a money scandal back in February. Brittany Koper, Carra’s sister, accused the TBN board of diverting millions of dollars away from their charity work. TBN, on the other hand, filed suit against Koper and her husband the month before, accusing them of siphoning the money while they were on TBN’s board. That suit was dismissed in January, unsettled.

Redemption Strategies Inc. — a corporation formed by Loe on Oct. 17 — sued the Koperts on Oct. 18, charging embezzlement, fraud, intentional misrepresentation and other misdeeds. At the time, Davert & Loe were still representing Koper, MacLeod said.

“It’s kind of a sordid affair,” said MacLeod, Koper’s attorney. “Many layers. But at the heart is the wrongful termination. She was terminated for insider whistleblowing.”

MacLeod is getting to be something of an old hand at suing TBN: He represented Brian Dugger, a gay broadcast engineer who sued Trinity in 2009, claiming he was harassed and discriminated against by employees of the world’s largest Christian broadcasting empire. Paul Crouch Jr. allegedly taunted Dugger with pornography, said TBN was no place for fairies and declared that ‘Brian has a man-gina!’ ”

Nice.

A bit more hunting got me a story from 2004 involving President and founder, Paul Crouch, and an accusation that he had a brief affair with a man by the name of Lonnie Ford back in 1996. That article reminds readers of other televangelist scandals, namely Jim Bakker (affair with and attempted pay off of a former Playboy playmate employed by him) and Jimmy Swaggart (admitted porn and prostitute addict).

The Crouches also have a singular line in defensiveness when it comes to criticism of the station – criticism that has spanned many lawsuits and included accusations from rival Christian organisations that TBN is spreading blasphemy.

“God, we proclaim death to anything or anyone that will lift a hand against this network and this ministry that belongs to you, God,” Crouch said in 1997.

A few years earlier, he reacted even more vehemently to critics he characterised as “heresy hunters.” “To hell with you!” he ranted during a praise-a-thon in 1991. “Quit blocking God’s bridges or God’s going to shoot you – if I don’t.”

The Crouches are positively tame compared with Benny Hinn, the network’s star performer, who has preached that Adam was a superman who flew to the moon and expressed his belief that one day the dead will be raised by watching TBN from inside their coffins.

I admit to a bit of a cackle over that one. I’ve heard of Benny Hinn somehow..or am I thinking of Benny Hill? Who’s funnier?

Anyway, this whole group seems like one I should do more research on. I’m really wondering what else I might have missed.

The only way to deliver people from evil is to eradicate it

I quote the advertising by a local church that I spotted on a walk this afternoon:

Whatever battles you face prayer should be your weapon of choice

It felt like quite the irony after the documentary I watched with the Saskatoon Freethinkers today. It was called Deliver Us From Evil, which you can watch here. Prayer is the last thing that would help here.

Filmmaker Amy Berg recounts a harrowing story of child abuse and how a serial child molester went free for the better part of two decades in this documentary. Oliver O’Grady was a Catholic priest who served in a number of parishes in Southern California during the 1970s and ’80s. O’Grady was also a habitual child molester who abused dozens of youngsters who were entrusted to his care, and while his superiors in the church were aware of O’Grady’s crimes as early as 1973, they opted to simply move him from one congregation to another rather than turn him in to authorities or strip him of his ordination.

It was mentioned by more than a few members after the film just how sinister O’Grady comes across as a person who has very little remorse over his crimes. (A fan of the film at IMDB likens him to Hannibal Lecter.) He admits to some wrongdoing during the court proceedings that are included in the film and admitted he’d been abused as a child by his siblings and priests at one point – not like those events should make us excuse his behaviour, of course. O’Grady was asked at his trial if he ever experienced any dissociative states and agreed he might have. He also seemed to have a different definition for what should count as assault and molestation.

Once out of prison in the States (where he only served half his sentence, I think) and allowed to roam free untethered in Ireland, he’s on camera in the film writing letters to his victims, thinking they might want to come hang out with him and have them explain in their own words what he did. “I wouldn’t expect a hug, but maybe a handshake,” he says with a wink. Yikes.

Someone else in the film mentions that seminaries often get boys as young as 14 years old taking courses there and how they wind up brainwashed by all the “sex is sin” stuff at such a hormonal age. He then wondered how much of that stifled natural sexuality plays into the perverse sex acts these predators force their victims into. Like they’re stunted mentally by their complete and total lack of sex education. It also got mentioned that in a world where all sex is bad, are those people really going to consider pedophilia worse than sex with a willing adult man or woman?

While most of the film focused on the story of O’Grady, I was more interested in the end part where they talked more about the widespread campaign by the Catholic church to hide this shit. They moved O’Grady four times before one more complaint to police finally got the legal ball rolling. I can’t recall how many kids they think he assaulted but the youngest was 9 months old. Fathom that, if you can.

It’s not just the fact that he is what he is, it’s the complicit nature of the Church that’s the problem here and the sheer number of priests they know are abusers but are still allowed to work in parishes filled with children.

Mojoey over at Deep Thoughts has made a very depressing “hobby” out of documenting as many cases of this as he can find.

We’re debating a public showing of this documentary at some point, mostly just to raise awareness of the issue at stake here – the safety of children. If Roman Catholics are raised from early childhood to think of their parish priest as a mere step away from God, and, in fact, God’s rep on earth during the Eucharist ceremony, and has so much power over his flock in terms of whether or not they’ll even be allowed to have the Eucharist.. to see so many willing to abuse the trust their parishioners automatically bestow on them.. why aren’t more Catholics up in arms about that? How can they sit idle and silent?

How can anyone?

They’re big on bananas in Papua New Guinea…

At least a sex cult in Morobe Province was. H/T to Doctore0 for this one — Sex Cult Vows Banana Bonus:

Yamine is a tiny hamlet of not more than 30 people in Ward 20 of Wau Local Level Government.

According to Mr Namusa, the villagers resorted to cult activities, claiming the government had forgotten them. Mr Namusa said the cultists believed that their banana fruit would multiply 10-fold every time they had sex in public.

Gotta love the optimism, though. If only orgies could improve crops…

Held captive in a hut for nearly four months, Mr Namusa escaped in the middle of the night and walked to Wau where he reported the alleged cult activity to the council manager Tae Guambelek who alerted police.

Chairman Namusa risked being murdered by the cult leader to walk for 12 hours in order to get to Wau and report the problem. Aren’t you glad now you have a cell phone and quality service?

“The people are armed and we will move in there and talk to them and will also apprehend the cult leader and bring him back to Wau to be formally arrested and charged for the alleged illegal activities,” Insp Busil added.

Yeah, the violent aspect of this isn’t swell. It’s one thing to arrange banana bonus orgies, but another thing to violently force people to participate in them.

Mr Namusa confirmed the cult movement and said young men and women including married couples were walking around naked and having sex in public places without being ashamed of themselves.

“The leader told the people that they have not seen any government services and have resorted to other means of seeing services trickling down to their door steps and ordered about 10 people to get involved in the alleged activity,” Mr Namusa said.

The village in question has only 30 people, remember. Imagine if a third of your town was involved in something like this to get a government’s attention. Would there not be a bit of a freak? (Bigger freak to be had if their banana crops actually did exceed expectations, though…)

Morobe Mining Joint Venture’s security workers also reported to the company management about the sighting of naked people walking around in a group in the vicinity of the mining construction area on one occasion.

At writing of the article, Wau and Bulolo police were planning to intercede and put a stop to their reign of sexual tyranny, arresting those involved if necessary. Exactly what led up to the feeling of being “forgotten” by their government isn’t well explained, but hell — what a way to get noticed, eh? Put that on the table at the next city council meeting…