#churchtoo

Details Emerge in Josh Duggar Case

Posted on by Amir

Josh Duggar is in very serious trouble. There is no other way to spin this.

According to the evidence presented, he created a fairly sophisticated system for the purpose of crcumventing Covenent Eyes, a popular Christian anti-porn accountability platform. He created a separate Linux partition; the password was one that he made; he even covered it with a family screen saver. He used a Tor browser to access the “dark web”. He used BitTorrent for file sharing.* This is how people with these dark fantasies obtain the types of porn that Duggar obtained.

(I note this because it is important to point out that this type of porn is NOT something you will find on a conventional porn site. It is NOT something that you obtain accidentally. To obtain it, you have to be intentional in your methods. The people who exchange this type of media are very meticulous. Law enforcement goes to great lengths to track these guys down, and we are still miles behind.)

When the Department for Homeland Security raided his auto dealership in 2019, Duggar, without being told why they were there, asked them, “What is this about? Has someone been downloading child pornography?”

That was a confession.

Prosecutors claim the illegal images show child pornography involving minors ranging from the age of 12 to as young as toddlers of 18 months.

Faulkner testified that the images were exchanged via a peer-to-peer file sharing called BitTorrent. The forensic investigation also found a program on the desktop called Covenant Eyes, which allows a user to “quit porn” by reporting to an accountability partner — in this case wife Anna — if the user visits porn sites. To get around triggering a report, Josh allegedly installed a Linux partition, which divided the computer’s hard drive into two isolated sections to hide what was being viewed in one of them. He also used a TOR browser to surf the dark web. The way he accessed that part of the computer was by inputting a special password — and the one used was one Josh often used for other accounts, including for personal banking, which included his birth year in the password.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/josh-duggar-child-pornography-case-trial-bail-home-confinement-000211966.html

Almost as bad: Duggar is not only out on bail, he also gets unlimited visitation with his children, as long as his wife supervises.

Rachael Denhollander has a great thread on the whole mess.

At this point, we know what Josh Duggar is, just as we know what O.J. Simpson is. Whereas O.J. skated on the murder charges, I strongly doubt that Duggar will skate here. What IS bothersome is the patriarchs who are doing–and have done–next to nothing to protect Anna and her 7 children. Her family made her stay with Josh in 2015–they refused to support her if she left him–even when it became apparent that he was a very dark man who had cheated on her, even sleeping with a porn star.

I don’t want to hear another word about how “patriarchy protects women and children.”

EVERY DAMN TIME we have an offender in the ranks, the only ones protected by the system are the perpetrators. When it’s time to kick ass for Jesus, the victims–even when they are boys–are the only ones taking the beatings.

Tell me, how much protection did Josh Duggar’s sisters get? Tell me, how much protection did Anna Duggar get? Tell me, how much protection did any #churchtoo victim get when they went forward?

Tell me: who is looking out for Anna Duggar and her kids? She has 7 kids, including the airplane in the hangar. She is married to a husband who is turned on by the torture of infants and toddlers. He hates children. He probably hates women, too.

And yet, no one–NO ONE–in her family is helping her leave that POS. They forced her to stay with him in 2015. This is clearly an abusive marriage, but where are the patriarchs in this major league who talk a great game? Where is Mohler? Piper? Grudem? Ware? Wilson? DeYoung?

Hell, WHERE ARE HER FAMILY? WHERE IS HER PASTOR AND CHURCH COMMUNITY?

A couple months ago, I remarked that it would have been nice if an evangelical leader had punched Ravi Zacharias in the mouth and told him where to stick his empire. Peter once told Simon the magician, “may your money perish with you.”

Where are the Christian leaders with the dump truck-sized balls to call these guys out?

Not too long ago, a good friend of mine remarked–in a conversation about domestic violence–that, while leaders are all focused on what the victim (often a woman) can and can’t do, they need to DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE ABUSER.

And she wasn’t wrong. For whatever reason, these chest-beating Manly Men are ALMOST ALWAYS mysteriously absent when it’s time to kick some ass.

During the war in Vietnam, one of the worst chapters in our involvement there was the My Lai Massacre: where two officers–Ernest Medina and William Calley–ordered and participated in the mass murder of as many as 500 South Vietnamese civilians. I would draw the comparson to #churchtoo.

My Lai Massacre#churchtoo
South Vietnamese terrorized by communists. They are taught that the Americans are the good guys who will protect them.People–particularly women and children–are taught that the world is evil, and that the Church is a refuge from the world.
A band of American soldiers targeted a village, killing everyone, and even raping the women.Clergy and other leaders, who should be protecting women and children, are instead taking sexual license with them.
The military sought to cover it up. Congress even tried to cover it up. President Nixon and the general public were sympathetic to the perpetrators (William Calley and Ernest Medina), even casting them as victims.Evangelical leaders have overwhelmingly covered for the abusive clergy. They often dismiss, attack, and malign the victims while casting themselves and the offending clergy as the real victims.
A helicopter crew–Hugh Thompson, Glenn Andreotta, and Lawrence Colburn–took decisive action to stop the massacre. They turned their guns on American soldiers, ordering them to stop the killing. Thompson reported this to his superiors, who sought to cover it up.A contingent of victims and advocates–mostly women, some men–have reported abuses and coverups, and have fought to expose the perpetrators.
Thompson and his crew received major blowback at the time, with at least one lawmaker seeking to court-martial Thompson. Public sentiment was overwhelmingly against them at the time. Thompson was considered a traitor in many circles.The victims and their advocates are largely dismissed as liberals and troublemakers, even heretics. They are subject to passive-aggressive attacks by evangelical leaders. Even the conservative ones are subject to attack.
Today, Thompson and his crew are regarded as heroes.The victims who came forward are slowly being recognized for their courage. The advocates are receiving qualified vindication.

Right now, what we need are leaders like Hugh Thompson, Glenn Andreotta, and Lawrence Colburn. THEY stopped the My Lai massacre. THEY turned their guns on Calley and ordered him to stop. THEY testified against Calley at his trial.

Where are the evangelical leaders who will stand up to the well-connected and financed network of abuse apologists, and the systems that enable them?

I’m anything but a liberal, an egalitarian, or a feminist. But as someone who identifies as a patriarch, I find the good-old-boy coverups to be evil on a very high scale. And Duggar is but the latest example.

—

*Tor and BitTorrent are NOT in and of themselves, evil applications. Good, upstanding software engineers and geeks use those every day without committing crimes.

Josh Duggar Charged for Child Porn

Posted on by Amir

Back in 2015, when the news of Josh Duggar’s molestation of his sisters–and a babysitter–broke, I wanted to believe that he had put all of that behind him. He was 14 at the time he did that, a lot of folks wanted to think it was a case of adolescent sexual experimentation gone too far, he apparently faced the music, and by all indications at the time, those were not indicative of who he became as an adult.

At the time, I said this:

It would be fair, in his circle of accountability, to question him significantly about who he is today. Has he cheated on his wife? Does he use pornography? What changed in his conduct after his scrapes at age 14? Has he learned to control his passions in a way befitting a Christian gentleman?

Then, a couple months later, he was outed in the Ashley Madison hack. As horrible as that was, at least it was otherwise consensual sex with other adults. Yes, it was terrible; yes, it merited repudiation from the Church; yes, it merited derision from the outside world due to the hypocrisy of his acts. But at that point he had done nothing criminal, at least not as far as we knew.

Sadly, what we are seeing is that Duggar’s adolescent molestations were indicative of sexually-predatory inclinations, and he apparently developed a sexual attraction to children. He has been arrested on two federal charges of receiving and possessing child pornography.

Trust me on this: the truth of this is very dark. Adult porn is one thing: unless the parties are forced, at least the adults involved are engaging in consensual sex. They are degrading each other, and yes–the viewer of such needs to understand that viewing conventional porn is not innocuous: you are enjoying watching one or more people debase themselves for your pleasure. Repentance is more than just vowing to stop watching it, but rather learning to view people as Image Bearers–worthy of dignity–rather than sexual commodities.

Child porn, however, is a whole different circle of hell. A person who enjoys child porn is a person who enjoys seeing children harmed. Children do not consent to be used that way. This is full-on child abuse the magnitude of which is severe and unconscionable.

Ravi Zacharias: Image Repair Analysis

Posted on by Amir

In light of recent revelations about the late Ravi Zacharias–particularly the corroboration of the massage therapists who accused him of sexual abuse–I decided to separate my Image Repair Analysis of RZ’s public press release in the wake of his settlement of his RICO suit against Lori Anne Thompson.

“In October 2014, I spoke at a conference in Canada. At the conclusion of my talk, I met a couple who expressed an interest in our ministry. The wife asked if I would reach out to her husband because he had questions about the Christian faith. As requested, I followed up by sending an email and a book to him, and invited him to consider attending one of our educational programs at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM).”

  • “I spoke…my talk…I met…our ministry”.
    • That’s BOLSTERING: it puts him in the position of superiority over the couple.
  • “The wife asked if I would reach out to her husband”.
    • That’s BOLSTERING: that bolsters his superiority;
    • it is also ATTACKING: it is a veiled cheap shot at the husband.
  • “I followed up…sending..email…and book…invited him”.
    • That’s BOLSTERING: maintains his authority over the husband.

“Some months later, I traveled with my wife and one of our daughters to another part of Canada for a speaking engagement. The couple attended this event and invited my wife and me to dinner at a local restaurant afterwards. That was the second and last time I was ever in the same room with either of them.”

  • “I traveled with my wife and one of our daughters”.
    • That’s BOLSTERING: it creates the appearance of superiority and propriety, even though the facts indicate impropriety on his part.
  • “That was the second and last time I was ever in the same room with either of them.”
    • This is DIFFERENTIATION: he is pleading innocent to an act that of which he is not accused: the “I was never alone with her” defense is invalid, that is not the issue, as the offenses here are cyber in nature.

“Subsequently, she began to contact me via the email address I had used to contact her husband after first meeting them. My responses were usually brief. Then, last year, she shockingly sent me extremely inappropriate pictures of herself unsolicited. I clearly instructed her to stop contacting me in any form; I blocked her messages, and I resolved to terminate all contact with her.”

  • “Subsequently, she began to contact me via the email address I had used to contact her husband”
    • That’s ATTACKING: he’s alleging less-than-proper behavior from the outset.
  • “My responses were usually brief.”
    • That’s MINIMIZATION: he is minimizing his role in email communications with her.
  • “She shockingly sent me extremely inappropriate pictures of herself unsolicited.”
    • That’s ATTACKING: a simple release of all electronic communications would show context, as that would establish the nature of any conversations that might have led to the sending of such pictures. An unsolicited nude would be a scandal for her, not him. That is, unless they had carried on conversations that were sexual in nature, in which case it would be grooming behavior.
  • “unsolicited”
    • That’s DENYING and DEFEASIBILITY: he is denying any role in the picture exchange.

“In late 2016, she sent an email informing me she planned to tell her husband about the inappropriate pictures she had sent and to claim that I had solicited them.”

  • “claim that I had solicited them”
    • That’s DENYING and DEFEASIBILITY: He is denying any role in her sending the pictures.

“In April 2017, together they sent me, through an attorney, a letter demanding money. I immediately notified members of my board, and as they advised, I personally engaged legal counsel.”

  • “In April 2017, together they sent me, through an attorney, a letter demanding money.”
    • That’s ATTACKING: He’s accusing them of blackmail.

“In response to the demand for money, my attorneys filed a publicly available lawsuit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The other side requested mediation rather than going to trial. We agreed to mediation and we reached an agreement in November 2017 to resolve the matter and dismiss my lawsuit. All communication with both of them has concluded, and the legal matters have been resolved. However, at this time, unfortunately I am legally prevented from answering or even discussing the questions and claims being made by some, other than to say that each side paid for their own legal expenses and no ministry funds were used.

  • “In response to the demand for money”
    • That’s PROVOCATION: he’s suggesting that his ensuing lawsuit was in response to a provoked act.
  • “..my attorneys filed a publicly available lawsuit”
    • That’s ATTACKING: filing a lawsuit, using multiple attorneys, targeting a couple.
  • “The other side requested mediation rather than going to trial.”
    • That’s ATTACKING: He’s suggesting that, because they did not want to go to trial, that they are trying to hide something.
  • “unfortunately I am legally prevented from answering or even discussing the questions and claims being made by some”
    • That’s DEFEASIBILITY: He claims to have no control, preventing him from discussing details.
    • It’s also a form of DENIAL: he has denied allegations, and yet left obvious questions unanswered, all while using DEFEASIBILITY to avoid answering them.
  • “no ministry funds were used”
    • That’s MINIMIZATION: By suggesting that no ministry funds were involved, this makes the situation less important than it is.

“I have learned a difficult and painful lesson through this ordeal. As a husband, father, grandfather, and leader of a Christian ministry I should not have engaged in ongoing communication with a woman other than my wife. I failed to exercise wise caution and to protect myself from even the appearance of impropriety, and for that I am profoundly sorry. I have acknowledged this to my Lord, my wife, my children, our ministry board, and my colleagues.”

  • “As a husband, father, grandfather, and leader of a Christian ministry”
    • That’s BOLSTERING: he’s reminding you of his superior status in multiple realms.
  • “I should not have engaged in ongoing communication with a woman other than my wife”
    • This is DIFFERENTIATION and MINIMIZATION: he’s creating a lesser offense—which isn’t even an offense—to take your attention to the offense for which he is on the hook. (Also, it’s utter hogwash. He’s saying, “If I’d only followed the ‘Billy Graham Rule…’ How about NOT BEING A DIRTY OLD MAN???)
  • “I failed to exercise wise caution and to protect myself from even the appearance of impropriety”
    • This is DIFFERENTIATION and MINIMIZATION: he’s admitting to a lesser offense as opposed to the one of which he is accused.
    • It’s also MORTIFICATION, although in a false sense: he is confessing to a non-offense.
  • “I have acknowledged this to my Lord, my wife, my children, our ministry board, and my colleagues”
    • This is TRANSCENDENCE: appealing to a higher authority to avoid accountability to the very people to which he must otherwise answer.

“Let me state categorically that I never met this woman alone, publicly or privately. The question is not whether I solicited or sent any illicit photos or messages to another woman—I did not, and there is no evidence to the contrary—but rather, whether I should have been a willing participant in any extended communication with a woman not my wife. The answer, I can unequivocally say, is no, and I fully accept responsibility. In all my correspondence with thousands of people in 45 years of ministry, I have never been confronted with a situation such as this, and God and my family and close friends know how grieved I have been.”

  • “Let me state categorically that I never met this woman alone, publicly or privately.”
    • This is DIFFERENTIATION: he’s denying having committed an offense of which he has not been accused. (Note: whenever people use the word “categorically” in this context, it usually means they’re not being truthful.)
  • “The question is not whether I solicited or sent any illicit photos or messages to another woman…but rather, whether I should have been a willing participant in any extended communication with a woman not my wife”
    • This is DENIAL and DIFFERENTIATION: He is reframing the issue on his own terms, not addressing the obvious question: what led to the woman sending him those photos?
    • This is MORTIFICATION, although in a false sense. Jesus had many extended communications with women (Mary Magdalene anyone?), in spite of not being married to any of them.
  • “In all my correspondence with thousands of people in 45 years of ministry”
    • That’s BOLSTERING: re-reminding you of his superiority.
  • “I have never been confronted with a situation such as this”
    • That’s DEFEASIBILITY: he’s casting this as a situation that has come upon him—that he had no control over—rather than a crisis of his own making due to his own choices. He is casting himself as a victim.
  • “God and my family and close friends know how grieved I have been”
    • That’s REVERSING VICTIM AND OFFENDER ROLES: he is casting himself as a victim.

“In my 45 years of marriage to Margie, I have never engaged in any inappropriate behavior of any kind. I love my wife with all my heart and have been absolutely faithful to her these more than 16,000 days of marriage, and have exercised extreme caution in my daily life and travels, as everyone who knows me is aware. I have long made it my practice not to be alone with a woman other than Margie and our daughters—not in a car, a restaurant, or anywhere else. Upon reflection, I now realize that the physical safeguards I have long practiced to protect my integrity should have extended to include digital communications safeguards. I believe—and indeed would counsel others—that the standards of personal conduct are necessarily higher for Christian leaders.”

  • “In my 45 years of marriage to Margie… more than 16,000 days of marriage”
    • That’s BOLSTERING: re-reminding you of his awwsummness as a husband.
  • “everyone who knows me is aware”
    • That’s TRIANGULATION: appealing to other people to deflect from the real issue at hand.

“The Lord rescued me at the age of seventeen, and I promised to leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth. He entrusted me with this calling, it is His; any opportunities I have been given are from Him. My life is not my own, it belongs to God. As long as He gives me life and breath I will serve out this calling He has given me. I am committed to finishing well, using whatever years He grants me to share His love and forgiveness, truth and grace, with people everywhere who are looking for meaning and purpose and hope. I bear no ill will toward anybody. God is the God of healing, and He promises a new day. May that be true by His grace.”

  • “The Lord rescued me at the age of seventeen, and I promised to leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth”
    • I’ll take TRANSCENDENCE for $500, Alex: It’s all about the Lord now.
  • “He entrusted me with this calling, it is His; any opportunities I have been given are from Him”
    • I’ll take TRANSCENDENCE for $1,000, Alex: HE’s been entrusted with the calling, with the implication that YOU are but a peasant.
  • “My life is not my own, it belongs to God. As long as He gives me life and breath I will serve out this calling He has given me. I am committed to finishing well…”
    • I’ll take TRANSCENDENCE for $2,000..OH DAILY DOUBLE!!!!: He’s now all wrapped up in his calling from God, his remaining years, finishing the race, and bestowing all good things on peasants. He’s untouchable now.
  • “I bear no ill will toward anybody. God is the God of healing, and He promises a new day. May that be true by His grace.”
    • This is BOLSTERING: he is making himself the superior person in this.

Given the known facts in RZ’s case, and given the use of Image Repair in his public statement, the conclusion is that

  • Ravi Zacharias is being less than honest,
  • Ravi Zacharias is hiding the truth, and
  • Ravi Zacharias is using corporate damage control tactics in lieu of addressing hard questions.

Ravi Zacharias: The Incontrovertible Fraud

Posted on by Amir

While I was on my Thanksgiving break during 2017, I checked my Twitter feed and noticed a tweet from Amy Smith (@watchkeep) referring to Ravi Zacharias as a “con-man”. I also saw an article by Warren Thorckmorton regarding Ravi’s false inflation of his credentials, having claimed to have an earned doctorate degree (he had honorary doctoral degrees).

The academic fraud was bad enough–in my world, it’s an immediate firing offense if you are determined to have lied about your vitae–but his problems were worse than that.

The news at the time centered abour Ravi’s settlement of a lawsuit with a couple from Canada–Brad and Lori Anne Thompson. At the time, the evangelical world was solidly behind Ravi: The Narrative had Lori Anne (LA) sending RZ unsolicited nude photographs, then extorting him for money, forcing RZ to sue them to protect his good name.

Except the Narrative was total crap.

I suspected as much from day one, when Steve Baughman mentioned RZ’s suicide email:

I’m thinking the “mediated settlement” was engineered to allow for Ravi to keep official evidence under wraps so he can go on denying otherwise damning revelations like that.

In fact, if you think about it, the lawsuit, and then the settlement, allow for Ravi to say that he sued the parties involved and forced them to settle with him. It allows him to have his cake and eat it too.

And very few will hold him accountable for it.

This turned out to be the case. RZ, in an interview with Christianity Today, threw LA under the bus, while hiding behind his Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) when the hard questions came up. CT gave him the kid-gloves treatment.

More revelations would surface, particularly his coercing 16-year-old Shirley Steward–pregnant with his brother’s child–to have an abortion, even making the abortion arrangements for her. Julie Anne has the receipts on that. I blogged about that story at the time.

After his cancer diagnosis in March, I appealed to him on Twitter and Facebook to apologize to Lori Anne. The response: a few DARVO (Deny Attack Reverse Victim and Offender) attacks from hired guns, almost all of them women. It was a pattern of his to hide behind skirts.

Ravi, sadly, would die on May 19, 2020. On his deathbed, RZ received a lot of praise from Big Evangelical leaders, although Christianity Today and the Washington Post did manage to call some attention to his known scandals. Some of his devotees took the time to attack Lori Anne Thompson, compounding her own trauma.

But last week, something changed.

Steve Baughman, who has chimed in here and has been a decent conversationalist, dropped the mother of all bombs on the late Ravi Zacharias.

  • RZ owned two “health spas” in Georgia.
  • Those health spas offered massage therapy, yoga, and Ayurveda. (I’m not commenting on the rightness or wrongness of yoga, but Ayurveda is Eastern Religious quackery and should set off a number of red flags.)
  • Multiple women involved accused RZ of sexually molesting them during massage sessions.

Note: While Ravi was notorious for his chronic back problems, as someone who has my own share of back issues, I wasn’t buying that angle. RZ had access to the best medical and therapeutic care that money could buy. He could have gone to a reputable chiropractor–many of them have licensed massage therapists. He could have gotten physical therapy.

While I would not have an issue with a Christian man receiving a massage from a woman therapist–it is a legitimate therapy–Baughman does make a good point that this undermines his claim that he had never been alone with a woman not his wife.

That alone begs an independent third-party investigation on RZ. Yes, he is deceased, but he may have other victims. And the allegations include bringing women in internationally for his spas. That merits a human trafficking investigation by the FBI.

Most recently, however: yesterday, Julie Roys broke a story, providing email transcripts that clearly vindicate Lori Anne Thompson and reveal Ravi Zacharias as a grooming predator who tried to manipulate his way out of exposure.

Today, Julie broke part 2. This details the grooming behavior. Read it for yourself. Trust me: there are receipts behind this.

A few months ago, before the latest bombs were dropped, I wrote a detailed piece about Ravi Zacharias: he built his ministerial empire on a foundation of blood, fraud, and abuse. I also did an Image Repair Analysis on his press release in the wake of his settlement with the Thompsons.

I concluded then that he was a fraud and he was lying.

The record now vindicates me. But more importantly, it vindicates Lori Anne Thompson.