https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6_L9Rzy3e8
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Evangelists are the real zombies, you can't kill them.
No matter the scandal they just keep fucking popping back up again.
Quote:
Sexual misconduct and resignation
A $279,000 payoff for the silence of Jessica Hahn, who alleged that Bakker and former PTL Club co-host John Wesley Fletcher drugged and raped her, was paid with PTL funds through Bakker's associate Roe Messner.[25][26] Bakker, who made the PTL organization's financial decisions, allegedly kept two sets of books to conceal accounting irregularities. The Charlotte Observer reporters, led by Charles Shepard, investigated the PTL organization's finances and published a series of articles.[27]
On March 19, 1987, after the disclosure of a payoff to Hahn, Bakker resigned from PTL.[25] Although he acknowledged that he had a sexual encounter with Hahn at a hotel room in Clearwater, Florida, he denied raping her.[28] Bakker was the subject of homosexual and bisexual allegations made by John Wesley Fletcher and PTL director Jay Babcock, which Bakker denied under oath.[29][30] Rival televangelist John Ankerberg appeared on Larry King Live and made several allegations against Bakker, which both Bakkers denied.[31]
Bakker was succeeded as PTL head by Southern Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell.[28] He chose Falwell as his successor because he feared that fellow Pentecostal pastor Jimmy Swaggart was attempting to take over his ministry. Swaggart had initiated a church investigation into Bakker over allegations of Bakker's sexual misconduct.[32]
Bakker believed that Falwell would temporarily lead the ministry until the scandal died down,[33] but on April 28, 1987, Falwell barred Bakker from returning to PTL.[34] Later that summer, as donations declined sharply in the wake of Bakker's resignation and the end of the Bakkers' PTL Club TV program, Falwell raised $20 million to keep PTL solvent and took a promised water slide ride at Heritage USA.[35] Falwell and the remaining members of the PTL board resigned in October 1987, stating that a ruling from a bankruptcy court judge made rebuilding the ministry impossible.[36]
In response to the scandal, Falwell called Bakker a liar, an embezzler, a sexual deviant, and "the greatest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in 2,000 years of church history".[37] On CNN, Swaggart told Larry King that Bakker was a "cancer in the body of Christ".[33] In February 1988, Swaggart became involved in a sex scandal of his own after being caught visiting prostitutes in New Orleans.[38] The Bakker and Swaggart scandals had a profound effect on the world of televangelism, causing greater media scrutiny of televangelists and their finances.[39] Falwell said that the scandals had "strengthened broadcast evangelism and made Christianity stronger, more mature and more committed."[40][41] Joe Carter of The Gospel Coalition compared the PTL scandal to the 2017 Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations.[42]
Fraud conviction and imprisonment
The PTL Club's fundraising activities between 1984 and 1987 were reported by The Charlotte Observer, eventually leading to criminal charges against Bakker.[43] Bakker and his PTL associates sold $1,000 "lifetime memberships", entitling buyers to an annual three-night stay at a luxury hotel at Heritage USA, during that period.[44] According to the prosecution at Bakker's fraud trial, tens of thousands of memberships were sold but only one 500-room hotel was ever finished.[45] Bakker sold "exclusive partnerships" which exceeded capacity, raising more than twice the money needed to build the hotel. Much of the money paid Heritage USA's operating expenses, and Bakker kept $3.4 million.[46]
After a 16-month federal grand-jury probe, Bakker was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy.[25] In 1989, after a five-week trial which began on August 28 in Charlotte, North Carolina, a jury found him guilty on all 24 counts. Judge Robert Daniel Potter sentenced Bakker to 45 years in federal prison and imposed a $500,000 fine.[47][48][49] At the Federal Medical Center, Rochester in Rochester, Minnesota, he shared a cell with activist Lyndon LaRouche and skydiver Roger Nelson.[50]
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld Bakker's conviction on the fraud and conspiracy charges, voided Bakker's 45-year sentence and $500,000 fine, and ordered a new sentencing hearing in February 1991.[51] The court ruled that Potter's sentencing statement about Bakker, that "those of us who do have a religion are sick of being saps for money-grubbing preachers and priests",[52] was evidence that the judge had injected his religious beliefs into Bakker's sentence.[51]
A sentence-reduction hearing was held on November 16, 1992, and Bakker's sentence was reduced to eight years. In August 1993, he was transferred to a minimum-security federal prison in Jesup, Georgia. Bakker was paroled in July 1994, after serving almost five years of his sentence.[53] His son, Jay, spearheaded a letter-writing campaign to the parole board advocating leniency.[54] Celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz acted as his parole attorney, having said that he "would guarantee that Mr. Bakker would never again engage in the blend of religion and commerce that led to his conviction."[55] Bakker was released from Federal Bureau of Prisons custody on December 1, 1994,[56] owing $6 million to the Internal Revenue Service.[57]
Yeah, but...
I mean, how willfully dumb does one have to be to give nickel one to a grifter like Jim Fucking Bakker after all these years?
Evangelist cons just keep doing what they know how to do, and are shameless about it: without these dupes willing to fork over the cash, these evangelists would be begging on street corners with tin cup in hand.
There is always gonna be a non-stop cycle of religious con jobs out there, playing on people's religious beliefs in order to pick their pockets. From The Pope on down.
I would have thought Bakker would have been discredited and stripped of his abilities to fleece believers thirty years ago. At this point, anybody who gives Bakker so much as the time of day deserves to be fleeced, and I have no sympathy for them.
Maybe the christian churches should do more self policing? You don't hear a lot about them trying to shut down the blatant crooks - or is it a people in glass houses don't throw stones kind of thing?
I try to get through to them, but Dad only knows, they won't listen to Me. :(
This is superior Stupid in action.
Even more unintelligent than any random comment the Krusty would say. :bigwink: