On Michelangelo Signorile's show on Friday, gumshoe private investigator Bobby Brown (of Dog, The Bounty Hunter fame) said that New Life Church pastor Stephen Evans "was convicted in 1999 of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy and admitted to sexual contact with his own 14-year-old son and his own 15-year-old daughter", but the church covered it up and made a deal that allowed Evans to exchange his sentence for a "restoration" within the church.
We already know that the New Life Church likes to cover-up its scandals, but this latest revelation begs the question of how complicit the El Paso County D.A.'s office is in letting New Life's pedophiles and sex abusers off the hook.
The strange and sordid story doesn't end there, though. Signorile reports:
"In 2001, for reasons that Brown doesn’t yet know, Evans’ probation was revoked. But rather than turn himself in, Evans apparently skipped the country, immediately becoming a wanted man, and apparently he is known to be in London. Brown believes New Life Church may have helped him leave the U.S., fearful that he might talk about the church.
I was able to independently confirm through the State of Colorado Court Database that indeed a Stephen Michael Evans was arrested and convicted in El Paso County (where Colorado Springs is located) in 1999 of sexual assault against a child under 15 and sentenced to five years probation. In the fall of 2001, the court records show, a warrant was issued for his arrest for “failure to comply” and indeed his probation was revoked.
Brown also talked with me about Christopher Beard, a youth counselor who left New Life Church due to sexual misconduct shortly after Ted Haggard's fall. Beard ran the 24/7 program, which Grant Haas told me was like a bizarre Christian military boot camp for young men which Haggard and Beard appeared to get off on, working out and showering with the 18-23-year-old men every morning. Beard left the church amid sexual allegations, but no details were given about the gender of the person with whom he engaged in sexual misconduct. The church said he’d had sexual contact with a consenting adult, but Brown believes otherwise and explained some discrepancies to me that lead him to believe this."
Yes, the New Life Church needs to answer for what is now, obviously a repeated pattern of abuse and misconduct by their leadership, but who's going to do the investigation? El Paso County law-enforcement apparatus has known about the New Life Church's history for years, but hasn't raised a finger to protect the church's own members. How much more evidence do they need to trigger an investigation into the lies and cover-ups done by one of the nation's largest evangelical churches?
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Excellent investigative reporting by Signorile.
The truth is always in the details and these details are an indicator that christer priests and pastors are even more depraved and given to criminality than we thought possible. And that their connections to politicians allow them to go largely unpunished.
It was the political connections of the catholic cults cardinal archbishop Bernard Law, who aided and abetted child rapists that allowed him to escape to the Vatican. No attempt has ever been made to extradite him.
Haggard also had his friends in high places. Haggard was president of the National Association of Evangelicals and regularly visited the White House to ‘advise’ Bush. Haggard worked both sides of the street and it helped keep him out of jail. CBN reports
Ted Haggard, the megachurch pastor and National Association of Evangelicals president felled by a gay sex and drugs scandal in 2006, says that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi regularly sent words of comfort and support in the two year following his fall
Looking at their followers you wonder if they are merely stupid or if they know this is going on and excuse it out of loyalty to superstition and ignorance.
Obama is obviously not one of the stupid ones. He used to be for same sex marriage but on a quest for the holy grail, votes from bigots, he saw the light. He proclaimed that same sex marriage was wrong because 'god's in the mix'. The christers quoted him in enough ads and robocalls to shoot us down in flames in California, Arizona and Florida.
There is ample proof that homophobic churches particularly churches that aggressively promote hatred of gays rot from within. As time goes by and the christian population becomes more and more moderate these fundamentalists look more and more ridiculous and less and less like people who really understand Christ's word. God said love thy brother as thyself he never said anything about homosexuality at all. Real christians don't hate gays. Remember slave masters used to rationalize slavery with the bible and eventually abolitionist use the bible to help defeat them and rescue people from the clutches of slavery. For every hateful christian there are people who use their faith to promote love and acceptance. These hateful churches are obviously imploding and I for one am glad.
For every hateful christian there are people who use their faith to promote love and acceptance. These hateful churches are obviously imploding and I for one am glad.
There are 16.3 million southern baptist cultists who are as a rule not just homobigoted but racist to boot. They are not even close to imploding.
Cults associated with Haggard’s National Evangelical Association are if anything even more bigoted. The NEA has 30 million deluded cultists and is growing, not imploding.
The mormons have almost 7 million members and are growing explosively, not imploding. The mormon church has a violence scarred past and a cult culture that demands and gets near total submission from most cultists as their Yes on 8 contributions demonstrate.
Then there’s the granddaddy of them all, the king cobra of cults, the roman catholic cult. With deep ties to fascism and the original franchises on homobigotry, misogyny and anti-Semitism it boasts of almost 77 million US cultists. It’s so powerful that when hundreds, maybe thousand of it’s priests raped and tortured tens of thousands of children most of them were able to keep at it for decades and then escape to other countries, read Vatican City. That includes the bishops, archbishops and cardinals who help them escape. They’re going to end up shelling out about $3 billion dollars as a penalty for getting caught but are otherwise surviving quite well and hugely ramping up their bigoted campaign against the GLBT communities.
I know that we have a few fair weather friends among the cults but they’re vastly outnumbered. @getreal:
As with the Catholic church, it's the institutional cover-up that's the story. Any company might unwittingly hire a pedophile. It takes a certain type of arrogance to shield one for the sake of your own reputation.
@Distingué Traces:
"any company might unwittingly hire a pedophile."
true, and that's an especially apt comparison in this case — i am extremely wary of these big-budget churches — even more so than others. it takes a special kind of jerk to profit from spirituality, and i think people who already live a sexual double life are probably attracted to this kind of employment; it appeals to their true natures.
These fuckers are all going down. We see more hitting the skids everyday. They are circling the waggons out of hate and fear. All their pious armour will not save them from the truth. It is the 'last days' for sure….for these anti love deviant christianist freaks.
@In his name: I agree. Burn baby burn. But not all Chrisitans just the hate monger hypocrites. They are self destructing it is inevitable.
Wow, I was thinking of going on an Atlantis Cruise but now I think I'll just join New Life Church! It sounds like they have ALL the ass-sex! I want to discuss Leviticus with a hair-sprayed "married" evangelical in a "private" ministering session at the Motel 6! Of course there's that pesky "guilt" thing but I'm sure we can pray it away. If that doesn't work there's always meth. Right, Ted?
ha ha ha
this is an amazing story.
let the conservative christian movement hang itself.
sunshine is the best disinfectant.