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#Post#: 20206--------------------------------------------------
BACKSLIDING IN YOUR CHRISTIAN LIFE
By: patrick jane Date: November 8, 2020, 12:23 pm
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Re: BACKSLIDING IN YOUR CHRISTIAN LIFE
By: patrick jane Date: December 20, 2020, 10:19 am
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Re: BACKSLIDING IN YOUR CHRISTIAN LIFE
By: patrick jane Date: December 25, 2020, 11:20 am
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Re: BACKSLIDING IN YOUR CHRISTIAN LIFE
By: patrick jane Date: January 4, 2021, 6:37 pm
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Re: BACKSLIDING IN YOUR CHRISTIAN LIFE
By: patrick jane Date: January 16, 2021, 8:56 pm
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Re: BACKSLIDING IN YOUR CHRISTIAN LIFE
By: patrick jane Date: January 25, 2021, 7:30 pm
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Re: BACKSLIDING IN YOUR CHRISTIAN LIFE
By: patrick jane Date: February 13, 2021, 8:57 am
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[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/121863.jpg?w=700[/img]
HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/february/ravi-zacharias-rzim-investigation-sexual-abuse-sexting-rape.html
Ravi Zacharias Hid Hundreds of Pictures of Women, Abuse During
Massages, and a Rape Allegation
His ministry, preparing to downsize in the wake of a new
investigation, expresses regret for “misplaced trust” in a
leader who used his esteem to conceal his sexual misconduct.
A four-month investigation found the late Ravi Zacharias
leveraged his reputation as a world-famous Christian apologist
to abuse massage therapists in the United States and abroad over
more than a decade while the ministry led by his family members
and loyal allies failed to hold him accountable.
He used his need for massage and frequent overseas travel to
hide his abusive behavior, luring victims by building trust
through spiritual conversations and offering funds straight from
his ministry.
A 12-page report released Thursday by Ravi Zacharias
International Ministries (RZIM) confirms abuse by Zacharias at
day spas he owned in Atlanta and uncovers five additional
victims in the US, as well as evidence of sexual abuse in
Thailand, India, and Malaysia.
Even a limited review of Zacharias’s old devices revealed
contacts for more than 200 massage therapists in the US and Asia
and hundreds of images of young women, including some that
showed the women naked. Zacharias solicited and received photos
until a few months before his death in May 2020 at age 74.
Zacharias used tens of thousands of dollars of ministry funds
dedicated to a “humanitarian effort” to pay four massage
therapists, providing them housing, schooling, and monthly
support for extended periods of time, according to
investigators.
One woman told the investigators that “after he arranged for the
ministry to provide her with financial support, he required sex
from her.” She called it rape.
She said Zacharias “made her pray with him to thank God for the
‘opportunity’ they both received” and, as with other victims,
“called her his ‘reward’ for living a life of service to God,”
the report says. Zacharias warned the woman—a fellow believer—if
she ever spoke out against him, she would be responsible for
millions of souls lost when his reputation was damaged.
The findings, alongside details revealed over months of internal
reckoning at RZIM, challenge the picture many have had of
Zacharias.
When he died in May, he was praised for his faithful witness,
his commitment to the truth, and his personal integrity. Now it
is clear that, offstage, the man so long admired by Christians
around the world abused numerous women and manipulated those
around him to turn a blind eye.
Miller & Martin attorneys Lynsey Barron and William Eiselstein,
hired by RZIM to investigate, interviewed 50 witnesses and
examined phones Zacharias used from 2014 to 2018. In the end,
the lawyers said “we are confident that we uncovered sufficient
evidence to conclude that Mr. Zacharias engaged in sexual
misconduct,” though the investigation was not exhaustive.
The RZIM board released a statement alongside the investigation
expressing regret and taking some responsibility:
“Ravi engaged in a series of extensive measures to conceal his
behavior from his family, colleagues, and friends. However, we
also recognize that in situations of prolonged abuse, there
often exist significant structural, policy, and cultural
problems. ... We were trusted by our staff, our donors, and the
public to mentor, oversee, and ensure the accountability of Ravi
Zacharias, and in this we have failed.”
RZIM hired Miller & Martin after a September 2020 Christianity
Today report on allegations of abuse by three women who worked
at Zacharias’s spas. Initially, the ministry leadership stated
it did not believe the women. Today that has changed.
“We believe not only the women who made their allegations public
but also additional women who had not previously made public
allegations against Ravi but whose identities and stories were
uncovered during the investigation,” the statement said.
In a span of eight months, RZIM has gone from having to
reimagine the work of its global ministry following the death of
its renowned namesake to having to restructure entirely, as
Christians inside and outside the organization lost trust in its
longtime leader.
Multiple speakers and RZIM staff members left the ministry
during the course of the investigation, concerned about top
officials’ initial response to the allegations. RZIM’s Canadian
branch suspended fundraising efforts and donation collection
through April, while the UK-based Zacharias Trust is threatening
to split if RZIM does not apologize to victims and institute
major reforms. (Update: The day after the report was released
the UK board voted unanimously to separate from RZIM and choose
a new name.)
Even before the report’s release on Thursday evening, RZIM
leadership had shifted to reduce the involvement of the
Zacharias family. Margie Zacharias, Ravi’s widow, resigned from
the board and the ministry in January, while her daughter Sarah
Davis stepped down as board chair but remains CEO.
Staff members inside RZIM say the ministry—the largest
apologetics organization in the world—plans to dramatically
downsize to as few as 10 US apologists and a few international
speakers, supported by a small staff.
Investigation limited by NDA
In addition to confirming previous reports of abuse at
Zacharias’s spas, the new report corroborated four-year-old
allegations by Lori Anne Thompson, the Canadian woman who says
Zacharias manipulated her into sending him sexually explicit
texts and photos. Her case was the first sexual scandal related
to Zacharias to go public, and it inspired other victims to come
forward.
Zacharias had sued Thompson in 2017, claiming that her lawyer’s
letter to the RZIM board alleging sexual abuse was actually an
elaborate attempt at extortion. The board wrote on Thursday that
“we believe Lori Anne Thompson has told the truth about the
nature of her relationship with Ravi Zacharias.”
Investigators interviewed other witnesses who “recounted similar
conduct” as Thompson’s allegations and found a six-year-long
pattern of text messaging with other women before and after her.
Yet Thompson and her husband, Brad, were unable to participate
in the recent investigation themselves. The late apologist’s
estate refused investigators’ requests to lift a nondisclosure
agreement (NDA) to allow the Thompsons to speak about what
happened. Their attorney, Basyle Tchividjian, told investigators
that with everything that has come to light, the fact that the
Thompsons are still bound by an NDA is “reprehensible.”
Davis wrote in a ministry-wide email that RZIM “asked for a
modification to the NDA for the purpose of the investigation,”
but the organization has no authority over the estate, which is
controlled by her mother, Margie Zacharias. The estate also
refused to have Zacharias’s personal attorneys hand over any
evidence collected from his devices at the time, leaving a gap
in the record examined by Miller & Martin.
According to the investigative report, however, Zacharias
continued soliciting sexual images of women as he settled the
case with the Thompsons, defended himself publicly, and assured
the RZIM leadership and staff he did nothing wrong and there was
no need to investigate.
“While he told his staff that his real mistake in the Thompson
matter was not alerting someone that he was receiving
photographs of another woman, we have no indication that he ever
went to RZIM management or its Board on the more than 200
occasions he received photographs of women during and after the
Thompson matter,” the report says.
In fact, one day after Zacharias publicly stated in 2017 that he
had learned a “difficult and painful lesson” over his
communication with Lori Anne Thompson, he received more
photographs from another woman, investigators found. That woman
went on to send him nude pictures as well.
One thing did change, though. After the Thompson case, the
investigators noticed that Zacharias did a better job of
deleting his messages in ways that could not be detected or
uncovered.
In its statement released with the report, the RZIM board
acknowledged the failure and apologized to Lori Anne Thompson.
“We were wrong,” the statement says. “It is with profound grief
that we recognize that because we did not believe the Thompsons
and both privately and publicly perpetuated a false narrative,
they were slandered for years and their suffering was greatly
prolonged and intensified. This leaves us heartbroken and
ashamed.”
‘He was able to hide his misconduct in plain sight’
Much of the abuse uncovered by investigators took place around
massage, which Zacharias relied on to treat a chronic back
injury. He regularly traveled with a personal masseuse and
criticized a fellow RZIM staff member who questioned the
“appearance of impropriety” for doing so.
While the report did not interview sources abroad, investigators
uncovered evidence that Zacharias routinely met massage
therapists when he traveled.
“He would often arrange for massage treatments in his hotel room
when he was likely alone,” the report said. “According to his
text messages, at times he would meet the therapists in the
hotel lobby and at other times he would direct them to come
straight to his room.”
In Bangkok, he owned two apartments in the early 2010s, sharing
a building with one of his massage therapists, the investigators
found. The notes app on his phone included Thai and Mandarin
translations of phrases like “I’d like to have a beautiful
memory with you,” “little bit further,” and “your lips are
especially beautiful.”
The massage therapists and the women pictured in Zacharias’s
phone albums were decades younger than him, many in their 20s.
The investigation did not find any evidence that RZIM leadership
or staff knew about Zacharias’s sexual misconduct. It also shows
the ministry provided little to no accountability for its
namesake and founder.
“Because his need for massage treatments was well known and
accepted, he was able to hide his misconduct in plain sight,”
the report says.
Zacharias spoke about the importance of “physical safeguards” to
“protect my integrity,” but the Miller & Martin report notes
that “As the architect of those ‘physical safeguards,’ Mr.
Zacharias well knew how to elude them.”
The investigation confirmed that Zacharias lied about not being
alone with a woman other than his wife or daughters. He also
maintained multiple phones at all times, kept them on a
different wireless plan than RZIM, and never used the wireless
network at the office. Zacharias said this was for security, but
it ensured his communication could not be monitored.
The RZIM board’s statement acknowledges that it has “fallen
gravely short” and expresses regret “that we allowed our
misplaced trust in Ravi to result in him having less oversight
and accountability than would have been wise and loving.”
Each example in the report contrasts with the public witness of
a leader—and a ministry—known for preaching integrity and truth.
“Those of you who have seen me in public have no idea what I’m
like in private,” Zacharias told his supporters in a talk he
gave about a year before he died, in a recording shared with CT.
“God does. God does. And I encourage you today to make that
commitment and say, ‘I’m going to be the man in private who will
receive the divine accolade, “Well done, thou good and faithful
servant.’”
Many who looked up to Zacharias as a mentor, model, and
spiritual father have been trying to grapple with the new
information, their feelings of betrayal, and questions about
their own responsibility.
“I feel disappointed in myself and others who could have pushed
harder against the tides of submissive loyalty to demand better
answers earlier, as there is no part of the evangelical creed
that honours cowardice or sacrifices conscience,” Dan Paterson,
the former head of RZIM in Australia, wrote on Facebook
Wednesday night.
“I feel a profound sense of the fear of the Lord, knowing that
one day I too will give an account, where like the RZ report,
everything done under the shroud of darkness will be made known.
Jesus comes to restore justice through judgment. Oh, how I wish
Ravi repented here!”
Changes coming to RZIM
The board (whose names are not publicly available) and
leadership have been planning for a reckoning since
investigators’ interim report in December prepared RZIM to
expect the worst.
Going into the process in September 2020, the ministry’s
official stance was that the allegations couldn’t be true but
that it would conduct an investigation to clear Zacharias’s
name. At first, RZIM hired the firm of one of the lawyers who
sued the Thompsons. Several people inside the ministry said vice
president Abdu Murray suggested enlisting a “rough” ex-cop to
track down the accusers and uncover information the ministry
could use to discredit them.
RZIM changed course and hired Miller & Martin in early October,
after several speakers said they found the allegations credible
and demanded the ministry do a real and reputable investigation.
“I believe each of us bear a degree of responsibility for what
we’ve all been blind to, what we’ve unwittingly enabled, what
we’ve not spoken against, and what we’ve allowed to go on and
continue,” Sam Allberry, one of the speakers, told colleagues in
the UK.
As CT previously reported, fights over complicity and
accountability roiled the ministry for months as the
investigation continued. At the start of the new year, RZIM was
bracing for a split.
Davis informed staff that some global offices may decide to
separate from RZIM and become independent, national
organizations. Currently, each office has its own articles of
incorporation or national charter as a charity and is associated
with the US-based ministry through an “affiliate agreement.”
This has allowed RZIM to function as a single global ministry.
“We have been able to operate as one organization in practice
for over 35 years, however, in a time of crisis such as ours,
this has caused some of our boards to need to exercise decisions
separate from the HQ and International Board in order to make
what they feel are the best decisions for their entity,” Davis
wrote.
Some senior apologists in RZIM think national separation is the
only way to preserve parts of the ministry that are doing good
work.
John Lennox, a Northern Irish mathematician and apologist who
famously debated Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and
other “new atheists,” has urged the UK branch of RZIM to
separate. Lennox withdrew from all association with RZIM the day
after CT reported the spa allegations, but told British
apologists he would happily work with them if they were to form
an independent organization.
“The current allegations are of such a serious nature that I
cannot be involved in any ongoing activity in the name of RZIM,”
Lennox wrote in a statement to the UK and US boards. “In my
view, a renaming of the organisation and fundamental
restructuring of the organisation and board needs to be done and
done very quickly, if the potential of the marvelous young team
of apologists is to be retained in any collective sense.”
Other national boards are also in the process of disentangling
themselves from the US headquarters, according to multiple
sources inside the ministry. The Canadian board said in a
statement that “It is clear that this ministry cannot be built
on previous structures” but “must be built on new approaches and
relationships.”
The Canadian apologetics ministry also laid off four team
members, including Daniel Gilman, a speaker who decided he
believed the women who accused Zacharias of sexual abuse and
vocally challenged RZIM leadership to acknowledge complicity.
Gilman told CT he was deeply concerned the ministry he loved
would choose to rebrand but not repent.
Gilman’s severance package included an NDA, which would bar him
from “any action that could reasonably be anticipated to cause
harm to the reputation” of or “negatively reflect” on RZIM.
Gilman protested and the NDA was replaced with an agreement to
keep donor information confidential.
Many more layoffs are expected soon. RZIM employees told CT that
they expect the international ministry, which once boasted 100
speakers and 250 staff members nationwide, will be reduced to a
fraction of that. Davis told staff that layoffs will be
announced in the weeks after the Miller & Martin report is
released.
“This is a very difficult decision necessary only because of the
situation we find ourselves in,” she wrote. “We are profoundly
sorry for this.”
After the staff reductions and national splits, the team that
remains will likely be some of the speakers who were closest to
Zacharias and have well-established relationships with major
donors. People inside RZIM expect the core to include speakers
Michael Ramsden, Abdu Murray, and Vince Vitale, led by Davis.
Davis stepped down as chair of the board, handing the reins over
to Chris Blattner, a retired energy company executive and major
donor from Minnesota. During the crisis, however, Davis has
taken on more of the day-to-day management of RZIM, personally
putting her name to all internal and external communication.
The RZIM board stated Thursday that “In light of the findings of
the investigation and the ongoing evaluation, we are seeking the
Lord’s will regarding the future of this ministry … We will be
spending focused time praying and fasting as we discern how God
is leading, and we will speak to this in the near future.”
RZIM announced it is bringing in victims advocate Rachael
Denhollander to educate the board and leadership on sexual abuse
and advise them on best practices going forward. The ministry
has also hired a management consulting firm to evaluate
“structures, culture, policies, processes, finances, and
practices” and propose reforms.
Answered prayer
The secret of Zacharias’s abuse started to unravel the day of
his funeral in May 2020. One of the massage therapists he
groped, masturbated in front of, and asked for sexually explicit
images watched in shock as the apologist was honored and
celebrated on a livestream. Famous people, including Vice
President Mike Pence and Christian football star Tim Tebow,
spoke of Zacharias in glowing terms.
Has no one come forward? she thought. No one?
She worried about other women who might be out there, hurting.
She prayed that something would happen.
The woman googled “Ravi Zacharias sex scandal” and found the
blog RaviWatch, run by Steve Baughman, an atheist who had been
tracking and reporting on Zacharias’s “fishy claims” since 2015.
Baughman blogged on Zacharias’s false statements about academic
credentials, the sexting allegations, and the subsequent
lawsuit. When the woman read about what happened to Lori Anne
Thompson, she recognized what had happened to that woman was
what had happened to her.
As far as she could tell, this atheist blogger was the only one
who cared that Zacharias had sexually abused people and gotten
away with it. She reached out to Baughman and then eventually
spoke to Christianity Today about Zacharias’s spas, the women
who worked there, and the abuse that happened behind closed
doors.
The woman from the spas told CT she didn’t expect anything from
RZIM. Not an acknowledgement. Certainly not an apology. A
multimillion-dollar ministry built in one man’s name and on his
reputation would never admit the truth of his secrets, she
thought.
She only spoke out because she wanted other women—women hurt by
Zacharias, and women victimized by other famous and celebrated
Christians—to know the truth. She wanted them to know that they
weren’t alone.
This week, she believes God answered her prayer.
“I think it happened in God’s perfect time,” she said. “It’s in
his time; it’s in his way. The Lord is doing this, and what will
be left over is what God wants to be left over.”
#Post#: 36084--------------------------------------------------
Re: BACKSLIDING IN YOUR CHRISTIAN LIFE
By: patrick jane Date: December 9, 2021, 3:34 pm
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#Post#: 39550--------------------------------------------------
Re: BACKSLIDING IN YOUR CHRISTIAN LIFE
By: patrick jane Date: May 17, 2022, 11:48 am
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#Post#: 39555--------------------------------------------------
Re: BACKSLIDING IN YOUR CHRISTIAN LIFE
By: patrick jane Date: May 17, 2022, 5:24 pm
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