Trinity Broadcasting Network

Leading up to the election, Harry Jackson confidently predicted and prayed for President Obama’s defeat. He claimed that “black and Hispanic Christians will put Romney ahead” after realizing that Obama “promotes abortion [and] same-sex marriage,” and that his reelection would bring divine judgment and suffering upon America. In fact, Jackson even said that God is working to remove elected officials who favor marriage equality from political office.

But Obama was re-elected and received the support of the vast majority of black and Hispanic voters, and now Jackson is arguing that God is moving to “take out” voters who chose “race over grace” and didn’t “care about homosexual marriage” (code words for Obama voters). In an appearance on the Trinity Broadcasting Network’s Praise The Lord, Jackson once again endorsed Seven Mountains Dominionism, which holds that right-wing Christians should dominate and lead the seven major spheres of society, and maintained that such Christians will replace the pro-Obama “false church.”

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Back in April we reported on a suit filed against TBN – the right-wing televangelism powerhouse based in Orange County, California – by Brittany Koper, a granddaughter of TBN founders Paul and Jan Crouch and a former senior executive at the organization. The suit alleged “multiple cover-ups of sexual and criminal scandals,” including a cover-up of a “bloody sexual assault.” A new suit, filed last week by Koper’s 19-year-old sister Carra Crouch, sheds signficant light on the allegation. 

A granddaughter of Trinity Broadcasting Network founders Jan and Paul Crouch filed a lawsuit Monday alleging that she was plied with alcohol and raped by a TBN employee when she was just 13 — and that her family covered up the incident, rather than report it to authorities, to protect TBN’s reputation.

 

Carra Crouch, now 19, was distraught after the 2006 assault by a 30-year-old man, and told her grandmother what had happened. “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.

The 30-year-old TBN employee, who Crouch had known for years, wound up in her room and ordered a bottle of wine from room service on Trinity’s account (“Trinity Broadcasting makes a regular practice of providing alcohol to its employees during business meetings”), the suit alleges. He coerced her to drink it “in an attempt to get her intoxicated,” and she did, it says. She asked him to leave her room, and he responded by giving her a glass of water to “help her feel better.”

 

Carra Crouch drank the glass of water and passed out immediately, according to the suit. When she awoke the next morning, the man was lying next to her, there was blood on the bed sheets, and she had “severe pain and soreness in her body in places which indicated she had been molested and raped,” it alleges. She locked herself in the bathroom and screamed at the man to leave her room, and returned to California that day.

 

That glass of water, Crouch now believes, contained a date rape drug which caused her to pass out.

Casoria, TBN’s in-house attorney,  fired him over the telephone, saying Trinity had gathered enough evidence to terminate him with cause, that the evidence was “most probably sufficient to bring criminal charges” against him, and that Trinity would not disclose the evidence to the police if he would not file for unemployment, worker’s compensation or an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claim, the suit alleges.

Appearing on Trinity Broadcasting Network’s flagship show Praise the Lord yesterday, Bishop Harry Jackson, the anti-gay activist who led unsuccessful efforts to defeat marriage equality legislation in Washington D.C. and Maryland, said that ministers who refused to work on his campaigns did so because they “envied” his success and were resentful that he had God’s favor. Speaking with Perry Stone, Jr., Jackson explained that “enemies, when vanquished, are simply stepping stones to victory, to accomplishment and to notoriety.”

Previously, Jackson blamed the “Queen of Heaven,” a demonic power, for the success of marriage equality bills.

Jackson: Sometimes envy takes hold of people, and they see you prospering and they see something that they don’t like, sometimes there are other dynamics that begin to cause them to really want to see you fail.

Stone: It’s amazing.

Jackson: It’s crazy. Not too long ago we were in a major, ground level battle, it was over the issue of marriage in the state of Maryland and Washington D.C., without getting into all those details there were people who said, ‘well if Jackson was leading it I don’t want anything to do with it.’

Stone: Were they ministers?

Jackson: They were ministers, and you’re saying, ‘wait a minute, I thought we were for the Word, I thought we were working together,’ but because there was an issue of envy that was stuck way down in their craw, so sometimes when these open doors open then enemies are revealed.

…

Jackson: When you go through the door, when you rise up, God has got a unique group of people who will be there for you. But you got to discern who they are. Secret enemies will come forward, I thank God every time I see an enemy, and I believe then God will also give His people who will help us.

Stone: What’s the purpose of an enemy? Is there ever a positive purpose for an enemy?

Jackson: Goliath was a great example, in that enemies, when vanquished, are simply stepping stones to victory, to accomplishment and to notoriety.

Stone: Praise God!