Word: bakker
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...response, Falwell scoffed, "To say that Jerry Falwell stole PTL is like accusing someone of stealing the Titanic just after it hit the iceberg." As Falwell told it, Bakker "misled me and lied to me in the meeting in Palm Springs." The Lynchburg televangelist insisted that he did not threaten Bakker with the Swaggart takeover rumor. Rather, Bakker asked him to take over PTL, saying, "You're the only preacher I trust right...
...Bakker, Falwell said, described the adulterous 1980 tryst with Hahn as a 20- minute encounter in which Hahn was the aggressor and intercourse did not occur. According to Falwell, Bakker also said that the $265,000 in hush money came from his personal funds, not from PTL. On that basis, Falwell told Bakker that if he ironed out problems with his church body, the Assemblies of God, "I see no reason why you couldn't get back in the ministry." Falwell declared his willingness to "step aside...
...Falwell renege? He freely admitted changing his mind as the scandal continued to unfold. Falwell charged that he has since learned that on the day in 1980 in Florida when, according to Hahn, Bakker and his companion, Evangelist John Wesley Fletcher, had intercourse with her, a PTL staffer then attempted to do the same, and Bakker later asked the third man, "Did you get her too?" Said Falwell: "That made my blood boil." Falwell-installed auditors subsequently discovered that the $265,000 in hush money had been siphoned from PTL accounts through a false billing...
...take, however, was piddling compared with the amounts of PTL cash the auditors have been trying to trace. Supporters had sent in $50 million to build an addition to the PTL hotel at Fort Mill -- a project now in suspension -- but only $11 million was allotted to construction. The Bakkers have drawn salaries and bonuses of $4.8 million since 1984; they and top aides also picked up $640,000 in unexplained cash advances. One Bakker friend, James Taggart, got $120,000 a year to decorate Tammy and Jim's residences. Peter Teeley, Vice President George Bush's former press secretary...
Nonetheless, long-range prospects are at best uncertain. One looming threat ) emanates from a vocal group that wants to rally the 518,000 PTL Partners in order to oust Falwell. Like the Bakkers, these protesters are Pentecostals and Charismatics, believers in "gifts" of the Holy Spirit, such as healing and speaking in tongues. As a Fundamentalist Baptist, Falwell is doctrinally opposed to these practices, and the five-member PTL board he appointed has no Pentecostal representatives. The loudest of the anti-Falwell group is the Rev. Mike Evans of Fort Worth, who thinks the chastened Bakker "has every right...