Citizen Journalist Sued by Apologia Church Fights Back

This is a generated transcript and may contain some spelling errors.

SPEAKERS: JULIE ROYS, SARAH YOUNG

julio: It is a common intimidation tactic used by people in power when accused of wrongdoing. Filing a lawsuit or just threatening to file can cause survivors and whistleblowers to shrink in fear, but sometimes this tactic backfires. Just weeks ago, a Washington court ruled against disgrace Pastor Macon Carter, who sued his former secretary for defamation.

After she claimed Carter Essayed her. Not only did the court throw out Carter’s lawsuit, it also ordered him to pay his former secretary’s legal fees. Similarly, last March, a federal judge dismissed all but one count of a lawsuit brought by former Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt. Hunt had sued the SBC, its executive committee and Guidepost solutions for publishing allegations in a report that Hunt had sexually abused another pastor’s wife.

But the judge found that the statements in the report were supported by the findings of guideposts investigation. He also found that Hunt had failed to show falsity actual malice or outrageous conduct on the part of the defendants. Yet sometimes the accused doesn’t just go after the alleged victim, but also targets the journalist or media outlet that reported the allegation.

This happened to me in 2018 when Harvest Bible Chapel and its Pastor James MacDonald sued me prior to publication. They also tried to SLAPP me with a temporary restraining order to keep me from publishing. The court threw out the restraining order properly, recognizing that it was an attempt at prior restraint, which is unconstitutional.

But Harvest and Anti also ended up dropping that lawsuit and paying all the legal fees for me and two other defendants. Fortunately, the US Constitution liens heavily toward protecting freedom of speech, especially when a public figure is involved. But that doesn’t mean being the target of a lawsuit isn’t terrifying.

It is. And joining me today is Sarah Leanne Young. A citizen journalist who operates the check. My church website Young is currently being sued by three pastors at Apology at church in Mesa, Arizona, but she’s fighting back and coming up you’ll hear her full story.

Welcome to the Roys report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and joining me is Sarah Young, who along with her husband Joe, have founded the website. Check My Church. And as I mentioned in the open, Sarah is facing a lawsuit brought by three pastors at Apology, a church in Mesa, Arizona.

But last week her lawyers filed an Anti SLAPPP motion, so she is fighting back and I’m thrilled to have her join me on this podcast. Sarah, welcome.

Sarah: Gracias por recibirme, Julio.

julio: For those who don’t know what an Anti- SLAPPP motion is, can you explain what SLAPP stands for and what that motion is all about?

Sarah: Yeah, so SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuit against Public Participation. And I think the Anti SLAPPP laws started getting introduced in the early nineties, I think when I’m actually not sure what provoked them to start coming up with the anti-SLAPP, but it’s to protect free speech basically.

Typically with journalists or whistleblowers or people who come forward with allegations of abuse and corruption. And that’s what I think it’s typically used for, but, and it’s been used for that, like you said, with the McCan Carter case.

julio: And I don’t think with that one, they actually did an Anti SLAPPP lawsuit.

It was just thrown out. Oh. Because they, it went to a judge’s ruling and that’s what they ruled. But I think the idea with the Anti SLAPPP laws and unfortunately I’m in Illinois and we don’t have any Anti SLAPPP laws. I wish we did. But the idea is to when there’s a lawsuit that really is meant to intimidate right, or to silence or burden critics or journalists to make it so that you know that this lawsuit really isn’t based on its merits, but more as an intimidation tactic to keep you from using your ex, exercising your first amendment rights.

That’s what this is all about, right?

Sarah: That’s what I believe it’s about. Yeah.

julio: Yeah. We’re going to discuss the lawsuit and apology of church and its pastors, but before we do that, can you tell me a bit about yourself and how you came to start this whole check my church website?

Sarah: Yeah. So my husband and I, we both grew up in the Evangelical Christian Church and when we met and got married, we started looking around Salt Lake City, Utah is where we.

We’re married, we were married in North Idaho, but that’s where we lived at the time. So we started looking for churches together and we decided we didn’t really like conventional church and we found a small little bible study led by an ex-Mormon named Sean McCraney. And so we decided we liked that gathering because it was very unconventional.

It was not a typical church service. There were not really demands for volunteering or tithing or a lot of control. It was just like a small group bible study, which is what we really enjoyed doing. So we started going there and after about 10 years of being part of that group, we went up and visited my family in North Idaho one Christmas and visited a family member’s church.

And we had forgotten what conventional church was like, because I was just really. Shocked and angry, I guess is the word. Very frustrated with a lot of the evangelical church culture there. And so on. Our drive back down to Utah after that, my husband and I had gotten to talking and we came up with this idea of wouldn’t it be cool if someone could just go on a website and look up a church and kind of do a background check on the church before they become a member and they could find out everything about that church before, investing and getting involved.

And so we talked about that and it just disappeared for a couple of weeks. And then our bible study teacher leader, he doesn’t like to call himself a pastor. He’s not a pastor of a church, but he he came up with the same idea, essentially. We hadn’t talked to him about it. And he said, someone really needs to do this.

And he’s the one who came up with the name. Check my church. And I said I’m doing it. And I just jumped on it and I created the website and I started compiling a list of questions and information that I think Christians wanna know before they join a church or become involved. Just basic information, but then also information that you wouldn’t know just looking at the website of a church or walking in the door the first time.

You wanna know their history and their denomination. If they don’t share it, a lot of times they don’t. So that’s really how it got started. And I mixed a lot of my opinions and I really can’t withhold my opinion. So I have a lot of opinionated articles and the church checks, but then I started getting emails from whistleblowers making allegations of abuse and corruption, which I had not really expected, and I was shocked by.

But once that started happening, we really took a pivot towards this seems like we need to focus on this. And that’s what it turned into. We still do the church checks and I still do my opinion articles, but blowing the whistle and public publishing allegations has become a thing that we do also.

julio: So how many churches have you checked, so to speak, and looked into and put up at your website?

Sarah: Church checks, I’d say we have like about 50.

julio: Bueno.

Sarah: About 50 or 60 maybe now.

julio: So just a very small slice of how many churches there are. I don’t know how many churches there are, but there’s gotta be hundreds

Sarah: s of thousands, I’m sure.

Yeah. We started just by looking into Utah churches because we were living in Utah at the time. But. I think we’re gonna be more strategic moving forward and focus on, churches that are really popular. Digital, not televangelists, like YouTube churches that have a lot of followers I think will probably be a focus for us.

julio: When you say YouTube churches, you mean churches that have large life livestream audiences kind of thing?

Sarah: Yeah. Livestream, internet, churches, basically. Yeah.

julio: Interesting. That is one reason that we publish. A lot of people will say why do you publish these awful stories on this pastor is, has been charged with this, or this pastor has done this awful thing.

And a lot of it is exactly that reason that you’re sounding a warning to people. I want that if some pastor has engaged in misconduct, that somebody can do a search on him. And it’s gonna turn up, one of our articles, right? One of your articles. One, I think it’s great that more people are doing this and that you got involved in doing it and you don’t, do you have any formal journalism training?

Sarah: I really don’t. And I did not anticipate ever being interested in journalism. I’ve always loved writing in general. And so journalism, it just never occurred to me until after I started getting the allegations and thinking I need to write about this. And then I had to learn how to do journalism without not knowing anything about it.

But I’m really learning as I go.

julio: Yeah. And you have to be careful when you do it, because if you don’t do it correctly, you can get a lawsuit. But in my understanding with this lawsuit I haven’t seen, and, but again, I haven’t. Done the kind of investigation on apology that you’ve done. But but it seems like pretty standard allegations that came by a source, firsthand source telling their story, which that is their first amendment right.

To tell their story. And as long as you report it without malice, without in any way going after the church because you have some sort of vested interest in destroying this church or something. But if you’re just reporting fairly and my understanding is in this case, you reached out to the church for statements, you’ve tried to check your facts all those things.

And yet this is coming against you. But before we get into the lawsuit, I do wanna talk about the specific lawsuit and how it came to be. But how did Apology a church itself and Jeff Durbin is the senior pastor there how did it get on your radar?

Sarah: Yeah, so pretty early on actually when I, after I started check my church, I had.

Some friends that were volunteering and helping me with investigations and writing the church checks. And one of them had pointed out to me, Hey, you might wanna look into apology at church. There’s some other articles through a website called Pulpit Pen. So I went and read those and I thought, oh, and this was very early on, so I hadn’t heard very many allegations or gotten really that many whistleblowers at that point.

But, so to me, at the time I thought, wow, this is really shocking. And I was surprised. And so I started writing about them and I reached out to them at that time and asked for their comments on those allegations. And so that’s

julio: when I first let’s end those allegations because

Sarah: Oh, okay.

julio: Some of those are similar to this case, even where there seems to be a pattern of. They’re being private. What people assume is a private conversation. Now in Arizona where Apia is located, it’s a one party state, meaning that you only need one party’s consent to record a conversation.

But when you’re talking to a pastor at a church, you generally think that your conversation is private. Now, the first case where this came up is my understanding, came up with a guy Tim Hurd, and I know Jim Tim Hurd from his, what is it, Bible thumping wing nut or something. Podcast.

Sarah: Si.

julio: Which is not one of my favorite podcasts. In fact, he has made allegations about me that are, it, typical case with Tim Hurd, I spoke at my own conference and he took an el a video of me speaking at my conference and said that I was a wicked woman preacher, and I’m like. One, just because you preach, I don’t think that makes you wicked.

But I’m speaking at my conference, I’m not even preaching. I’m like, what? Yeah. And he twisted it to make it look like something. It wasn’t, which again, I don’t have a problem with had that been the case, but it’s like it wasn’t the case. But it’s a little of the pot calling the kettle black.

I think in this particular case where you have Tim involved, you have Pulpit and Penn, which the founder of Pulpit and Penn has been sued for legitimately misquoting people or Mischaracter mischaracterizing them, and he’s been sued successfully for that. So I wouldn’t

Recommend his previous publication public pulpit and Pen, which I guess has been sold to another colleague of his Right.

But even it’s very similar to Portia and they have said things about me and had to actually print retractions. So I think these guys play very loose and fast with the facts. But that said. What happened between these, between Jeff Durbin and Tim Hurd is pretty stunning. Not so much in this case because it wasn’t a, he wasn’t a congregant.

But my understanding, Tim Hurd called them because he had criticized them publicly and Tim admitted to them on this recording, which he thought was a private call, that he had misrepresented them and he knew he misrepresented them. And he admitted that. But he also said that it was out of envy and that’s why he did it.

And so these pastors, my understanding, they held onto this right for a couple of years till Tim criticized them again. And then they published it all on a, anonymous YouTube, which, if you’re going to publish it, at least have the guts to come out and say, I’m publishing this myself. But then they did it anonymously, almost like to.

To mask that they had done it. So that’s one of them. But there, there were several others as well, right? Where even congregants were involved with secret recordings, where they come in to talk about like personal sin issues or issues with their family members and Jeff Durbin’s family members.

And tell me about some of those and how those turned out.

Sarah: Because they used pseudonyms and were very careful with their identities. I don’t know that much about the deep details of those, but yeah, basically what you said is there were conflicts in the church between family members and they would meet together to try and resolve it.

That, that’s my understanding. And people were not aware they were being recorded according to those reports. And then later they would find out that they were recorded because. Those recordings would get used against them. And at least that’s, from what I remember, that’s what the allegations were in those.

And it does sound very similar to Hayley’s allegations. And yeah. What you said, it sounds like a pattern.

julio: So you published several articles about some of those previous incidents. Correct.

Sarah: Si.

julio: And as a result how did apology or respond to you?

Sarah: When I reached out to them the very first time, I think it was in 2021 that I first reach out to them.

But every single time I try it’s usually just a, an attack against my affiliation with Sean McCraney. They really don’t like him, so I’m affiliated with him. Therefore, they don’t owe me any explanations for anything. And when I was writing my church check I would ask questions and I ask all pastors these questions.

I, I actually haven’t done it in a long time because I came to the. Swift realization that asking pastors questions is a waste of time. But that’s just been my experience. Wow. Nobody wants to answer these questions. They don’t wanna, they’re not gonna tell you what their salary is. They’re not gonna be as financially transparent as I would like them to be in

julio: order for me.

And just so people know, every single nonprofit in the United States has to file a nine 90 revealing their top wage earners except for religious nonprofits and churches. And when you ask for the same, what you’re saying is when you ask the average church pastor for the same transparency that every other nonprofit, secular, nonprofit has in the United States, they’re unwilling to do it.

Sarah: Exactamente.

I think I, I’ve contacted dozens of pastors and maybe one or two was willing to send me financial information. As long as I kept it private and confidential. And that kind of defeats the purpose. ’cause the point is to show Christians that you’re transparent and that you, they can trust you with their donations.

It seems like common sense to me, but when, whenever you ask that question, you get a real hostility from a lot of pastors and that includes apology at church. They did not appreciate that. They think it’s nobody’s business that doesn’t go to that church. So yeah, that was the response was I guess righteous indignation.

I dunno. But they did not like me asking questions and bringing up past allegations and my affiliation with a Bible teacher they don’t like. And yeah it’s always been a very similar that way.

julio: And then at one point you published a story and they sent you a cease and desist letter.

Is that correct?

Sarah: Yeah, that’s true. After a few years of doing check my church, and about a year actually, after I had published those first original reports on Apia, a woman reached out to me who had adopted a child who was previously adopted by a couple that was in apology at church. They were very prominent members there, and she had alleged that they abused this child.

And so I I spent months talking to her and receiving all of her documentation, which she sent me a lot. And so I wrote up a report and I reached out to Apology again. And I said, these are the allegations that this woman is making. And is there any correct, are these true? Are the allegations true?

And. Do you have a comment? Because I’m gonna write a report on this. And that’s when I got threatened with the lawsuit. The first time was in 2022. And we went back and forth several times. I published the whole email interaction. I have this radical transparency and it can it deters people from reading my reports because they’re so stinking and long.

I get a lot of complaints. Your reports are just too long. But they include everything. So if anyone has a question, I just point to the report. But they’re the email interactions are all there. And we went back and forth a few times and ultimately I said, if you can’t show me, some kind of correction, are there any actual factual corrections and it’s just, you’re in a cult so I don’t have to talk to you.

And I said, okay, i’m gonna be publishing this. Thank you for your time. And so

julio: you published it anyway, even though they threatened you with a lawsuit. Good for you. Good for you. Because there’s an awful lot of people that when it gets to that point, and I can’t tell you how many sources that I literally daily talk to, probably interact with at least weekly who say, I’m afraid they’ll sue me.

Yeah. And that one fear often, which is an unfounded fear in the particular case of that of that story, they didn’t sue you for that story. Three years went by, nothing happened.

Sarah: Right. Yeah. They didn’t sue me. They sent me a cease and deist

Along with the parents that the parents and the church sent me a cease and deist together.

So the same attorney was apparently representing the church and the parents.

And I just, I. The claims they were making in the cease and desist I knew were not true. And so I kept the report up and they never sued me. So a year went by and I know that the statute of limitations for those claims was up.

And so I published another report. Why didn’t you guys sue me? And, nothing quiet. Silence. But then

julio: that’s funny because we get lots of cease and desist letters. The latest, the one where we published the cease and desist was with Day Star tv. So they sent us before we, we pu or it was after our first article, but then we, published many articles, many follow up articles, but after that first one they they published or they sent us a cease and desist letter.

I gave it to, we have an attorney on our board, and she just made mince meat out of every allegation. She like answered every single one and then we published it and I felt like publishing it gave some of the other, there were podcasters out there and different bloggers and things that, that had also piggybacked off of our reports and began reporting on Daystar.

And I felt like it emboldened them where they, and there was one guy, I love this guy. He actually took it, ripped it up and ate it on his podcast, which I’m like, wow. Because I started getting cease and desist as well.

Sarah: Yeah, I think I saw that one.

julio: Yeah. But again. These guys are bullies and so often their bark is worse than their bite.

And they threaten and they do a lot of these things, but they don’t follow through. However, obviously we wouldn’t be having this podcast had they not followed through. But let me let me, because it’s my understanding you became aware of this latest story because of a TikTok and some church members or former church members said, Hey, you gotta see this TikTok.

So I’m gonna play the TikTok, but maybe you wanna set it up a little bit who’s speaking and what’s the context?

Sarah: Yeah, so this is Hailey Marris. She was a former attendee of Apology at church and she had received some marriage counseling from the pastors there and. After being kicked out of the church for a dispute with her husband and some time had passed, she was sent a group text screenshot of the daughters of the pastors basically gossiping about her marriage disputes that she thought were confidential between her and the pastors.

julio: This is what Hailey had to say on her TikTok, and I believe this got an awful lot of views and got spread around and really got the attention, not just of the public, but obviously of apology at church.

Hailey: The content of this video is for informational and educational purposes only. It’s based on documented facts, personal experience, and firsthand evidence.

I am exercising my first amendment right to free speech and report matters of public concern, particularly regarding potential abuse and misconduct within faith based communities. With that being said, let’s get into it. I went to the elders of Apology at church for counsel within my marriage. At the time, I was severely traumatized from an abusive past marriage and triggering on my current husband.

They had just married us and I really wanted to get into counseling before my marriage got worse because I started reacting to my husband’s physical touch. I was under the impression that the things that were shared in our sessions were confidential. Conflict in my marriage was so great that the church put us out, labeling me the abusive one because allegedly I pulled a gun on my husband.

That’s the narrative that was being spread about me.

julio: Okay. And then she shares a number of documents showing exactly what she’s talking about and folks we’ll put a link to that TikTok in our description so that you can go view it yourself. But to be fair, I need to mention that apology a pastor, Jeff Durbin, denies that he shared any confidential information and the incident Hailey refers to involving a gun, became the subject of a police report, which Durbin argues and rightly makes it public record.

Now, pastors are not licensed counselors in most cases in this case, they’re not licensed counselors, correct?

Sarah: Correcto.

julio: I guess technically, if you shared something that somebody had told you in counseling and you’re a licensed counselor, you would lose your license. No questions asked. In fact, you would probably never be allowed to practice again.

Yeah. But in this case, they’re pastors. And this is one of my frustrations and it gets at why you even started check my church. Like, why is it that if you’re a counselor you have to be licensed for you to operate in a state, but you can be a pastor and you can do the same functions and more than a counselor does.

And you don’t have to be licensed, you don’t have to have any standards that you adhere to. Maybe if you’re in a denomination, they enforce some standards, but legally to operate a church, and I understand we don’t want the state getting involved in religious matters and messing with the church, but at some point, I think we have to say there’s been so much misconduct and wrong behavior on the part of pastors that there needs to be at least some regulation where you have to adhere to certain standard.

To be a pastor, but again, they shared this private information and you, at least that’s the allegation by Hailey. And then you followed up with her, right? And you discussed this. And what more did you find out about the situation and what had happened?

Sarah: There was a lot more to the situation.

Haley ended up sending me something like 170 text screenshots that I ended up going through. Just a novel. A lot of it I included in the report, but it’s so much, I just couldn’t get it all in there. But yeah, there, there’s a lot more to be said about the situation. But yeah, we, her and I spoke for.

A couple of months before I ended up actually publishing the report. And just making sure I have the timeline correct and everything that happened. But they, I’m trying to not say details that I shouldn’t say that are

julio: part of the lawsuit. Lawsuit. And I don’t want you to do something that you shouldn’t.

And I know that it’s important when you’re in the midst of a lawsuit that you have to be careful about what you say. Yeah. And I really appreciate you being willing to come on this podcast when you’re in the middle of the lawsuit. And part of that I think is because you don’t just have an average lawyer.

You have, that’s true. You have basically when you got sued we’ll talk about that. When you got sued how you ended up with a lawyer you did, but I’m guessing when you first get a lawsuit, ’cause. Happened to me and there’s so many parallels and we’ll talk about those between what happened to you, what happened to me back in 2018.

But there’s a little bit of fear, like when you get a lawsuit especially at the point that I got sued, I didn’t even have the Roys report back then. It was just my blog and I was actually reporting the story for World Magazine. I didn’t know if I had any protections from them. I did have a personal insurance policy, which I always tell people, if you own your house, get an umbrella policy that protects you against libel and slander.

Just do it. It’s so easy and it’s usually cheap. And I had one of those, and that ended up protecting me. But as I said, in the open harvest and James Anti ended up repaying like all of my legal fees and then a little bit on, on top. I ended up not having to pay, but I was so glad I had that insurance.

And I had a great lawyer who was in my corner. He was actually in my small group, and he just happened. They didn’t actually appeal to your standard antide or defamation laws. They appealed to this other, it’s an Illinois law, and it’s really weird that they chose it. But the funny thing was that my lawyer who had, who was in like the only lawyer I, at that point, he’s the only one I really knew on a personal basis.

And when I called him, here’s this friend of mine, and he is oh, this is hilarious. He’s I just finished litigating according to this law. And the great thing is it gives us, we, we can actually counter Sue according to this law. So he was like we’re in great standing. And plus when he read the lawsuit, he kinda laughed because it was so poorly written.

I I still wonder to this day, even though James Anti had hired A-A-D-U-I lawyer to do this lawsuit, which might explain why it was so poorly written, but I also sometimes wonder if James Anti wrote it himself because there were so many things in there that were so crazy, just absolutely wild.

One of the things was that supposedly my husband was in business with Ryan Mahoney, who was one of the founders of this other blog. Called the elephant’s debt. And I like, went to my husband, I’m like, do you know Ryan Mahoney? And he’s Ryan, who? And he never even met the guy, but supposedly they’re in business together.

It was just crazy allegations in this thing. But anyway, you get this lawsuit. Talk about your, how you felt when got served. I’m guessing, did somebody come to your door to serve you or did you get in the mail, or how did you get served?

Sarah: I didn’t technically. Oh. They, we, they filed the lawsuit in early October and I found out about it through the public docket, the Maricopa County Public Docket on their website.

And so I just waited to get served. Nobody ever came to my door. And you’ve

julio: never been served?

Sarah: We got served officially through our legal representation after they claimed they tried to serve. Haley and Cameron Meris, which they dispute. They say that they have not avoided service, but their attorney claims that the Meris tried to avoid service.

But after that happened, we’re like, no, we’re not avoiding service, so we’ll accept service through our legal representation. So Greg Leslie of the First Amendment Clinic he accepted service for us. And I think that was in early December. I can’t remember exactly when it was, but yeah.

julio: So how did he find out about your case, or how did you find out about him?

Sarah: Hailey and I had been searching around for attorneys after we found out that we were getting sued. And we started to GoFundMe because we didn’t know if we were gonna need money and we didn’t have the funds for a, an attorney. A lot of attorneys in Arizona, they charge a lot just to.

Consult with you.

julio: Si.

Sarah: And we got quoted from a few of them, tens of thousands of dollars upfront, and I’m like I don’t have that.

julio: And that’s why it’s so scary, right? Even if there’s no,

Sarah: Yeah. That is the stress.

julio: It’s money and you gotta put that money out before you know there’s any ruling or anything.

And it’s terrifying. It really is.

Sarah: Yeah. Basically we were just reaching out to every attorney we could find, and then Haley had found this First Amendment clinic at the Arizona State University. I don’t know how she found it, but she found it and she said, I’m gonna reach out to him.

And Greg was like, yeah, we’ll help you. I was just like, oh, thank you, God.

julio: And they’re actually, they’re privately funded, aren’t they? Or funded by Grant or something? That they don’t charge,

Sarah: I think they’re funded by the state. I’m by the state. I’m not a hundred percent sure on that, but because they’re part of the university

I think they’re funded by the state. But

julio: a SU has a phenomenal journalism program, the Walter Cronkite journalism school there. So there’s a strong understanding of journalists and First Amendment. And protecting that. And kudos to them. Kudos that there’s even such an organization, like every university, should have that’s a state funded university should have something like this.

This is excellent. Yeah. It’s outstanding. Especially if they have a journalism school, and especially if they care about First Amendment rights, which all of us should, because that’s what one of the just main distinguishing, features between us and so many other countries that has given us freedom.

If we care about freedom, we have to care about the First Amendment. And so I just, I love that you were represented. By someone who is doing this because of the principle of it. Yes. And just a little tidbit on when I got sued, I was actually working on a story for the Chicago Tribune and they dropped me like a hot potato.

The minute I got sued I was like, thank you so much for like really caring about the First Amendment and journalist writes and, but World Magazine, back when Marvin Ky was the editor, they refused to drop me. He said, I will never drop someone because they are experienced backlash from the source of their investigation.

And they stuck with us. And thank God they did because I probably wouldn’t be doing this today if Marvin hadn’t stuck by me. So I’m always just indebted to him. We need those people who will stand on principle and will say, I’m gonna protect you with the power that I have to protect you. And that’s what your lawyer is doing.

And. Kudos to him. Yeah, that’s, that is just really awesome. So I’m so happy for you. So tell me about as much as you can about the lawsuit and the process where we’re at right now.

Sarah: Yeah. So they filed the lawsuit in early October, and then there was the waiting on when we were gonna get served.

And after, some back and forth arguing about whether or not we avoided being served, we just accepted the service and I believe. Today is when we’re filing our anti SLAPPP motion and our response to their TRO. It feels like it’s just been, the wheels of justice turned so slowly, but we filed an initial motion to dismiss a couple of weeks ago, I believe.

And that was purely not purely, but partially to dismiss. Joe and I, Joe has no involvement at all in any of this, and I’m assuming they sued him because of the Arizona common property law where you’re required to sue the spouses. I think that’s a law in Arizona where you sue one person, you have to sue their spouse.

julio: But it’s an

Sarah: Montana

julio: we’re intimidation tactic too.

Sarah: It might be, I can’t speculate on their. Motives. But

julio: I’ll give my opinion that it is. And I’ll say a couple of things. Temporary restraining order, that’s exactly what I got served with. In fact, I heard it was coming because I was sued with two other defendants, Ryan Mahoney and Scott Bryant, who were both the co-authors of the Elephants dead.

So he went after both them and me, but they threw in, I believe it was Scott’s wife, just for good measure. She wasn’t involved at all either, and it was like, and Ryan’s wife and she wasn’t involved. So it was the same sort of thing where they got lumped in. And of course they didn’t sue my husband though, so he felt gypped, like, why didn’t he get included?

What is that? But yeah, I guess the wives, but not the husband’s. ’cause it’s always the woman’s fault. But I digress. But yes, we got a temporary restraining order. I knew it was coming because Scott called me and he said, Julie, you better not get served because if you get served, you’re not gonna be able to publish ’cause of this restraining order.

And so I remember they came to my house, nobody was home but me. And they’re knocking on my door and I kid you not, it’s like between nine or 10 and o’clock at night, it’s dark out and I’ve got these guys knocking on my door and I’m like, not gonna answer the door. It was scary and actually my husband when I was, felt like it was safe that they could come home.

But in Illinois, even if they serve, if your child’s over, I forget what age, I think maybe 11. If they serve your child or your husband, it’s the same as serving you. So I was like, you can’t get served either, Neil. So he came home and I think he got some buddies. He has a friend in the neighborhood who has sons that are all over six two.

They’re huge. And they came and guarded the car and escorted him to the front door. So I couldn’t get served. Now I later found out that when they filed this, the judge in Chicago cook County immediately threw out that temporary restraining order. ’cause he saw that as an effort at prior restraint.

Again, that’s unconstitutional. And I was surprised in your case it didn’t get thrown out right away. Why hasn’t that been thrown out? The judge wants some sort of response. Is that right?

Sarah: Yeah, I really don’t know. I don’t know why it wasn’t. But they filed it like maybe four or five days after they filed the initial lawsuit.

And, but then on, I think. Early November, the lawsuit actually ended on a ca landed on a calendar for dismissal because of lack of prosecution. So they were going to dismiss the lawsuit for lack of prosecution because they hadn’t served us yet.

And that’s when, and it stayed there. But then I came out with a press release probably a week before it was supposed to be dismissed.

Announcing that we were getting sued.

And so after I published the press release that’s when they filed a Motion for alternative service and claimed that the Mars were avoiding services. And that’s when Greg and the First Amendment Clinic represented us and then accepted service.

And so that’s the gist of the first like 60 days

julio: Si.

Sarah: Of what’s

julio: happened. And I wanna clarify something you said today. You got, you’re filing the Anti SLAPPP motion?

Sarah: Si. Si.

julio: This is prerecorded. My guess is it won’t be today, it’ll be this week. It’s just because it’ll take a couple days to, to get this podcast out.

But I just, along with the anti SLAPPp, you filed a, an affidavit. And I just wanna read this affidavit because again to prove that someone has defamed you, and especially when you’re a journalist or in your case, a blogger or a, citizen journalist, however you put it.

But, you’re basically trying to get out the facts and you’re reporting on someone who, my understanding is they’ve agreed that. The pastor there, Jeff Durbin, and I believe there’s two other pastors who are suing you as well. That they are, they’re public figures or at least semi-public figures.

And so when that’s the case, you don’t just have to prove that what was said about you is false. You have to, the burden of proof is on you, not just to show it’s false, but that it was published with malice. In other words, Sarah, you knew it was false and you published it anyway. And so I wanna read your affidavit because it really gets at, again, these anti-SLAPP laws, which are meant to to really dismiss and discourage the lawsuits that are brought.

Not really because the merits of what you published was false, but they wanna intimidate you. And that’s the case that needs to be made in this case. So you write, I was acting in accordance with all the principles listed in the About Us section of my blog when I reported on the Pastors of Apology at church and in all my other reporting.

I have been running this blog since 2019 and have published dozens of articles about churches all over the country. I became aware of Ms. Maris Osborne after seeing her TikTok videos about abuse occurring at the Apology at church. I was already familiar with apology because I had previously reported on them in August 15th, 2022.

And then you give the title of that article. After writing this article, Jeffrey Durbin sent me a cease and desist letter and threatened to sue me if I left the article up. We’ve talked about this. He never actually sued you and it was stayed up for three years after its initial publication. You said, I decided to reach out to Hailey after seeing her TikTok videos because I believe that she had an important story to tell about abuses that were happening within the church.

I began corresponding with Hailey in or around July, 2025 when she provided me with substantial evidence that the pastors at Apology had breached their duty of confidentiality to her. The evidence included, but was not limited to text messages, which showed the pastor’s daughters discussing Hailey’s personal life.

I felt that the materials Hailey had provided me was credible evidence that the apology of pastors had breached their duty of confidentiality to her gossiped about her and slandered her. Haley also showed me the text messages where Jeffrey Durbin appeared to be making veil threats to publicly share more of Hay’s private personal information.

I consider this to be blackmail. I decided to write a blog about Hailey’s accusations against Jeffrey Durbin and the apology at church. Before publishing my blog, I emailed Jeffrey Durbin directly to get his thoughts on the story on August 11th, 2025. In this email, I provided him with a list of all the specific accusations that were being made against him.

I wanted to ensure that he had a chance to share his point of view and to rebut any factual errors that I may have made. He refused to share any information with me. He refused to respond to any of the specific allegations. He insulted me personally and he threatened to sue me if I published my article.

I sent him two follow-up emails where I encouraged him to present a counterargument of Haley’s accusations. This got me nowhere because he simply responded with more insults and threats. Okay, and then you say that you have it there as an exhibit. I would’ve been happy to publish any credible facts that Mr.

Durbin shared with me because I believe as a journalist it is critical to allow people to defend themselves. When faced with accusations, however, Mr. Durbin refused to present me with any facts at all. It was clear that no amount of effort on my part could convince him to do I published my blog, and then you talk about a few more details about the article, but again, this is a situation where it seems very clear that you did your due diligence to get to the facts.

You published an allegation by a firsthand source. And that’s what journalists do. We go to the source. We don’t publish hearsay from secondhand sources. Then we go and we go directly to the accused. We give them an opportunity to respond to the specific allegations. You did all of that. So to make the case that you acted with malice or disregard to him, I think it’s is pretty challenging in this case, of course, having not seen all of the things that are being alleged. But it does seem like you did your job. Do you feel like you did your job or do you have any regrets?

Sarah: I feel like I did my job. I spent a lot of time making sure that every claim that I made in the report was substantiated by some kind of evidence.

And anything that I couldn’t prove 100% was my honest opinion. And I stand by the report and I do think I did. I was honestly surprised. I was surprised that they filed a lawsuit, but at the same time, it’s, it is a vocational hazard you would say. But, yeah, so I, I am proud of what I did, and I think I would do it all over again exactly the same way that I did.

Maybe I would make it a little shorter so that people didn’t have to read for 14 minutes.

julio: You can link to a lot of those documents and it saves people sometimes, but that is always the challenge. I always say that I feel like I have a mountain of information and I not only have to boil it down to a certain amount of words, but then you have to put it on the bottom shelf so it’s really accessible to anybody who comes and reads it.

And so it’s, it is challenging. It’s always a challenge to do that. But again, kudos to you for doing your job for and you’re not, do you even get paid for what you do?

Sarah: No,

julio: you, so you’re, and you’re, you’ve done, just from what I’m seeing, you’ve, you’re, you’ve learned, you’ve begin to learn the craft of journalism.

You, you’ve done it, you’re doing it well, and you’re doing it with integrity as far as reporting and making sure that you’re, your, all your facts are checked. And that’s the biggest part of what a journalist does. And unfortunate that you got sued in this case. But, I was telling you when we got sued it was I laugh now.

I’m like, it was kind of Christmas come early because it gave us an opportunity. ’cause I knew where so many of the skeletons were, and I had so many sources that wanted to speak about the abuse or misconduct of James Anti, but they were afraid to. And they were afraid to, in part because of the Christian community, not just retaliation by James and Harvest, but the Christian community sometimes turns on you.

It’s how dare you touch the Lord’s anointed and you’re just trying to, undermine the church and it’s no I’m trying to purify the church and people need to be aware of what’s going on. But they were so terrified of that. They were like, listen, if you subpoena me, I’ll respond.

And if I don’t get a subpoena, I’m not talking to you. And so they were more than happy to give me the information, but we ended up emailing them the subpoena so that they get it quickly and they would get us a response back, and as a lawyer, you have to tell the opposing lawyer within two or three days of when you do something like that, of when you, you file a subpoena.

But in this particular case, I had their response and all the documentation I wanted, usually within a day or two. And I was publishing, at my website. So it was when that happened that they couldn’t drop that lawsuit quick enough. They actually first wanted to quash all the information that I got that way.

But when the judge was like, no, you brought the lawsuit. Sorry. She’s at liberty to, to publish that. Then they dropped the lawsuit really quick because they didn’t want, and this is what is actually shocking when pastors with skeletons in their closet, sue, because it opens you up to discovery.

And I’ve heard so many people say they’re gonna sue and I’m like, go ahead and make my day. I’ve got insurance. And yeah, we will come after you and we will find the things that you’re hiding. If we make a mistake, we always correct it. We’ve never made a mistake on a major investigation other than like incidental mistakes that everybody, every media outlet makes.

But the thrust of our stories have never been shown to be false. And we stand by in the same way. And again, they wanna do the bully tactics. Go ahead. But you’re not gonna prevail. I love living in a country where journalists are protected free, speech is protected, and the facts and the truth are protected, and it’s really a beautiful thing.

And this is one of the cases where the courts actually normally do their job. Yeah. So for me, I am, I’m thrilled that you’re doing this, but from your perspective, what are the implications? I cited at the beginning, and I’m thrilled, like me, con Carter had to pay the legal fees for the woman that he sued.

Yeah. I think more of that needs to happen, but when you look at what, what has happened to you so far, how do you feel about the state of free speech and what impact do you think this might have on other journalists or bloggers or podcasters out there who, again, need to use their platform to speak?

Sarah: It does have a huge implication for free speech. If things don’t go our way, that would be a huge loss to free speech and to free press and everything that you mentioned. But I’m really confident that things will go our way. I’m really confident in the First Amendment clinic.

And yeah, I don’t really have much else to say about it. Besides, I’m really glad that we do live in this country where we have the freedom to speak and give our honest opinions and report the truth. But to be honest I’m frustrated with how slowly this whole process is because I have other reports to publish that I’m just like holding onto things and when can I talk about this?

And even though we have the freedom of speech, the whole process of this. Lawsuit has forced me to be very careful and hold my tongue. And even though I know something is true, or it’s my honest opinion, can I say this while I’m in the middle of a lawsuit? And that whole, that the whole situation is very frustrating.

So they’re still getting what they want temporarily until this is resolved.

And so that is very frustrating because I would like to just speak freely and it’s been very, it’s been frustrating in that regard. And then the initial financial stress, which was fixed by the First Amendment Clinic, thank God.

But beyond that, yeah, I’m just, I’m really grateful for the support we’ve gotten. I’m really grateful that we do have this freedom and I’m confident that it’ll go well for us. And moving forward, I definitely will have some insurance.

julio: Yeah. I highly recommend it. Although after this I realized that I probably will never get covered unless I get a professional policy.

And those are very expensive. I don’t know if that would apply in your situation. I shouldn’t say very expensive. They’re expensive. But we had to get ’em because that’s what we do. Just like doctors have to get malpractice insurance and all of that.

Sarah: Si.

julio: But it’s just, that’s part of what it takes to operate in this space.

But I, I have to say I am surprised that, again, ours came with a temporary restraining order just like yours, that got thrown out immediately. Because the judge understood that’s prior restraint. You cannot keep a journalist or a blogger or any American really. From speaking the truth.

And so that’s, that is a little, I hope you prevail in that particular regard. And then the rest of the lawsuit the defamation or whatever that’s a different matter. But the restraining order seems to me like it should be pretty automatic, but we’ll see. We’ll see what happens, especially with this Anti SLAPPp motion that you have filed.

And maybe by the time we publish this, we’ll have a response, although I doubt it, highly doubt it. We’ll see. It, it usually takes a while, but hopefully we will have it soon and we will certainly report on that. And be following your case as it goes. What about the response from the Christian community?

Have you felt like there’s supportive of you or, how dare you report on this? Church in Arizona,

Sarah: right. Surprisingly, we’ve gotten a lot of support and I was expecting a lot more criticism and support, to be honest, because it’s such a popular ministry, especially on YouTube and social media.

They have a lot of followers, so I was really expecting a lot of hate, but we’ve gotten tons of support and very grateful for that. And it’s had quite an impact just I believe, in their local community. A lot of former members have reached out and continue to, and yeah, it’s, it created some tension I think, in, in the church there.

But as far as supporting us, I think it’s been really great And I really couldn’t ask for more support to be honest.

People have even donated to the GoFundMe, even though we don’t even know if we need it or not. Yeah, it was just, it blew me away actually, because I’d never seen that level of support from people I didn’t even know.

And yeah, it was really encouraging.

julio: But it seems to me apology and Jeff Durban has left a trail of broken relationships and hurt people like this. Again, you had published, you’ve been publishing for several years, and what I find with these churches, and we’ve reported on so many churches where, again, there’s so many aggrieved people out there, but they’re scared to say anything.

And I’ve often said fear is contagious, but so is courage. Yes. And so when one person speaks up and says, they did this to me, like Hailey, I love her. Like I love that she, yeah. That she took to TikTok and she used the power that she has and this is the thing, we’re living in an age where anybody can do that.

Anybody Yeah. Can go and speak up. And honestly, the Royce report started because we were able to bypass the Christian media gatekeepers because they wouldn’t publish a lot of this stuff we knew needed to be published because they were part of the whole evangelical industrial complex. And they were financially tied in and their advertisers and their supporters and everything were parts of all these organizations.

And when we did just a grassroots funded, we’re gonna publish the truth, whatever it is, and let the chips fall where they may, people got behind it. But again, there’s, when there’s people out there who have been hurt and wounded, and in this case there is a lot of smoke coming out of this church.

And when there’s that much smoke, there’s gotta be fire. And my sense is that you will probably hear from more victims at Apia Church who will reach out to you. And you’ve also heard that the. At least at that local church that they’ve lost a lot of members. Is that right?

Sarah: Yes, I have heard that. I’ve heard and I don’t know if it’s involved in or related at all to Haley’s whistle blowing, but yeah, I heard that over a hundred people have left the church sometime in October. And that’s what a, a few former members have told me.

julio: And how big was the church to begin with?

Sarah: Apology is not a mega church, they’re, I think they’re less than a thousand members. So for more than a hundred people to walk away, if that’s how many left, that’s

julio: that’s significant.

Eso es

Sarah: quite, yeah. That is significant.

julio: Yeah. I’m sure that in part these sorts of stories, they certainly don’t help the church. And I think, I would just like to say to anybody listening who goes to this church. Understand there’s a pattern there of people being recorded. So I would be very careful.

I can’t imagine going to a church where you can’t trust your pastors to be, pastors are supposed to protect their sheep. They’re not supposed to record them so that they can retaliate against their sheep. Someone who does that is not a pastor. That is not a pastor, that’s a mercenary, that is not a pastor.

So I,

it

Sarah: makes me think of, it makes me think of the Pharisees actually, and the way they would send in spies to spy on Jesus to try and get him into trouble. It’s, that’s just what it makes me think of. So

julio: I’m so glad that it’s being called out. I’m glad for your role in it. And what would you say just when it comes to the Christian community and accountability, do you see.

Do you see an increase in accountability? Do you see more people attuned to this is not okay and when it’s not okay, I’m gonna speak up and say something.

Sarah: In a lot of ways I do, because of media outlets like yours. There’s not tons of ’em, but there are a lot of grassroots and independent journalists who are now being like a voice for people who are coming out of churches and wanting to go to somebody.

’cause they have no recourse in them. They take it to the leadership. We’re right, you’re wrong. What are you gonna do about it? And all they have to do is either submit to the church or walk away quietly.

But the I do, and there’s a lot of negativity that we could talk about when it comes to the internet and social media.

But when it comes to things like this, I think it’s a huge blessing because then individual Christians have the right and freedom and the platform to blow the whistle. And I think that they are doing that a lot more than has been done in the past, at least. And like with Hailey and TikTok and, others are doing the same thing.

And like you said, courage is contagious. And I think that a lot more people are gonna be holding their leaders accountable because they see this kind of courage.

julio: Yes, a hundred percent. I wish you well in your lawsuit and you are absolutely right. We had 12 million views last year and every year, wow.

It’s growing. And, but we can’t report every case that’s out there, not even close. We are turning away stories all the time. And when we do I have referred people to, Hey, have you considered this blog or this podcast, or this? And often they do that and they go there because again, we can’t cover it all.

We would love to, but we’re limited. We can only do so much. And so I’m very grateful for you keep swinging and keep doing what you’re doing. To me this is as much the Lord’s work as the preaching of the gospel is the purifying of the church. And so I do really appreciate it and I know you’re doing it from a heart that’s committed to.

Truth and to the Lord, and so thank you.

Sarah: Gracias por recibirme, Julio.

julio: Thanks for listening to the Roy’s report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Royce, and just a reminder that the Roy’s report is supported by viewers like you. You make this podcast happen. So if you care about podcasts like these continuing, would you please help us out?

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