Is Misty Edwards A Victim?

SPEAKERS
DAVID POOLER, Julie Roys

Julie Roys  00:03
Our bombshell report on the alleged affair between popular worship leaders Kevin Prosch and Misty Edwards sent shockwaves through the charismatic Christian community. How could two people who ushered so many into the presence of God, sin in such an egregious way? But were both of them consensual partners? Or was Kevin, an admitted sexual predator, the abuser? And was Misty his victim? Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and today we’re going to discuss not just our report on Kevin and Misty, but the often-misunderstood issue of adult clergy sexual abuse. This is when someone in spiritual authority intentionally uses their role, position, and power to exploit someone else sexually. Is this what happened with Kevin and Misty? Kevin was not in any formal role of authority over Misty, but he was more than 20 years older than her. And we know from published articles that Misty admired Kevin’s songs and his intimate style of leading worship. Kevin also has a history of sexual predation. As I reported in 1999, Prosch admitted to a series of adulterous relationships. Yet when you hear the way he described those relationships, they sound abusive. Prosch writes, and I quote, I committed adultery and used my gifting to manipulate the women involved. I pursued women not only sexually but also emotionally and always for my own selfish gain and personal pleasure. The very gift God gave me to bless others with, I used to manipulate and seduce these women. We also know that Misty has spent the last 25 years in what is increasingly being exposed as a manipulative and sexually abusive environment at the International House of Prayer or IHOP in Kansas City. And if you haven’t been following the shocking revelations concerning IHOP founder Mike Bickle, I encourage you to go to the investigations tab at my website, JULIEROYS.COM. And there we have all of our stories on IHOP easily accessible.

Julie Roys  02:10

Well, again, there are a lot of questions surrounding what happened with Misty and Kevin, our reporting on Misty and Kevin, and this whole issue of adult clergy sexual abuse. And joining me for this discussion is a well-known expert on the topic, Dr. David Pooler. Dr. Pooler is a professor at Baylor University who’s done extensive research on adult clergy sexual abuse, and I’m so looking forward to speaking further with him about this topic.

Julie Roys  02:36

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Julie Roys  03:39

Well again, joining me is Dr. David Pooler, a professor at the Diana R Garland School of Social Work at Baylor University. Dr. Pooler has more than 15 years of social work practice experience and has done extensive work among at risk and abused children. But most pertinent to our discussion today is the research he’s done on adult clergy sexual abuse and his desire to develop healthy church congregations. So Dr. Pooler, welcome, and thanks so much for joining me.

1. DAVID POOLER 04:09

I am super glad to be here. It’s a real privilege and an honor that I get to talk about something that really matters.

Julie Roys  04:15

Now it does matter, and I just so appreciate your interest in abuse, but also in the way that I first met you at the RESTORE Conference, which to me, I was just kind of blown away when I saw you had signed up for it. I’m like, Oh, my goodness, Dr. Pooler is coming and, and he should be teaching, I should be like sitting under him. And yet you came just to learn and observe, and I just appreciate that.

1. DAVID POOLER 04:38

I did. I wanted to be around people that it’s almost like the folks that show up that RESTORE  are sort of my people if that makes sense. It’s sort of a hodgepodge of people who have been injured and wounded and are still finding their way and wanting things to be better and on some level looking for church reform, right and in ways that we often aren’t thinking about reform. And so I do think that this whole topic of adult clergy sexual abuse kind of sits in this strange place of the church just does not know what to do with. But yet there’s a lot of room for hope and healing and change to occur. That’s what I’m devoting my life to do.

Julie Roys  05:24

Well, I appreciate that. After we published this article on Kevin Prosch and Misty Edwards on what I had termed in the article an affair, and I know that’s a very questionable word, given the context of everything, but you reached out to me, just with some concerns, some questions, and just in such a gracious manner, and we were able to have a zoom call about that. And as we’re having this call, I’m thinking, this is such a profitable conversation, I want to make this public. And so I invited you to do this podcast with me. I think this is going to be outstanding, and I appreciate just your demeanor in coming to me about that. But let me just, instead of me trying to paraphrase you, what were some of the concerns that you had with the article and with even how things were presented?

1. DAVID POOLER 06:12

Sure. When I read it, just in my study of adult clergy sexual abuse, I could immediately tell there was so much more than could be reported on there. These abusive systems and when I say abuse of systems where we have sort of a patriarchal leader, sort of men are elevated, and we have an issue around clericalism, where it’s elevating the priorities and needs of certain leaders to the exclusion of others. Anyway, but when I read the term affair and I’m like, for there to actually be an affair, there would have to be consent, people would have to be on equal power levels. And I’m like, I wonder if that’s really the case here. So I had issues with the term affair, because one of the things that’s really interesting is that there are 14 states that actually criminalize, have state statutes, where a pastoral leader if they abuse an adult under their care, they can be charged with a crime. In some states, it’s a misdemeanor, and some it’s a felony. California is a current state where there’s legislation happening right now, that’s going to be going through this session, where clergy will be added to the list of other helping professions around that. So I had issues with the term affair, primarily. And I also just was a little worried, too, that we could end up doing some victim blaming in this particular story, blaming Misty as if she’s completely complicit. And again, I’m just wondering, to what extent was position authority, the nature of the relationship, the gender? Are those things leveraged, exploited in this long history? I know Misty has been a part of that movement for years. And what way has she been, you know, her thinking has been sort of distorted, and shifted to come alongside and support leaders no matter what, and protect them at the exclusion of her own self and her own needs? There’s so much more complexity and nuance with this. And thankfully, your response was just amazing and led to this opportunity. Because in a sense, the article then gave an opportunity for a deeper, more meaningful conversation that can expand this and get more people talking about what is adult clergy sexual abuse? can pastors abuse adults and people under their care? even another minister under their care? My research with a resounding yes to all of that. And I’ve seen many cases where there has been a positional leader under another leader who actually is abused. And I’ve seen the system’s hold them equally accountable and like, but that’s not okay. And if you’ll allow me, I’ll share a little bit about what has framed my thinking around power and consent. And some of that actually has to do with the secular world. The secular world is way ahead of where the church is, quite frankly, when it looks at power differentials and consent, in relationships, interpersonal relationships, where there’s a lot of connection, and there’s a lot at stake. For example, with a therapist or a doctor, or a nurse, or my profession, a social worker. And so we have boards that guide our behavior. And so in no situation, would there ever be a case whereas a social worker, I had a sexual connection or relationship with someone that I was working with, and it would never be called consensual it never happened, because it would be clearly labeled as misconduct and inappropriate.

1. DAVID POOLER 09:42

So not only could I lose my license as a social worker, I would then be held accountable. Generally, every state has a state statute or law to hold a helping professional accountable. Again, that’s where ministry is so far behind, and I honestly think it’s interesting our separation of church and state is actually part of the problem. Because what happens is the church has just not been forced to keep up with evolving new ways of thinking about power, and consent, and relationships and boundaries. And that really, it’s always the person with more power, it’s their job and responsibility to delineate what a healthy relationship is going to be. It’s their responsibility to outline the boundaries, it’s their responsibility to maintain boundaries. But yet in the church, we have done so much victim blaming. A pastoral leader is sexual with someone that is dependent on them, and then they blame that person and says, Yeah, they just did this, that or the other. A lot of the purity culture stuff, a lot of our rape culture, quite frankly, in this society, and just, Oh, what was she wearing? What was she doing? She must have been the temptress, those kinds of things. So that sort of sets the stage for this conversation about adult clergy sexual abuse.

Julie Roys  11:04

And I don’t disagree with you on one thing that you just said. And in fact, I think my first introduction to adult clergy sexual abuse was hearing Lori Anne Thompson’s story. And if you don’t know Lori Anne’s story, she was one of the victims of Ravi Zacharias. And the way that she was manipulated, the way he found out her past abuse, and then used that to basically become a father figure. And then to exploit that, to get her to do something that she would not have normally done. But it was so predatory. It was so abusive, and I could see it once I heard the story. It was like, Oh, my goodness, of course. And we’ve had entire podcast we’ve done on this, I did one with Katie Roberts, who was, you know, in a similar type situation, and now she started an entire organization, helping adult victims of adult clergy sexual abuse. And so this is something I’m familiar with. And so if somebody asked me, do I think Misty Edwards was a victim? I would say, absolutely, 100 percent, I think she was a victim. What I found difficult with this story, normally, the victim in the stories that I report, is the source. It’s the person who comes to me with their story, and says, will you please report this story for me of this person that harmed me? Here I have a situation first time ever, honestly, where I have somebody coming to me, who is saying she’s not a victim. And I’m having to deal with a very complex story where there were two stories in this particular case; one, which was I referred to as the other secret because you couldn’t tell one story without having that story, because they were intertwined. But I didn’t tell that story, because it involved what to me was very clearly what you just described, it was abuse. And I wasn’t going to tell that story out of respect for the victim, because it was clearly abuse. With Kevin and Misty, again, my opinion, it was abuse. And so now I felt like it was one of those situations where you have two competing virtues and values. So on one hand, as an advocate, your highest commitment is to the victim, right? You’re there to protect the victim, the survivor, right? As a journalist, your responsibility is to protect the public, it is to serve the public interest. So you have two people, Kevin Prosch and Misty Edwards. Both have very large platforms. I didn’t know I’ll be honest; I didn’t know Misty before I started reporting on IHOP and then I discovered she has a global following. She has recorded seven albums with I don’t know if they’re all with 4Runner Music. I think most of them are which is IHOP’s label. And you have Kevin Prosch who, even though he has a past, he confessed these adulterous relationships which when honestly, when you read about them, they sound like they were abused, because he clearly used his position and power in these cases. I don’t know whether any were congregants at his church or not. But certainly he has a predatory pattern and likely was abused in these cases.

Julie Roys  14:09

But again, you have two people in positions of power, at least ostensibly, right? And you have Misty who’s on the executive leadership team at IHOP, which is their highest level of leadership. You have her saying she’s gonna go to Israel and go serve in prayer houses there. And I know that people are emulating her worship style – a worship style that frankly, she got from Kevin, she talks about this romantic worship this intimate worship. I was in the Vineyard movement; parts of that I agree with it and parts of it, I go, this is like getting a little icky. And so I think there were just so many factors and then having on top of it. You have someone like Brent Steeno, who’s a former IHOP staffer who’s saying I was abused in this I was harmed because I was smeared by these folks. There were just these complex dynamics and as a journalist, I felt and I know a lot of people were like, there’s a number of journalists who got this story and didn’t report it. Actually, from what I’ve heard from Brent. Judy at the Star, for example, Casey Stars done some excellent work on this. Just hadn’t figured out how to report it. But from journalistically she was like, That was a good story. And I didn’t hear that directly from her. But I’m just as a journalist, again, I felt a responsibility to the public to report this story, because they were two public figures. And because and why didn’t I report it as abuse? Were there some red flags there? Did Kevin have a predatory pattern? Yes, he had a predatory pattern. Was he a celebrity? And did she look up to him? Yes, but the argument can be made, she was just as big a celebrity as he was. There was an age differential, but we can’t automatically say that because there was an age differential. That was.

1. DAVID POOLER 15:55

Yeah, that was abuse, right?

Julie Roys  15:56

You can’t do that. And then, and then you have just this blackmail element to the story, which clearly when there’s blackmail, that’s abuse. That happened in my understanding five years into the relationship. So it definitely became coercive,  but I’ll be honest, I didn’t know whether I could even report the blackmail aspect of this story, because I have one witness telling me that she said it was blackmail, and I have one text that seems to support that where she said she wishes she could destroy all the devices. But it was pretty circumstantial. And I’m glad I reported it, because I wanted to put the clues in there to folks that they could look at that and say, whoa, wait, this was not okay. But at the same time, journalistically, I just felt like my hands were tied in this particular case.

Julie Roys  16:47

Now, having said that, could I have done it better? Could I do it better? I’m always open to that. Yeah. And that’s why you have these kinds of conversations afterwards to say, okay, how can we do this better? I’ll just give you a chance to reflect on that.

1. DAVID POOLER 17:01

The thing that really stands out to me that’s worthy of discussion on this is her reporting that she’s not a victim. And I think that’s worth taking a deeper dive into, because I’ve met survivors at various points along their healing journey, and many early on, would not call themselves a victim, on some level. They would blame themselves, possibly, but not see themselves as a victim, certainly not understand that they were being abused. Like, how should I say this, it would cause so much cognitive dissonance if they’re not along in their healing journey, or don’t have a name for what’s going on. Because, honestly, to come to grips with the fact that I had been harmed and injured to that level, by someone that I had trusted my life with, my spiritual life with my mediator, if you will, with God. And I’ve trusted that and to come to a deep and abiding realization that I had been betrayed and exploited, and sexually used and potentially sexually assaulted by this person? That’s like too much. But what I’ve noticed is that along the healing journey, as the awakening and awareness happens, they can then point back and say, absolutely, I was a victim. So that’s one of the big unknowns with Missy’s journey. Six months from now, two years from now, will the story be different? Will she then say, yes, indeed, I was a victim, and here’s how I was victimized, and here’s how I was injured. But most of the instincts of people is to protect their abusers, to protect the church because they’ve been socialized to do that. It’s almost like if this gets out, or it’s known that we’ve, of course, the perpetrators would use the word affair, if we’ve had an affair that would cause people to fall away from the Lord and leave. So they feel this enormous amount of responsibility to protect the institution, to protect the leader, to protect their abuser. And, of course, to me, that’s one of the big question marks at play in the story with Misty.

Julie Roys  19:08

And interestingly, I had a number of conversations with Misty some on the record some off the record, some I can’t talk about, but I will say right before I published the story, I called Misty, and I told her, I know that you don’t believe you’re a victim. I believe you are. And I also told her, I’m not going to report the one thing that we didn’t report, because it would to me expose a victim. That’s their story to come forward with if they want to. But we had those discussions, and it was just, it was heartbreaking to me personally. Misty’s one of the most tragic figures in this whole story, and if you know anything about what’s happened with her and I think a larger context that I couldn’t tell in this story, your heart can’t help but break for Misty and this whole situation.

Julie Roys  19:58

One thing that’s challenging for me too though is, as a reporter, I have to report what people tell me. So if somebody says they’re not a victim, I have to say that person says they’re not a victim. And I know too as advocates, and this whole advocate space is a little bit like the wild West right now. We have some people that are really trained. I spoke of Lori Anne Thompson, she’s someone that went and got her master’s degree is very educated on real advocacy and how to come alongside people. But I remember at our 2022 RESTORE conference, she talked about advocates speaking for victims, and victims often say, speak for me, because I have no voice. And she’s like, Excuse me, unless you’re dead, you have a voice. You have a voice, and the job of advocates is to come alongside the victim, and allow the victim to tell their story, not to put words in their mouth or to tell them their story for them. And so it becomes very challenging when you have someone who’s maybe they’re living in an alternate reality, where they have taken blame for something they shouldn’t take blame for, or they have seen this in a certain context, where they see protecting the legacy of someone that you go, are you kidding me? protecting the legacy of this person, who’s an abuser? Why would you want to protect that legacy?

Julie Roys  21:14

But how can we, as a reporter, I have certain rules I have to abide by. As advocates, there’s a little more leeway. But how can we be helpful in this stage with people who, and right now I’m sure Misty is representative of an awful lot of people who may have been victimized by a system or by a person that don’t see themselves as victims?

1. DAVID POOLER 21:37

Helping people move from victim to survivor is huge. But I feel like I did something wrong, I’m really not a victim, I participated in this, right? Believe it or not, I actually still have some control. That’s one of the things I’ve noticed as a clinician. But when I say I’ve actually been victimized, that means I literally could have done nothing to stop it. It’s like it literally happened. I am powerless. That doesn’t mean their powerless going forward. But just the acknowledgement of the nature of the wounding and the injury, was this was totally done to me by someone else. And I think that’s really hard for people. For Misty and/or lots of other people in that sort of space, right? And I think part of it is having conversations like this, being able to have an adequate definition of adult clergy sexual abuse, to actually say, hey, it’s when a leader uses their power position, their authority to basically gain access sexually to someone under their care, or that they’re working with or supporting in some way. That person is dependent on them in some way. And they use that dependence as a way to be sexual with them. That’s adult clergy sexual abuse. And interestingly if someone’s 16, or 20, there’s nothing magical that happens when someone is 18. The same tactic someone uses to groom and exploit a 15 year old is the same that they would use to groom and exploit and be sexual with someone who’s 25. It’s the same dynamics. And so uncovering those dynamics, talking about how people are groomed, because that’s the thing, abusive leaders use the language, the culture, Bible verses, and even their authority, their pastoral authority, God is in this. So the Holy Spirit has told me; they use all that language to gain sexual access to somebody. And then when you look at that, it’s just grotesque, right? It’s predatory on the deepest level. Being able to just honestly have the conversation for the church to say, this is indeed happening in our midst. And we have very little in place to detect abusive people. We have almost nothing set up within our religious structures where people can go to report it, or a system that’s going to listen to it or believe the person.

1. DAVID POOLER 23:56

In my research, one of the things that’s most damaging, actually, to survivors is the church response. If that makes sense. It’s not just the nature of the injury itself. But it’s the way the institution fails to respond adequately, by believing them and supporting them and validating them and helping them get help, and then holding the abusive leader accountable or removing them from ministry or out of the way so they can’t harm anybody else. They we just tend to continue to elevate the abusive person and shove the victim right out the door, right? In the playbook of the evangelical world, but I’ll be honest, it’s beyond the evangelical world. I mean, there’s a case I’m involved with right now, where I’m going to be an expert witness, if you will, and it’s a much more progressive denomination. But the narrative is the same, oh, it was consensual. And it clearly was not. We really have a problem. And I’ll give you just a quick statistic. This is really old, but Diana Garland’s research going back to a study in 2009. She actually looked at what percentage of women who regularly attend church had an unwanted sexual advance from their church leader, and the unwanted sexual advance was framed in such a way, that it would be clearly wrong, if someone found out they would really have concerns about what had happened. But if you extrapolate this out to the average sized church and sort of the gender makeup of your average sized church. So if you take an average sized Church of 400, there would be seven women in every church of 400, in the United States, where this has happened. So again, it’s about 3%. So it’s not a huge amount, right? But it’s also something that we have to take very seriously. It is indeed happening. And I would say every church has someone who’s experienced some version of sexual exploitation or harassment by a church leader. We can have every year we do domestic violence months and things, but we ought to celebrate and honor those people who’ve been injured by clergy and say, you are among us. You are here. We care about you. We care about your experiences, and we know you’ve been injured within the church. And we’re doing something about it instead of just ignoring the problem.

Julie Roys  26:13

Well in this environment that you’re describing, where obviously we have predators, obviously, I’ll say allegedly, but it’s been certainly we have so many victims right now, or alleged victims that have come forth and said, Mike Bickle abused me, started when I was 14, or 15, or 19, depending on the particular story. But this seems like a man who was a serial predator, and preyed on the women that were under him, and had this persona of being hearer, and God spoke directly to him. And the angel Gabriel showed up, how could you possibly question this man of God? And then you have this whole history, this prophetic history, that seems like it was almost put on the level of Scripture. Like, you can’t question this history, like, this is what’s happened. And it was really so grandiose. I’m reading this, and I’m going, Whoa, like, Why didn’t red flags go up? And yet I heard from somebody recently who was like, yeah, it probably would have but he was accepted in mainstream evangelicalism, which to me is a whole other discussion. Like, why did nobody see that this was a problem? These are really grandiose things that he is claiming and stating very early on, and selling to impressionable young adults, men and women who are a part of this.

Julie Roys  27:30

But let’s talk about specifically at some place like IHOP where, and I’m not gonna say that abuse happens more at charismatic churches than non-charismatic, I’ve seen plenty at non charismatic. But I have to say, when you think that your leader is like God, in direct line with God, and you have this Moses model of leading, which is really an Old Testament, I won’t get into all of that. But I mean, this idea that God speaks to  your pastor like he spoke to Moses, and now he’s the Prophet and the word for you, or he’s the apostle and the word for you. And again, I see in the New Testament, a totally different thing where the gifts are available to everyone. There isn’t like one person who has a direct line to God. We all have a direct line to God in that sense. But speak to this particular system. What, again, we’re outsiders, although you are in the Church of God, which started with Assemblies of God, right? And the two were very connected.

1. DAVID POOLER 28:24

Same origins. Yeah, around the turn of the last century.

Julie Roys  28:27

Okay. And I was in Vineyard. There’s a lot that I absolutely love about charismatic denominations, and I love about the charismatic movement, and I’m not a Cessationist. But at the same time, I do think there are some things that are particular to these systems that can lend themselves to this kind of clergy sexual abuse.

1. DAVID POOLER 28:48

Absolutely. Yeah. Where I literally go back to is the clericalism. again. And I think it can be heightened in spaces like this, where you have a central charismatic leader, whose authority is almost unquestioned. Because what ends up happening is there’s a high level of dependence on everyone upon what they say, and what they do. What they say is okay, what they say is not okay. And it’s a diminishing of power among everyone else around their sense of personal agency, their ability to think critically, ask questions, dissent, push back, right? So none of that is tolerated. So when a system like that, if that leader crosses the line and wants to be sexual and says, it’s God’s will, no one’s gonna question, right? I mean, the system is set up to sort of make perfect victims; that it’s not just the IHOP system. There’s plenty of others, but we’re talking about that it literally sets people up to be exploited and victimized. I don’t mean to oversimplify it, but that’s it in a nutshell right there. And so one of the things I suggest in my research is a much deeper level of power sharing between leadership and laity, or congregants., right? A much more robust way of holding people accountable.

1. DAVID POOLER 30:12

The other thing I’ve struggled with is, so how do congregants benefit from clericalism? They don’t have to do as much work, they don’t have to do as much critical thinking, they don’t have to be at the table, being My Brother’s Keeper, really. They get to sort of offload all of that responsibility on to the leader. And the fact is, that’s not a great system. We need a much better system where people are empowered in congregations to really all be concerned about abuse, all be concerned about exploitation, and flip it to the other side to be concerned about flourishing, and well-being. And how do we have a really healthy congregation, right? Then if everyone’s really not at the table talking about that, and one leader is trying to tell you what a healthy thing is? You’re probably not. It’s probably going away off into the ditch, which is what we’ve actually seen had been happening at IHOP for years. There were people being injured and torn up and ground up under the machinery of this institution, right? In a sense people waylaid and victimized for years. And it just finally came to light. Because any dissent anyone speaking up or questioning or trying to bring it to light would have immediately been pushed out of the system. The system wouldn’t tolerate that.

Julie Roys  30:12

I’m trying to figure out how though, like when you’re in a system like that, I mean, you read the Scripture, it’s pretty clear. I mean, you have someone like Mike Bickle married, clearly shouldn’t be engaging in outside sexual activity. And yet, if you’re the recipient of his sexual advances, how do you put that dissonance together? And, and I know people are pushing back and saying, Well, okay, how did they not know that this was wrong? Or why when you’re in a system like that, what happens just psychologically, to put these two seemingly contradictory things together? How do you do that?

1. DAVID POOLER 32:09

Yeah. So honestly, your question gets at the grooming process. And what I’ve noticed with these predatory folks is they start creating a culture where more physical touch is okay. And most of the predators will test the people out, they’ll do a prolonged hug or other things. And they do this over months and months. And eventually, I can’t tell you how many times this happened. It would be so interesting to find out how many folks that I have this happened to, they’ll be like, Can I kiss your hand? and then can I kiss your neck? And then eventually, it’s a kiss on the lips. So it’s not just, you know, the adage of the frog boiling in the water; you don’t just drop them in the boiling water, it jumps out, or whatever. You slowly turn it up. These predatory folks have mastered grooming, and they will slowly blur and break boundaries over months and sometimes even years until they finally have the person have full access to them. And they’ll use whatever playbook they need, including the things I just talked about. But again, adding in the Scripture and those things. So by the time the person is, if you will, actually being sexual with the leader, they’re no longer trusting their intuition. So anytime someone’s intuition said something’s wrong, right? That’s the other thing about those systems is that intuition is tossed out like your gut reaction, that something is wrong, is squashed over and over and over to the point it doesn’t work anymore. So you don’t trust yourself at all. You’ve been socialized to trust the leader and their perspective.

1. DAVID POOLER 33:36

So in a sense, that’s how that dissonance occurs, its slowly broken down over time. So by the time sexual activity is actually happening, even though the person so honestly, the victim is actually I’ve heard this so many times, they literally feel insane. They  feel completely insane. Like, this can’t be okay, but yet, I’m being told it’s okay. What is wrong with me? It is an internal sort of soul injury of dissonance that’s ripping them apart. But yet they’ve been taught to conform, to stay in church and to keep trusting the leader no matter what because, of course, they know what they’re doing. God has called them, and God is in charge of this. All these things that get used to injure people. And this is the stuff we’ve got to really be talking about. In fact, I actually have a doctoral student right now. We’re working on a paper right now to identify the grooming tactics. So what we hope to do is spit in the soup of the playbook of predators, quite frankly, so that their playbook doesn’t work anymore. Maybe they’ll come up with new tactics, but at least the ones that have been regularly used and the survivors I’ve interviewed that won’t be accessible anymore. We’ll know how they do it. And so that when someone sees a leader doing something or saying something, they can trust their intuition that this information is now actually out for the public to consume and use to inform them to be, in a sense, a better citizen or a better participant or a better congregate, talk about this in the secular world, sort of the non-protecting bystander. We have so much of that going on right now in the church, where it’s like, I see something, I wonder, is that okay? Or when the pastor did that? But we’re just taught to where we don’t protect, we don’t intervene, we just stay back. Because that behavior of getting in and getting it messy, we don’t like that. But I honestly think that kind of messiness, and questioning, critical thinking is a part of what actually would make our churches way healthier.

Julie Roys  35:38

The problem is, you’re not allowed to question. If you say there is a problem, then you are the problem. I’ve interviewed so many people from IHOP, who said, Yeah, I would see women go into Mike’s office and spend an inordinate amount of time and like we didn’t have access to Mike like that. But why did these women who weren’t even necessarily very high up in the organization, were going into his office and spending all this time? Why are there locks on the inside of the office? Some of these things that are just bizarre, but he had ways of dealing with that. And I’m sure with his victims, when I’ve heard this from victims who thought they were in love their abuser, think they’re in love with their abuser. And then also think like with Ravi, it was like, you can’t expose me I need this because I’m under so much pressure. And I’m just human. And if I don’t have this kind of support from you, then I just can’t function and you’re critical to my functioning. And if you say anything, then oh, do you want to bring down the whole apologetics movement, or in this case, the whole prayer movement? You want that to be on you that you’ve just brought that all down? Even now, people are protecting the prayer movement. They’re protecting Mike’s legacy. They’re protecting something that has been shown to be fraudulent, not that the whole prayer movement is fraudulent. But certainly, whatever requires Mike Bickle as its foundation is not legitimate.

Julie Roys  37:00

What does a bystander do, though, and these are my sources that I talk to almost every day, right? And Brent in the story was a bystander, right? He’s a bystander, but he wasn’t just a bystander, if you believe his story, and I obviously did believe his story. Misty divulged a lot of these things to him, but then also confines him to secrecy. Like all of a sudden now, I remember when I was in youth ministry, when people would be like, I’m going to tell you something, but I don’t want you to tell anybody else. And I’d be like, no. Timeout timeout. You know, if there are certain things if you tell me, I’m responsible to tell somebody else. I’m trusting that you’re telling me because you trust me. And I will try to be trustworthy, but that trustworthiness may mean that I have to tell somebody about what you’re going to tell me. Let me just put that out there ground rules before you tell me anything further. Here’s Brent in this situation, though. Now he’s stuck with this secret. And what does he do? It’s ripping him up. It’s destroying him. What does he do? And what do bystanders do, or witnesses do in a situation where they see abuse? And if they come forward, as in this case, and this is a whole other dynamic too which maybe a follow up question to this is when the victim becomes part of the abusive system and begins harming other people? But what do you do as a bystander in that situation?

1. DAVID POOLER 38:20

Yeah, yeah, the complications are built into all of this. There’s not a pass, there’s not the one thing that you’re supposed to do. But I do think staying silent is not okay. And doing nothing is not okay. We have to do something. And I do think many people who bring up or confront a system where there’s a lot of power held in one person, or bring up something that’s of a major concern, they’re going to get injured by that system, because that system is protecting itself. And it’s protecting the power and the control that it has. And part of it is when someone’s bringing up something or pointing out something that’s wrong, or where there’s injury, it’s a threat to the system, if the system is that unhealthy, and it is abusive, it’s we don’t want to get found out. Yeah, so there’s no simple answer other than Yeah, I think people are going to have to take the risk and put their own neck out for someone else. Again, so anytime you stand up for someone who’s being injured, the likelihood of you being injured, too, is very high. It takes courage.

Julie Roys  39:29

It is and so often they do what they’re told to do in the church, which is go to your leaders within your organization. And sadly, those leaders within the organization they’ve been groomed to protect. And so they are going to as you say, they’re going to harm you. And people often say who made you judge and jury as journalists where we report on a lot of the stories? For one I’m not judge and jury. I report the facts. You’re the judge and jury. You are.

1. DAVID POOLER 39:59

Yeah. people make sense of what you’re reporting. Yeah,

Julie Roys  40:01

That’s right. I report the facts, you make sense of it. And I wish we didn’t have to exist. I wish the church had some sort of structures in place to police itself. And it does in some denominations. They don’t seem to be working very well, these structures that we have in place. I hope at some point, we at least I love that there’s 14 states where adult clergy sexual abuse is a crime as it should be. I hope that more states are like this. But it seems to me at the very least, there should be some sort of professional, just like when you’re a doctor, or therapist or whatever, there aren’t professional standards. I know, as a journalist, there are professional standards. You can go and read them, where the society professional journalists have put it out. This is what we adhere to, this is what we do. And we have to adhere to them. And if you don’t, then you can be disqualified. Do we need to get some system in place for licensing pastors?

1. DAVID POOLER 40:58

Wouldn’t that be great? The fact is, I think there is no way probably even in my lifetime that our society we can get there. Because currently what we have are different denominations that have varying ways of here’s the education that you know, some denominations might require having a Master of Divinity for ordination, some might require nothing. You can have a high school diploma or not even and go through a process. And you can get a ministerial ordination certificate online for free. It is the absolute Wild West, a completely unregulated space. Even though I agree, ideally, in an ideal world, absolutely, we should. But again, that’s the very nature of the question is why we have such a huge problem in our religious institutions right now is because of our lack of accountability. And so many people with power surround themselves by Yes men, yes women, yes people, right? who aren’t going to hold them accountable, who are just a part of that system of control and power and money. I mean, I don’t want to be too cynical. But I also want to be incredibly realistic. There are way too many leaders, if you will, doing what they do because it’s unregulated. They’re free to do whatever they want to do. They have an enormous amount of power and influence and money. And they’re going to keep doing it because it benefits them in an incredible way.

Julie Roys  42:26

Yeah. And unfortunately, I think there’s far too many pastors out there that don’t understand this and don’t understand this dynamic. And so they’re restoring these abusive pastors who, again, it’s not just a sin problem, I mean, there’s something deep, deeply wrong when someone is a predator like this and a serial predator. You don’t just confess it, and then go back to another church. Stephen Strang, who’s the CEO of Charisma Media, Charisma Magazine. He went on before Mike has given like a half apology that ever really isn’t an apology. He hasn’t even come close to owning this and repenting from this. And Stephen Strang saying, Oh, isn’t it a noble thing to restore people? I’ve always thought that was a noble thing. And so we just keep restoring these pastors. Talk about the pastor as a predator; should someone who’s abused somebody in this way ever be restored to a position of trust?

1. DAVID POOLER 43:26

In my opinion, after having done so much research on this, almost never. Like that would be the exception rather than the rule if anyone could ever return to ministry and influence people the way they had. Part of your question gets at something that I think we weaponize, which is forgiveness. We are actually using and weaponizing forgiveness as a shortcut. And actually, then what we do is we put the burden on the person who’s been injured, you just need to forgive. And once you’ve forgiven, then we can restore. It’s almost like forgiven, once we hear you’re okay, again, and that we’ll  put them back in ministry. So the burden is in the wrong place. The burden should be on the person who’s done the injuring, and go through an incredibly rigorous, even if they’re not restored in any particular way they need to make right the wrongs they’ve done. They literally need to take years to do the work to figure out what happened, why they did it, the exact nature of the injuries that they’ve caused, and figuring out ways to actually help heal those, right? That’s where the burden should be. So if someone were ever to be restored, it should be the exception. And to me, it would be years in the making. But typically what when we do remove someone from ministry, we send them off somewhere, and it’s not even really therapy, it’s some discipleship program somewhere that people go through for four months and say they’re restored, and we bring them back. That is completely inadequate. So I’m with you that yeah, in most of my writing, I’m just like, yeah, whenever this happens, it should preclude them ever having a job in ministry again. Because what for me as a social worker it would. If I were sexual with a client, I’d lose my license and I wouldn’t be able to work in my chosen profession. Why do ministers who have all this power and authority and esteem and represent God, get to just jump right back in? We’ve got it upside down right now.

Julie Roys  45:23

We do. And I think what people don’t realize is that, fundamentally, there’s deception at the core of this. So this is someone who is skilled at deceiving people. So how on earth do you know that this person is repentant? How on earth do you know if this person won’t reoffend? They’re a master manipulator and deceiver. You just don’t put people like that back in positions where they’re over people, and they have authority and a means of manipulating people. You just cannot do that. I look at certain pastors who have fallen. And I’m like, there are not enough years left in this person’s life to restore the trust they’ve betrayed. There’s just not. The only way you know if someone’s changed, is, over time, a long time in a community. And we’re sadly in a situation in evangelicalism where the pastor’s removed from community, especially in these mega churches, especially in these big movements, they’re removed from accountability, people don’t know them. And again, just ripe for this type of abuse.

Julie Roys  46:28

So, glad we’re talking about it. And I don’t want to not touch on something that I mentioned earlier, but we didn’t really dig into it. Talk about the victim, who then becomes a victimizer, who becomes a part of the system. I don’t know how common that is. I will say in my reporting, it hasn’t been all that common. But in this particular case, there’s at least some people saying there was Misty participating in some harm. I don’t think she saw it as that. But talk about that dynamic and how that happens, and how to deal with it.

1. DAVID POOLER 47:05

So to universalize, this on some level, we’ve all been injured, and we’ve all injured others on some level. So we can just sort of state that’s a fact about being human. But I would just say in my experience, most victims of adult clergy sexual abuse, they themselves do not go on to injure and harm others. However, I think some of the exceptions to that are when that person who potentially is being abused and injured is at the core and has power and has influence. And there’s something at stake in both the way that they’re protecting the system, and some of even protecting their own interests in some way, whether that’s financial, emotional, psychological, whatever that is. And I think when we’re backed into a corner, we’re likely to lash out and injure others. So it absolutely can happen. But I guess that’s the thing is like, where do you go back and tracing back by say, hurt people? Right? On some level, that’s exactly right.

1. DAVID POOLER 48:10

But I think what’s important in all this is teasing out some of these dynamics that, yes, someone may have been a victim, and then they have injured someone else in a certain way. They don’t get off the hook for that, right? They need to make that right, acknowledge that and own that. In any given day any of us can injure or heal. And I think part of what we have to just say is that all injuries are not the same. Right? When you’ve got a predatory person, deeply injuring someone who’s going to have major pain for the rest of their life. Right? I’ll just add a statistic. I just got a paper that’s under review right now. But 39% of the survivors of adult clergy sexual abuse that participated in my research, 39% have PTSD. The injuries are deep, abiding, and profound. This isn’t just a little fly by night, oh, this was no big deal. The data I’m looking at, are saying this is a huge deal. It’s causing post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental health diagnosis that has profound impact on how we function and think and navigate relationships. It’s a big deal.

Julie Roys  49:25

 It’s not just adult clergy sexual abuse, the amount of spiritual abuse and what that does to people. I will never forget. And this was very early on in my reporting. When I was reporting on Harvest Bible Chapel and James McDonald and the harm he was causing people. And there was a couple that came over it was actually the former chairman of the board of elders at Harvest and his wife, and they had been out of the church for 10 years. They came over and I’ll never forget his wife was literally shaking, and she’s like, I’ve been out of it 10 years. She had never seen a counselor to get this diagnosis, but she’s like, I’m sure I have PTSD. She’s to this day and she was shaking, telling the stories; 10 years out of it.

Julie Roys  50:08

I remember somebody else I talked to said, his counselor asked him at one point, how often do you think about James McDonald? and he said at least seven times a week, because he knew daily, he still thought of the abuse that he had received. Again, no sexual abuse in this, just bullying and nasty spiritual abuse. And it is just such a scourge in our churches right now and something we don’t understand. And so I appreciate so much you reaching out. This is one story I have just agonized over before I published. I continue to agonize afterwards. Could we have framed something differently? I just think all of us, we need to be asking these questions need to be doing better at understanding it in the church and having more of these discussions. And so I’m very grateful for that. Is there anything that I haven’t brought up that as you’re looking at this particular situation, that you feel needs to be highlighted, or that we just haven’t explored yet?

1. DAVID POOLER 51:03

Maybe this is an interesting place for this to end. But around maybe the person who’s been injured, who thinks they’re in love with their abuser.

Julie Roys  51:13

Is that the Stockholm Syndrome?

1. DAVID POOLER 51:15

It can be, but I think, on its deepest level, is that this person has met a need for  the survivor. In other words, as a need for belonging, affirmation, feeling important, feeling valued, feeling essential, having a sense of purpose. And these predators actually exploit all of those very human normal needs that could be met in very healthy ways, as far as being a part of a congregation. But are met in a way that of course, you know, how I describe that grooming process. And it takes on a life of its own, but there’s this sense of this person loves me. And of course, and that I’m going to protect the person who I think loves me, and I love them, right? And so breaking that trauma bond, almost around that, is a huge part of recovery for people. I guess, if anything, I would just want to validate it’s a messy and complex journey for people. And what we’ve got to do better in the church is see it for the abuse that it is, and quickly come alongside people that have been injured in our midst and include them and embrace them and let them remain in our congregation. Because right now, the status quo is to push them out and exclude them and blame them and ask what they did wrong. Really, the reason we do that is our collective cognitive dissonance around the fact that we currently in 2024, have predatory leaders in our midst, all over the place, injuring people. We would rather believe that the church is wonderful, our churches are healthy, our churches are safe, our leaders are amazing. But it upsets our little utopia that we’ve created for ourselves.

1. DAVID POOLER 53:08

And so I guess that’s where I would end is that getting through this requires a depth of critical thinking, a depth of courage, a depth of awakening and self-awareness, a reckoning with ourselves in a way that the church just isn’t used to. But I think if the church can move in that direction, the church would be far more appealing to others. Look, here’s a place that’s wrestling with its own self, with its own questions, and its own failures in really authentic ways that are like really dealing with the hurts that had been caused and holding people accountable. Because right now, I can’t imagine people looking at some of the crises that are facing the church and being attracted to it at all. If anything, it’s gotta be nauseating, and repulsive. I don’t want anything to do with that.

1. DAVID POOLER 54:03

So that’s sort of my invitation, my call going back to just how messy this is. It’s being a Christian it’s not easy. It’s not for people who want an easy way or an easy path. In fact, it calls us to the depths of injuries and hurt. Yeah, even my own theology has changed as a result of looking at all of this, right? My theology is no longer super positive and super wonderful and just isn’t God great and isn’t being a Christian, super fun? No, it’s a lot of hard work. It’s grief. It’s so effort expended in ways I never imagined. But I honestly think, Oh, I’ll end with this. I think the survivors of this kind of trauma and injuries in our church actually are some of our future church leaders. They know best what a healthy church would look like. They know best what to avoid in a leader who would injure people. They know best what it’s like to actually heal from some of the deepest wounds that you could experience. Right? I don’t know, I have a lot of hope for where we are. But it’s going to include the voices of people who’ve been deeply injured in our spaces of adult clergy sexual abuse, spiritual abuse, some of the things that you cover and talk about. It’s those very people who are making their way through this that can lead us and bring us new light.

Julie Roys  55:29

I agree with that 100%. I think Phil Monroe, in the message that he gave to RESTORE in 2022 said something along those lines, and the sweetness when you are around survivors, and these are people whose faith has been through the fire, and some of them are clinging to just like barely clinging on to faith. But some of them also, if you come through this, and you even have a mustard seed left, that’s commendable. That’s all I can say. And so I think these folks are our teachers, they will be our teachers. And can I just say, with this particular story, I do pray for Misty, I really do. And I really, truly hope that she comes to a place of being able to tell her story truthfully to herself. She will find there is a great deal of love and support for her and for others who have been through similar things. Thank you, David. I so appreciate you joining me. I learned a ton, as always, just really wonderful. So thank you.

1. DAVID POOLER 56:33

Thank you, Julie. I so appreciate being here. What a privilege.

Julie Roys  56:37

And thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And just a quick reminder, all of our content at The Roys Report is available free of charge. We don’t erect paywalls. We don’t make you pay for our conference talks. Everything is free and available to the public. However, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t cost us money to produce it. It does. And if you want to know how we spend our money, our financial reports are available on our donate page. All that to say we rely on your donations to do what we do. So if you believe in our mission of reporting the truth and restoring the church, would you please help us out this month? To do so just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged.