In 1996, at age 19, “Jane Doe” decided to move to Kansas City to intern with her father’s friend, Mike Bickle. The 42-year-old prophetic pastor’s preaching about King David had touched her heart.

“I just remember feeling like he knew the same Jesus that I knew,” Doe told The Roys Report (TRR) in an exclusive interview.

Soon after she arrived, she said Bickle told her he had a dream about her. After a Sunday service, in front of Bickle’s wife, Diane, Doe said Bickle prophesied that he was David and Doe was Esther.

“He gives me the biggest word of my life,” she told TRR.  “It was, ‘You’re not just an Esther, you are going to lead thousands of Esthers.’”

A few weeks later, Bickle called Doe from Asia to say the Lord spoke to him about her, she said. This time, though, she said he sounded drunk.

“He begins to tell me that the Lord has spoken to him and that Diane is going to die and that we’re going to get married,” she said.  “As he’s talking to me, I’m thinking, ‘Is he drunk?’ And he did start talking about the alcohol that was in the fridge that he had been drinking.”

From 1996 to 1999, Doe said Bickle put her up in an apartment by herself, gave her a key to his office, engaged in sexual interactions with her, and told her about the dream, again and again. He also began establishing the International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC).

“That line that Diane, his wife, is going to die and that we’re going to get married—he at least said that to me 100 times,” Doe said.

TRR is referring to “Doe,” rather than the woman’s real name because TRR has a policy of not naming victims of alleged clergy sexual abuse unless they request it. But Allen Hood, former president of IHOP University, and Erin Parks, an IHOPKC founder, confirmed Doe’s identity with TRR.

TRR reached out to Bickle repeatedly for comment, but he did not respond to our requests. TRR also reached out to IHOPKC but did not receive an on-the-record response.

Doe told TRR that she provided information for a 50-page report that former IHOPKC leaders, known as the “complaint” or “advocate group,” turned over to current IHOPKC leaders last month. The advocate group alleged that Bickle engaged in clergy sexual abuse with multiple women over decades. Eight people—some former high-level IHOPKC leaders—also spoke exclusively to TRR and corroborated Doe’s allegations and Doe’s attempts to bring accountability.  

Former IHOPKC staffers have called for a third-party investigation into the allegations against Bickle.

However, current IHOPKC leaders have said any such investigation is premature. Three women have publicly said they were named by the former IHOPKC leaders as victims of Bickle’s but are not. IHOPKC has also released a report, discrediting some of alleged victims mentioned in the report or named in conversations with whistleblowers.

Yet Doe told TRR she’s not just one of Bickle’s victims. She’s also witnessed his grooming of other women at IHOPKC. She told TRR she tried for years to confront Bickle on inappropriate behavior with other young women.

“I would see him do things like put his hand up one of my friend’s leg under the table at the restaurant. And I would the next day, go in and confront him about it,” she said. “Another woman—I saw her put her hand in his pocket to get ibuprofen. And she had a key to his office, and she was coming in with special drinks and herbs and essential oils. . . Anytime I saw anything with any other woman that was inappropriate, I would confront him on it.”

Several people who worked closely with Doe at that time told TRR they also noticed strange dynamics between Bickle and other young women, as well as Doe. They include Erin Parks and Doe’s brother, whose name we’re not revealing to protect Doe’s identity. However, Allen Hood confirmed Doe’s brother’s identity with TRR.

Parks and Doe’s brother say Bickle’s spiritualized explanations, the power of his fame and presence, his generosity, and the fact that they were all young—in their 20s—masked the red flags.

“He was 40-something and we were 20-something,” said Parks. “And so, I guess it felt safe to let him dote on you and to let him encourage you and to let him offer to buy you houses and things.”

Until this year, Doe hasn’t spoken publicly about what happened with Bickle, heeding his alleged warnings to her that if she did, no one would believe her. But beginning in March, she said she realized the gravity of her situation and began talking—first to family, and then, through the 50-page report, to a watching world.

Doe’s brother told TRR that after hearing his sister’s revelation, past encounters with Bickle that seemed odd suddenly made sense.

Doe’s brother said that one time, Bickle pointed out verses about King David sleeping with Bathsheba.

“He highlighted them in orange, laughed, and gave my Bible back to me,” Doe’s brother said.  “I just so believe (Doe). . . . I’m grieved that it’s true, but it’s so true.”

A movement of young women

Bickle is a “larger than life” pastor whose attention toward young people and use of prophecies were exciting, Doe’s brother said.

In 1982, Bickle claimed God told him, “I will change the understanding and expression of Christianity in one generation.” In 1983, pastor and prophet Bob Jones came to Bickle with a word from God: Bickle would lead young adults in a prayer and worship movement that would have strong ties to Asia, Bickle explained in this September sermon. 

A few weeks after Jones’ prophecy, God gave Bickle a prophetic word for 24/7 prayer “in the spirit of the tabernacle of David.” Bickle claimed he went to heaven in a vision—and in another vision, met with the archangel Michael, which is documented in Bickle’s sermon notes from this past October.

Bickle built up a global following while pastoring Metro Christian Fellowship (MCF), a church he founded in Kansas City in the early 1980s, said former MCF pastor Michael Sullivant.

Then in 1999, with these prophecies in mind, Bickle founded IHOPKC, which has held continuous prayer meetings for the past 24 years, drawing devotees from around the world.

But the young people Bickle gathered during his time at MCF and the early years of IHOPKC were mostly women, said Parks, who worked at MCF, and a former MCF intern who requested anonymity. This other, former intern, whose identity Parks confirmed, told TRR that Bickle groomed her but never crossed the line into abuse.

Parks, the former intern, and Doe said they were part of Bickle’s group of female disciples who were in their late teens and early 20s. He was a father figure to many, Parks said. He was generous, too, she said, buying some of them clothes and giving them gift cards. He regularly organized pizza and movie nights—usually religious movies or World War II movies—at one of the women’s homes, without his wife or kids present, Parks said.

“I don’t know why no one said anything at the time because looking back at all of this, it’s clearly inappropriate,” Parks said.

Bickle would also prophesy over the women, Parks said.

“He was like, ‘You guys are the core and the foundation of IHOP. . . People will come and go, but you are the pillars in the house of the Lord,’” Parks said.  “He would do that a lot, hook people in with this prophetic vision and calling.”

One time, the other former intern said Bickle met with her and Doe in a restaurant and other young adults saw them. Right after that, Bickle said they shouldn’t meet in public anymore, and he invited a few young women to begin meeting secretly.

“We had plenty of conversations with him about what celibacy meant, and the special calling of setting ourselves aside,” the former intern said. “We weren’t supposed to tell anybody that we were invited to this mystic group to study because then people would be jealous.”

Special attention

Doe’s family revered Bickle, Doe said. In 1995, Doe’s brother said he was the first one in their family to return to Kansas City as a young adult to be near Bickle and MCF. He rarely saw Bickle until a year later when Doe also moved there. Then everything changed.

“That’s when all of a sudden, Mike showed special favor,” he said.

Bickle would invite Doe, age 19, and her brother, on outings. They would go to the park to play football, to restaurants, and to Barnes and Noble for caramel lattes, Doe’s brother said.

“The way that it was presented was that there was a call on our lives, that we had basically a special friendship,” Doe’s brother said. “I was extremely excited to obviously receive that attention.”

Doe’s brother also noticed that Bickle called his sister at the church from a trip overseas and talked to her for an hour. Bickle also expressed a special connection to Doe because on the day she was born, he’d received one of his prophecies, Doe’s brother said.

Parks said she heard Bickle prophesy over Doe at a prayer meeting. “Specifically, for (Doe), there was always language around Esther and Shulamite,” Parks said.

Parks said Doe told her something she never forgot.

“She said to me at one point, ‘There’s a married man who said that I’m going to be his wife,’” Parks said.

Another alleged abuse victim of Bickle’s, whose identity was confirmed by Allen Hood, told TRR she heard Doe say something similar: that Doe believed she was prophesied to marry a much older man. Because of the amount of physical affection Bickle showed Doe, the woman said she assumed Doe meant Bickle.

But in both cases, Doe reportedly didn’t say who it was. It wasn’t the only secret she would keep, Doe told TRR.

Doe said that in early 1997, Bickle told her that God had told him she was supposed to leave the internship she was doing with MCF and do research exclusively for him. As part of the internship, she said she was living with a host family. But with the job change, Bickle rented an apartment for only her, which Parks also confirmed.

“He actually started telling me about the sin that the leaders were in, and that it wasn’t a safe place for me,” Doe said. “He would pay me to do research where I would go to all the libraries in the city and search out everything on the return of Jesus.”

The anonymous former intern said she knew that Bickle was paying Doe to do research and asked Bickle if she could also do that job.

“Not only did he tell me, ‘I’m just doing that to invest in her,’ he was also like, ‘You know, no one’s supposed to know about that,’” she said.

Doe said Bickle gave her a key to his office, telling her to use it anytime she wanted, which both Parks and the anonymous intern confirmed. Doe said Bickle also told her that she would someday join him in a chariot in which God had invited him.

“I felt like I was the center of his world,” Doe said.

Bickle then started to control her schedule, inviting her to fast with him from Sunday to Wednesday. He limited who she could see, supposedly so she could follow the isolation of the early Desert Fathers.  

“He controlled who I met with and when I met,” Doe said. “I could only have a couple of friends. When I met with them, I could only meet with them about the Bible or Jesus. It was not to be a hangout.”

In the fall of 1997, she said Bickle invited his research team—five women and one man—to travel to Europe. Bickle would refer to his wife, Diane, as Lady Di and connected Princess Diana’s recent death in Paris to his prophecy that his own wife would die, Doe said. Bickle also gave Doe a book and magazine on Princess Diana, she said.

On the last day of the trip, they were scheduled to tour Paris, Doe said. But that morning, Doe said Bickle disappeared. The team spent the day looking, but no one could find him, Doe said. When Doe finally got back to her room that night, she said Bickle called her.

He reportedly didn’t tell her where he’d been. But she said he invited her to eat alone with him at a restaurant. He also said he’d splurged on everyone having their own hotel rooms, she said. At the restaurant, she said he ordered her a couple rounds of cocktails. At the time, Doe was 20 and Bickle was 43. After dinner, she said he took her to an alley and kissed her “full on.”

“The next thing I remember, I was waking up in my hotel room the next morning,” she said. “I definitely blacked out. . . I remember I was clothed. That’s all I remember, and just being very disoriented.”

Sullivant, who said he was a close confidant of Bickle at that time, said he knew about Bickle’s travels, but had no idea Bickle was taking mostly young women with him.

“We would’ve intervened if we had known that was going on,” Sullivant said.

When they got back home, Doe said the dynamic with Bickle “progressed.”

“He would cross the line and kept crossing it more severely sexually,” she said. “And he would have me pray a prayer of Psalm 51, asking the Lord to forgive us.”

Bickle soon told her the apartment was no longer a good place for her and rented a different apartment for her, five miles away, she said. He told her that someday they’d have their own house, “but that it needs to be conservative in the front and could be bigger on the back,” she said.

The sexual interactions included everything but intercourse, Doe told TRR.

“I have a few memories in hotel rooms,” she said. “I don’t—I just—they were way worse than Paris.”

Doe said she didn’t write about Bickle in her journal entries from that time, due to the secrecy Bickle required. But in an entry a month after her Paris trip, she wrote, “I’m in a whirlwind right now. Sometimes I think I do good to just come up for air.”

Meanwhile, in 1997, Bickle “became urgent” to bring in another senior pastor to replace him so Bickle could focus on establishing the prayer movement within MCF, said Sullivant.

In 1998, Doe’s father bought a house for Doe and she soon added roommates to the house. Also, two other young women moved to Kansas City, who drew Bickle’s attention, Doe said. The meetings with Bickle slowed down, Doe said. Yet, in late 1999 or early 2000, she said she had one more physical encounter with Bickle in a hotel room in Dallas.

By 2000, Bickle had taken the prayer ministry out of MCF, Sullivant said, adding: “I think that he separated from our church because he didn’t enjoy the kind of scrutiny and accountability that was built into our church.”

Bickle, however, said in an apology email to MCF in 2005, that God had told him to separate from MCF.

“I had a dream that I believe was from the Lord,” Bickle wrote. “In it, He showed me that MCF did not establish IHOP, but rather IHOP was removed from MCF by the Lord because of the spiritual culture of MCF that evolved by 1999.”

Sullivant views the supposed prophecy differently.

“In my view, (Bickle) has regularly used claims of urgent prophetic revelations to trump the ethics of biblical love and relationally healthy processes,” Sullivant said.

Bickle also spiritualized his requirement on Doe to keep their interactions secret, Doe said.

“During that time, he would nicely threaten in his charisma way . . . that if I would ever say anything, no one would ever believe me,” she said. “He talked about lying and truth and how Jesus had a different truth than we think he did. It was very sophisticated, the brainwashing weirdness.”

Doe said Bickle also told her to delete emails from him and never to reply back, but rather to start a new thread.  

When Doe started dating the man who became her husband, Bickle became angry at Doe for dating him, the other anonymous victim told TRR.

“One night we had a meeting and (Doe) and (her date) came a little late. And (Doe) walked up to Mike, and I was standing there. And Mike berated her, got very angry with her, and said she was ruining her life in God and what was she even doing with this guy?” the woman said.

Though Bickle officiated at the wedding of Doe’s brother, Doe said Bickle told her he couldn’t officiate hers. Instead, he walked up to the front during her wedding ceremony, sobbing, Doe’s brother said.

For years, throughout her marriage, Bickle sent Doe coded emails or texts, Doe said. “Praying for you for real 195 to the end,” he texted on Nov. 1, 2018. When he used “195” he meant, “I love you,” Doe told TRR.

“We both have chariot to get into in this life and we both being challenged physically,” he emailed to her on Oct. 3 of this year.

Doe said she mostly tried not to think about Bickle.

“For these 20 plus years, I would drive by the exit where my apartments was—my two apartments—and in my mind, I would wonder if I’m ever going to talk about that,” she said. “But that was as far as I would go. I would feel sick to my stomach . . . I’ve never gone to any place I’ve ever been with Mike since then, like there was no curiosity. There was no nothing. It’s like I ran.”

‘Trauma unearthed’

In March 2023, Doe said she listened to a podcast about Bill Cosby’s alleged abuse and saw herself in that situation.

“I fell to my floor and began to wail,” she said. “That was a moment of trauma unearthed.”

In May, Doe finally talked about it for the first time, first telling her husband. Her husband also confirmed this with TRR. Four days later, a friend of hers asked her a question out of the blue: “Did Mike ever do anything physical to you?”

“I literally start to cry and shake and I just shared with her my story,” Doe said. “That’s when she said, ‘You know, there’s a current woman.’”

And that’s when Doe said she knew she had to do something.

Neither Doe nor her husband had confidence in IHOPKC’s leadership or accountability structure.  So, in late June, Doe told Allen Hood her story, which Hood confirmed with TRR. Hood called it “devastating” news.

“(Doe) is so credible, her fruit, the fruitfulness of her life and faithfulness, that I’ve seen her walk in for over 20 years,” Hood said. “That, to me, it couldn’t be denied. And yet to be honest, I didn’t want to believe it . . . We just wept and I said, ‘I’m with you, (Doe), I’m here and I’ll stand with you. And we’ll walk this out together.’”

By August, Doe and her husband also reached out to former IHOPKC leader Dwayne Roberts, his wife, Jennifer Roberts, and to Sullivant, both Dwayne Roberts and Sullivant told TRR.

“We’ve known her to be a person of integrity and character,” Roberts said. “It’s not in her nature to come up with something remotely close to this to gain something. (Doe) will always tell the truth and Mike will always tell his own story.”

Roberts, who was part of IHOPKC since its earliest days, told TRR that he didn’t know about Bickle’s secret meetings with women in their 20s in the late 1990s. But he said Bickle didn’t hold similar discipleship groups for men.

Roberts said Bickle commonly had young women who were 20 years younger than him around him at IHOPKC. Both Roberts and Hood told TRR that Bickle had internal deadbolts in his office.

Sullivant said Doe’s story reminded him of a 2015 conversation he and his wife had with a woman who’d been close to Bickle when he pastored at MCF.

“She told us that was the line that he used—that Diane was going to die and that they would be together,” Sullivant said. “So, when (Doe) told us that, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve heard that before.’”

The woman to whom Sullivant was referring spoke with TRR. She confirmed that Bickle, when married and serving as a pastor in her church in Kansas City around 1983 or ‘84, had connected emotionally with her. She said she doesn’t consider herself a victim of Bickle’s. But she said Bickle communicated to her a prophecy that someday his wife Diane would die in an earthquake and then Bickle and this woman could be together.

Seeking accountability from IHOPKC

Roberts said that phrase became key throughout August and September when he talked with Doe and other former IHOPKC staffers who’d noticed red flags in Bickle’s behavior through the years.

“That was the golden thread we pulled on and things began to come to the surface,” Roberts said. “That phrase has been tied to stories in three different decades. I’m 150% positive that Mike has said that to other women.”

Roberts said he met in person with IHOPKC Executive Director Stuart Greaves on Sept. 30, and told him some allegations had been made about Bickle but didn’t go into specifics. Roberts said he told Greaves he intended to meet with Bickle, and asked Greaves to be a witness to that conversation.

However, Roberts said Greaves refused, saying Roberts needed to conduct a Matthew 18 process with Bickle and initially confront Bickle one-on-one.

On Oct. 2, Roberts met with Greaves again, telling Greaves he’d involved two other pastors who had strong ties to Bickle. The exchange turned “heated,” Roberts said, because Greaves didn’t want to involve anyone outside of IHOPKC.

On Oct. 9, Doe’s husband, who TRR is keeping anonymous to protect Doe’s identity, emailed Bickle to meet that day to talk about “something personal.”  Doe told TRR that she declined to be part of the meetings because she doesn’t think it is appropriate for victims to meet directly with their abusers.

Roberts planned to attend the meeting, too, but when Bickle found out, Bickle insisted that Doe’s husband and he meet alone, the emails show.

Doe’s husband told TRR that Bickle denied the allegations when they met and said Doe had misunderstood his prophecy. Bickle said God wanted Doe and Bickle to work together in ministry after Diane died, not in marriage, Doe’s husband said.

“He said, ‘I always just assumed that (Doe) was so pure, she would never take any of those things romantically,’” Doe’s husband said.

Email thread between Doe’s husband and Mike Bickle – Oct. 9, 2023

Bickle followed up that night with an email, urging Doe not to go public with the accusations, and then accused Doe of “the greatest betrayal of my life.”

“I realize she has not betrayed me at this point . . . but even the chance of her doing this creates great pain in me (but not anger at her)—that a most trusted friend did this to me at the end of my life after 40 years of being in prayer meeting many hours a day (6 days a week),” he wrote.

Doe’s husband said Bickle’s foundation was a donor to their organization. But Bickle predicted that if Doe were to talk publicly about her allegations that Bickle would need to remove financial support to avoid the appearance of a “bribe.” Bickle also warned that a social media storm would bring up accusations against her.

Email from Mike Bickle to Doe – evening of Oct. 9, 2023 

That same day, Doe’s husband and Roberts met with Greaves and Marci Sorge, another senior leader of IHOPKC. Doe’s husband shared what happened between Doe and Bickle in Paris with the leaders, Roberts said. But then Greaves and Sorge were “incredibly slow” to move after that, Roberts said.

On Oct. 20, Bickle preached a message at IHOPKC on a “black horse” prophecy and predicted he’d be betrayed by someone close to him.

On Oct. 23, Doe’s husband emailed Bickle and requested another meeting, this time including former IHOPKC leader Brian Kim and Wes Martin, former pastor of IHOPKC’s Forerunner Church. But Bickle reportedly refused, saying that Bickle is under Greaves’ accountability, and that Greaves had advised Bickle to meet only with Doe’s husband and not with “a group.”

“I am still waiting on ladies who allegedly have a story to come to me and Stuart according to Matthew 18:15-18,” Bickle wrote. “I am very sure none will come because they do have a real story.”

Email thread between Doe’s husband and Mike Bickle – Oct. 23, 2023

On Oct. 24, IHOPKC executive leaders, including Dave Sliker, Greaves, Sorge, and Lenny LaGuardia met to hear Doe’s husband share Doe’s allegations, Roberts said. Brian Kim, Wes Martin, and Roberts also attended that meeting, Roberts said.

Roberts said he had written a 50-page document with a timeline and some suspicions concerning Bickle and several women. He added that the report had no names, only a couple initials, and some unnamed references. Roberts said he referenced the document in that meeting but did not give it to the leaders.

On Oct. 25, Roberts gave the 50-page document to Greaves, and talked with him about a few alleged victims he identified by name.

Roberts told TRR he urged IHOPKC’s leaders to issue a bold and transparent statement about the allegations to the IHOPKC community. But on Oct. 27, IHOPKC announced merely that there were allegations against Bickle but declined to comment on the nature of the allegations.  

Roberts said IHOPKC staff were threatening to resign. So, on Oct. 28, Roberts, Kim, and Martin released a statement with details about the allegations against Bickle to IHOPKC staff, hoping more information would stabilize a frustrated community.

Greaves has publicly said IHOPKC leaders responded within 24 hours of “official notice” of allegations to meet with Bickle to remove him from public ministry. A recent statement from the advocate group refuted Greaves’ claim.

Greaves and the executive team did not respond on the record to TRR’s repeated requests for comment.

Roberts said he believes IHOPKC leaders are good people who are caught in a system created by Bickle who engages in “masterminding storylines.” They need outside help and must demonstrate transparency, Roberts said.

Doe said speaking out to the media was her last resort.

“In spite of the fact that IHOPKC thoroughly knows my story, they have consistently minimized and denied their knowledge of real evidence from the victims,” she said. “I am devastated that men and women who have been my friends for 25 years have completely shunned me since they were first made aware. I had hoped we could all work together to do the right thing. . . . How I have been treated has broken my heart.”

Correction: The spelling of an IHOPKC leader’s name has been corrected.

Rebecca Hopkins is a journalist based in Colorado.