When you sign up for love, romance, Valentine's day, you also get religious leader sexual misconduct as part of the package deal.

 

I highlight the particularly interesting/gruesome parts in yellow.

NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/us/ravi-zacharias-sexual-abuse.html

excerpts:

The influential evangelist Ravi Zacharias, who died last spring, engaged in “sexting, unwanted touching, spiritual abuse, and rape,” according to a report released on Thursday by the global evangelical organization he founded.

...

When Mr. Zacharias died of cancer in May at age 74, he was one of the most revered evangelists in the United States. Former Vice President Mike Pence spoke at his memorial service in Atlanta, calling him “a man of faith who could rightly handle the word of truth like few others in our time” and comparing him to Billy Graham and C.S. Lewis.

...

Though the report adds shocking new details, accounts of Mr. Zacharias’s sexual misconduct had arisen in recent years. In 2017, he settled a lawsuit with a Canadian couple whom he had accused of attempting to extort him over intimate text messages he had exchanged with the wife.

Then last fall, several months after Mr. Zacharias’s death, the magazine Christianity Today reported on allegations that Mr. Zacharias had groped and masturbated in front of several women who worked at two day spas he co-owned near his ministry’s headquarters in Alpharetta, Ga. After initially denying those claims, RZIM acknowledged in December that an interim report from Miller & Martin confirmed that he had engaged in “sexual misconduct.”

The full report paints a stark portrait of that misconduct. The law firm interviewed more than a dozen massage therapists who treated Mr. Zacharias. Five of them reported that he had touched or rubbed them inappropriately, and four said he would touch his own genitals or ask them to touch him. Eight said he would either start the massage completely nude or remove the draping sheets during the treatment.

One massage therapist “reported details of many encounters over a period of years that she described as rape,” the report says. She said Mr. Zacharias talked with her about topics including her faith and her finances, and she came to think of him as a “father figure.” After he arranged for his ministry to provide her with financial support, however, he demanded sex, according to the report. Mr. Zacharias, it says, “warned her not ever to speak out against him or she would be responsible for the ‘millions of souls’ whose salvation would be lost if his reputation was damaged.”

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The law firm also found a pattern of intimate text and email-based relationships with women. In reviewing his electronic devices, they found the phone numbers of more than 200 massage therapists and more than 200 selfies, some of them nudes, from much younger women. Mr. Zacharias also used the nonprofit ministry to financially support some of his long-term therapists. The report also reveals that he owned two apartments in Bangkok, where he spent 256 days between 2010 and 2014. One of his massage therapists stayed in the other apartment.

Mr. Zacharias said in 2017 that in 45 years of marriage, “I have never engaged in any inappropriate behavior of any kind.”

The report is a devastating blow for the reputation of a man who was for decades a widely admired evangelical leader. Born in Chennai, India, and boasting impressive academic credentials, he had a reputation among many evangelicals as a worldly and winsome intellectual. His ministry’s motto is “Helping the thinker believe. Helping the believer think.”

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In 2014, Mr. Zacharias met a Canadian couple, Brad and Lori Anne Thompson, at a fund-raising luncheon in Ontario. They stayed in touch, and eventually Mr. Zacharias invited Ms. Thompson to correspond privately on BlackBerry Messenger. The evangelist was 30 years older than Ms. Thompson, and she saw him as a “spiritual father,” she has said. After she confided in him about her history of abuse and trauma, she has said, Mr. Zacharias began soliciting sexually explicit messages.

When Ms. Thompson told Mr. Zacharias that she needed to tell her husband about their relationship, Mr. Zacharias threatened suicide, according to leaked emails first published by the blogger Julie Anne Smith.

After a lawyer for the Thompsons approached Mr. Zacharias privately in 2017, he sued the couple, portraying them publicly as serial extortionists and saying that Ms. Thompson had sent him the explicit messages against his will. The suit ended in private mediation, and all parties signed a nondisclosure agreement.

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CNN news

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/12/us/ravi-zacharias-sexual-misconduct-report/index.html

excerpts:

A digital forensics firm examined four cell phones and a laptop used by Zacharias. Evidence was uncovered of "text- and email-based relationships with women who were not his wife," along with more than 200 photos of women, the report said.

Several women accused Zacharias of using ministry funds to give them financial support, eliciting personal information about their lives and employing religious language during encounters, according to the report. 

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The Miller & Martin report describes the case of Lori Anne Thompson, a Canadian woman who accused Zacharias of engaging in "sexually explicit online conversations" and exploiting "her vulnerability to satisfy [his] own sexual desires."

In April 2017, Thompson and her husband wrote Zacharias to demand "$5 million in exchange for a release of claims against him and the ministry." Three months later, Zacharias sued the couple in federal court for extortion. The couple and Zacharias settled the dispute confidentially in the fall of 2017, the report said.

Zacharias convinced the RZIM board that he was a victim of extortion and the matter was not investigated, according to the report. Witnesses within RZIM told investigators they were "marginalized for raising questions" about his explanations.

The RZIM statement this week said the investigative findings "caused us to think very differently" about Thompson's 2017 allegations.

"We believe Lori Anne Thompson has told the truth about the nature of her relationship with Ravi Zacharias," the board said. "It is with profound grief that we recognize that because we did not believe the Thompsons and both privately and publicly perpetuated a false narrative, they were slandered for years and their suffering was greatly prolonged and intensified. This leaves us heartbroken and ashamed."

In an email statement to CNN, Thompson said she and her husband "are deeply indebted to every victim and whistleblower who spoke for not only themselves, but also for us."

...

(Ravi's 39yr old daughter is CEO of their RZIM organization, here is an excerpt of an article she authored)

https://www.rzim.org/read/rzim-global/q-a-with-rzim-ceo-sarah-zacharias-davis

excerpts:

What were your dreams for your future?

From the time I can first remember, I wanted a family. I wanted to give love and be loved. That felt the most important. When I got to college something awakened in me and I also felt more driven to a career and to grow and achieve, and that became part of my dream. I still think living from love is the most important. It just looks different to how I imagined as a child. Even though my life has not turned out as I thought it would, I can see now how God planted that seed–that purpose–to love, and how He has brought that purpose into who I am and who I feel He has called me to be.

What are some of the most difficult, but life-shaping lessons you’ve learned along the way?

Surrender. I was always terrified of full surrender, of relinquishing control of my life and my dreams. Coming to that place of surrender was very difficult and yet, I feel God lovingly brought me to a place where I truly desired to surrender everything to Him. I was in Shanghai with Ravi and the last night, the last event, during the Q&A, someone stood up and said that he was a Christian but he didn’t feel like he genuinely loved God. Ravi answered the question by telling a story that was in one of his books written for children, The Broken Promise. He applied the story by asking the questioner, “Perhaps you don’t feel you love God because you are holding something back from Him.” It was at that moment I knew I was withholding surrender but I was still afraid. But in that moment, I did fully surrender and simply asked God to be with me when disappointing or painful things happened, and I truly feel He has been and continues to be.

I have also learned grace through making mistakes, grace for myself, but also grace towards others. Though difficult, through this I learned God’s love for me and that not I nor anyone else is too far from the love and grace of God.

What is your favorite thing about being a CEO?

I am excited by seeing a vision for what can be, in people as individuals and in the organization. I feel fulfilled when I can recognize gifting or potential in someone else and then can clear the barriers so they can do and be who they are meant to be.

What is the most challenging thing about being a CEO?

I feel a deep burden of responsibility to honor what God has called this organization to be, to our team, to the people we serve, and to those who stand with us, and to make the right decisions for the organization while also loving the individuals well.

What is something most people don’t know about you that you wish they did?

Because I can be reserved, people often think I am serious or quiet, but I love being with people, I love to laugh, and believe it or not, some even say I can be witty!