Bethel's Book Platformed a Wolf and Silenced His Victims

What you are about to see in this video is the very epicenter of coverup culture in the charismatic movement. We're about to expose not just a man, but a corrupt process that has formed the foundation of a book called Unpunishable that has proliferated coverup culture across the charismatic movement everywhere it goes. This is a heartbreaking story of betrayal. But in exposing the story, hopefully we will be striking at the root of coverup culture in the modern charismatic movement.

In all of my years of being an elder, of being an associate pastor, and even being a senior pastor, I've only ever kicked two people out of the church. Both were Jonathan Welton.

This is Jonathan Welton, a self-proclaimed seer, prophet, and apostle within the charismatic movement. He is also a self-proclaimed wolf in sheep's clothing. I was a wolf. I was a wolf.

A few minutes pass and I'm petrified. He still has one arm around my neck and with the other he takes my leg and pulls it up against him. I should have known he wasn't going to stop.

Jonathan Welton's teachings were incredibly influential within the Bethl sphere of influence.

See, it's not just a trinity. The bride is the fourth person of the Godhead.

Bethl being the most influential charismatic church in the world. Bethl has recently come under fire for not warning the church about sexual predators and false prophets that it had platformed BS being one of the most recent cases that has come to light.

And one of our dearest friends, one of our most trusted friends is Shawn BS.

Sean BS was using the internet to data mine prophecies and then calling people out of the crowd in order to prophesy over them the information that he had looked up online pretending that it was the voice of God. while also behind the scenes pleasuring himself in front of his male interns and staff. This was known to leaders at Bethl for years and Bethl had never warned the church publicly about such a dangerous individual. Many people have been asking this question, why does this keep happening? One of the people who was warned was this man, Danny Silk. Danny Silk wrote the book called Unpunishable and the forward was written by Shawn BS. It's theology, but it's a different I mean, it's it's not something I learned from a a book or a teacher as much as I learned from trying to help people that messed up their life.

Now, Danny Silk, one of Bethl's senior leaders, knew about the allegations against Shawn BS before publishing the book. And yet, he kept Shawn Bulls's forward anyway.

In unpunishable, Danny Silk makes the case that ministers who have abused their position of authority to sexually take advantage of people under their care should be restored to ministry because to not restore them would be an act of punishment. This is a quote. People are naturally wary about a fallen leader returning to a position of influence, especially once they find out that he is a repeat offender. However, often this weariness is an expression of the punishment paradigm.

Danny Silk uses two case studies to support his claims. One is the case of Ben Armstrong. Ben Armstrong works for Bethl Church or worked for Bethl Church as their director of prophetic ministry. Ben Armstrong had used his position of spiritual authority to bring a woman who was under his spiritual care into what was a relationship leading towards sexual encounter. We call this grooming. It was not the first time with Ben Armstrong. And yet he was immediately invited to come back to the pulpit.

You asked me a question early on actually. We were sitting in your office and you said, "So, what does coming back to ministry look like?" And I I I was surprised you even asked that question because I didn't think that was even on the table.

I mean, I was always sometimes questioning in the back of my mind, as I mentioned, Danny had just wrote a book about what we're talking about, the culture of honor.

I had just written Culture of Honor the year before, I think, or something.

So, I thought maybe they were keeping Ben along because they were testing out if the book really worked. We're just propping this book up.

Yeah. Yeah. We if we don't do this, like I just wrote a book that says this works.

But that's not the only case. Another is the case of Jonathan Welton. Jonathan Welton was exposed for a second time for abusing his spiritual authority to sexually gratify himself at the expense of those that he led. Danny Silk was brought in to be part of bringing accountability to Jonathan Welton. However, behind the scenes, Danny Silk was also writing Unpunishable, wherein he wrote about Jonathan's restoration process, and he did so in such a way that blindsided all of the victims of Jonathan Welton and the other ministers who were brought in to help bring accountability.

It was very angering. I let the staff member know who had sent it to me from Danny Silk. I said, "I don't I don't like this. You can tell him that I don't agree. I don't think that he should publish this." Well, now Jonathan Welton is using this book and the credibility of Danny Silk to replplatform himself and to claim that he is a changed man and to seek the pulpit yet again.

Yearsl long season that I walk through with a team and through a restoration process that was a legitimate one. Thank God I had Danny Silk to walk with me. He ended up actually writing a book called Unpunishable. And while Welton claims that his restoration process was legitimate, those who were responsible for providing oversight, including a clinical psychologist, Jonathan's former pastor, his former staff, and his victims, all say otherwise.

Now, today, Jonathan Welton appears repentant. He seems to be apologetic for the ways that he has treated his former staff. He's even gone as much as to call himself a wolf. But then he shares his teachings from when he was a wolf. He's using his past behavior as a platform to try to launch himself back into the spotlight as an authority on these issues of abuse and trust.

Today, what we're going to talk about is apologies. I'm not here to apologize to you. I'm here to help you learn how to apologize. Now the question I have is should the church trust somebody because they apologized when their victims had not yet had a voice and should the church trust Jonathan Welton just because Danny Silk wrote a book about his restoration. I'm joined in this video by Ron Caner who has been an advocate. He has a podcast called Speak Up and he has been a vocal victim advocate and I'm privileged to have him join me in this video.

In these situations, people talk quite a bit about the minister that has been involved in the moral failure, but it's not often that the the survivor has a voice. And one of the things that we wanted to do in these series of videos is to hear from those people what what did they go through in their soul? What what type of emotional trauma did they go through when they were groomed?

Grooming is the leveraging of trust that a person has developed sometimes over weeks, months, even years for the purpose of maneuvering someone into a sexual relationship. Um, it doesn't even always have to be sexual, however. It could be some sort of coercive control over somebody for whatever purpose that benefits the person who is the groomer. It's incredibly disorientating. It really begins to erode away uh after somebody wakes up from having been groomed. It it's unbelievably damaging because you wonder who can I trust? You begin to question reality on some level.

My goal in doing this video is to debunk unpunishable and expose how its primary case studies were faulty. The testimonies that it leaned upon in order to make itself seem plausible really have not been understood and the stories had not been told. In fact, the victims had been silenced in the publishing of the book. They did not even know about the book. even board members, people that were part of the accountability team, they were kind of shocked that this book came out celebrating Jonathan Wilton, uh, because that was not their experience. So, it was done without their permission. And quite honestly, a lot of them felt blindsided by this book.

We're going to spend a lot of time talking about Jonathan Welton, and it really doesn't shine a positive light on him, but we're we are the church of Jesus. We have mercy uh for sinners as as we all are. We have come into the grace of God because of the love and mercy of God. We're not looking to uh hurt Jonathan. We are believing God for his restoration, his full restoration. But when we use the word restoration, we don't necessarily mean that that means in the pulpit. If he is genuinely repentant, we want to see him flourish in his relationship with Jesus. But we do not believe that someone who has multiple cases of clergy sexual abuse and and we're not speaking about just the act of sex we believe has disqualified him. This is not about forgiveness. This is about trust. Do we trust somebody who has a pattern of of pretending to be better and then it turns out he's not? Do we trust that person with the pulpit? And really, do we trust a book written by a very influential Christian charismatic leader part of the Bethl Network that is advocating for the restoration of people who have repeatedly broken trust?

Now, finally, this is a content warning. Um, there's going to be some foul language in this. I've elected not to edit it out because I want you to see the type of culture that Jonathan Welton had created around himself within his ministry and his staff. There's also graphic depictions of sexual abuse that I think is important for you to know um that that's going to be happening. So, if that's difficult for you, then I would encourage you maybe just skip this one. We're going to hear from Renee Lorraine. She hosts the blog Know the Sound. She has been the voice of many of Welton's victims. She has carried the torch for this at great cost to herself. Without further ado, here is Renee Lorraine.

This didn't start with Welton Academy. So, it was quite interesting because when um when Welton Academy as a school was in process, there was a lot of stuff that Jonathan would share with us behind the scenes to kind of make us feel like we really knew him, really understood his story. And so although he had um spoken openly about an affair that he had in which he does talk about and he would bring it up from time to time behind the scenes and you know we would say like you know what happened at Global Awakening. He was like uh Randy Clark and I just didn't see eye to eye and we really believed him that he and Randy didn't talk and there was no correlation between Malton Academy and Randy because of this disagreement. We knew nothing more than that.

Steve Hogan >> uh Welton's pastor was under the impression there was no physical thing at all that had happened that it was just you know some inappropriate comments or something of that nature.

Yeah, that that's really fascinating you say that because that is part of the thing that's so interesting is that everybody gets a different version of the story. What we ultimately found out to be true was he began hosting private groups. I think they were just under the name of like um Bible study or something of that nature. And he was hosting these groups and they were sort of secretive and they were women only. And one of the things that he would do with them is really express this narrative that um he was their spiritual father and they were his spiritual daughters. And in that fathers and daughters are to be affectionate with one another. And he used that narrative with them over the course of time, including things like having them sit on his lap and he would, you know, stroke their back or touch them inappropriately. And all of this manipulation and grooming eventually led to the so-called affair that he talks about in public at times. So, if you hear of that, that is the context for that scenario.

so there's a secret group of women

that he has uh he cultivates this spiritual father relationship with even though he's like their age and he was younger than you and tried to do the same thing with you, right?

and

and so he's like, I I'm your spiritual father. Why don't you sit on my lap and why don't you let me touch you inappropriately? And the reason that the reason that this is important to point out is because when you recognize that this had happened maybe as like however many years previous to when this comes out again

um you can understand that this is a pattern and it is goal oriented. It is going towards a a specific purpose. So you cannot just brush off like it was just handholding or it was just a hug or because this is the pattern. It has been proven out before and it is repeating itself.

And so that's why I I thank you for for pointing that out. I wanted to really hammer that home. Let me just jump in and and say that this is a pattern that we've heard from many witnesses over many years that when he gets into a ministry, he will form a small secretive group. So, you know, we we heard from Steve Hogan that in his church, he formed a men's group and then after a certain amount of time, they had to commit to confidentiality. Yeah. So you've got this secret women's group and I think at one point he had a Facebook group for uh just a select group of women and in all these things it's secret you people under

what's that

multiple Facebook groups with women

and you and and you and it's because you people understand me and we are going to have you know I'm your spiritual father and as far as I understand these are cultlike test tendencies where you know right now uh He he is a cult leader without a cult in my opinion. But given the opportunity, he seems to always revert to gathering a small group and you you tell me things as we heard in testimony. You know, tell me all the things that you would want to do with your future husband. Now, we all know that that is whack. That is crazy. But when you have been, you know, groomed constantly, I am your spiritual dad. it. You don't get someone to open up about that overnight. It it is a a method. And then we know in the men's group,

you know, he wanted them to tell them, give a report. I know it just sounds so crazy. Give them a report about what they did with their wives sexually. All under the guise of this is healthy spiritual

uh stuff that we're doing together.

That is the that is what happened in those days. That is why there was multiple accounts of confusing versions as to why there was absolutely no contact with Randy Clark which was and that is that's kind of important to know because um when we are trying to when he is working with us as a staff at Welton Academy and he's you know enrolling us into this belief system into his story into his narrative um he needs us to believe that there's no reason to ever communicate with the people from the past. So, that's part of the whole thing. Um, and again, we can see that pattern repeated. We'll get there in the story, but um, the new people he's with do not communicate to us. So, it's the whole thing like he does it in sections and then he creates a story so you don't look back and communicate with the old people.

after the school closed um we had people who um from that era and that were on the restoration board or connected to it reach out to those of us who were involved in let's say you know the closure of the school and the Jonathan's process to say basically come to us prostrate saying we have failed you guys and everyone in the f like everyone from here because we didn't take it seriously enough he went back in the public because we did not do it right. And they basically told the story that he was just so incredibly insufferable that they ultimately washed their hands of him. So he did not fundamentally did not complete that process on any level whatsoever. And that's been multiple people.

Yeah. It's it's important to note that that that's why we're doing this video.

Yes. is is because I I think that that pattern just repeated itself again and now he's he's trying to relaunch into ministry and it's it is time to say no.

Yeah. Yeah. So, it didn't start at Welton Academy. [laughter] Um it started long before that and then I believe that that all got warped into all of that happened because he had a an addiction to pornography. Um he is very open about that in Eyes of Honor. Um there are videos out there of him expressing that in different interviews. Uh he went on Sid Roth famously expressing how he had an absolute biblical level transformation in an instant. He went from seeing women as prey to seeing them as something he must protect. Um and I can point you to the exact

Huh.

Yeah. He called it a Saul to Paul transformation, which is what he says about himself yet again. So

he went from a Saul to Paul to [laughter] whatever's after that, you know. So, like it's always this this magical transformation that keeps happening to him that he can use as evidence for you to trust him.

My guest, international author, international speaker, minister with a secret sin. You couldn't tell he had this sin because it was an internal sin. He had a sin of sexual lust. He's a man of God. What does he do about it? I can tell you that over 10 years he went to the best courses available for Christians and could not get free. But then he had a revelation from on high and he's a free man today. This revelation is so powerful that it will allow you to walk in every promise that you've read about in the Bible and it will allow you to be empowered over secret sins and public sins. Uh what did you try to get free?

Well, uh you know, we thought we were happily married and [music] uh obviously had some issues in the background too. And so for over the course of about [music] 10 years in my life, um tried reading all the popular books, went to all the seminars, tried 12step groups, tried [music] kind of everything that's out there uh at the moment and was not finding freedom, was finding behavior modification. uh where you might have the willpower [music] to say no for a while as you're involved with one of the programs or

[music]

uh bouncing your eyes as some of the books say or you know some of the other strategies but not real freedom inside.

How long did it take you to [music] get real freedom? I would say it was like a Saul to Paul kind of transformation where uh obviously you [music] have to walk it out but there was a transformation in a matter of days that

you know what did you hear that days in a matter of days. It took 10 years and had the best that Christianity had to offer and it could not make him free. What does your wife think about uh the new man? M well uh the first few days she was skeptical. Um but she could tell the Lord was doing something and it was within a matter of of weeks that she began to recognize that I was walking as a new person that there was a a transparency, a vulnerability that she had desired in our relationship for years. um realizing that this cancer had been really taken out from me. This this cancer of pornography and lust and um sexual sin had been removed from our relationship and she began to see the health, the transparency.

Okay, compare what he just said on Sid Roth in the Eyes of Honor era to what he says 2 years ago to Funk Roberts. You'll notice a few of these elements are there. One, um I tried everything, nothing was working. Two, I have the magic solution that solved all of my problems. Three, my wife has noticed the transformation and she is now evidence that I am completely changed and trustworthy. He is not honest with Sid about what was really going on. He says it was a pornography issue. And the same is true with the bulletproof husband and Funk Roberts. Uh he's not telling the truth about what his issue really was. um he's saying, you know, I just wasn't a good guy. I had all these issues. But the reality is that there are several women that he has groomed and um manipulated into some sort of a sexualized relationship.

Um my uh my journey is I'm one of those testimonials. Um, Andre created the program and uh, [clears throat] I walked through the program and I had tried all kinds of other stuff before. Um, we did marriage counseling weekly for two years. Uh, I had gone and gotten a counselor to work on one-on-one, 5 days a week for months at a time. I had uh gone to intensives and seminars and retreats and all kinds of stuff and it wasn't working. I mean, I was I was so buried in a um a deficit of trust. You know, my wife did not feel safe, did not feel heard, did not feel like I empathized or understood h how she was experiencing me. And I I didn't I it wasn't clicking. And uh so I Bulletproof Husband was kind of a lastditch effort for me. It was the um you know it was kind of this well I don't know much about him but I've been watching Andre in his short videos cuz he was sending out these threeinut videos at the time and uh after about a month of that I was like well this guy seems to know what he's talking about. And there was enough enough confidence there to say I'm going to I'm going to try this. I'm going to try this this uh crazy Facebook uh group and see what happens. And uh I was blown away. I mean, within a couple weeks, my wife was saying to our marriage counselor, "This is what I've been waiting for for the last 2 years. It's finally showing up."

He begins his school. I believe that he wrote Eyes of Honor um as sort of the stamp he was going to put out into the world so that people from the past would not try to stop him. It absolutely worked. What I can say is that people that did come forward to talk to us from the Randy Clark era said, "We saw the book. We read it and really thought that he had transformed it." Did Eyes of Honor served its purpose. Um and then he went on that book I want to say is was released in 2013 2014 somewhere in that era when he was doing a lot of itinerate ministry and then it was in the uh fall of 2013 that he opened supernatural bible school which later goes on to be turned into Welton Academy. We'll kind of use those terms interchangeably. So SPS Wilton Academy starts September 2013 and the rest is kind of history. I got involved in Wilton Academy because I Jonathan was doing itinerate speaking for the first couple of years that the school was in in session. And so a um I would say around 6 months before SPS started, he was uh at my home church and was a guest speaker. I heard him speak. I was absolutely blown away at his ability to teach. I'd never met anyone like him. It was also kind of inspiring because he was um he seemed about my age. And so I found him on Facebook that day and sent him a private message and just said, "Hey, um I'd love to connect. I was really moved by your teaching." Blah blah blah. Um and he was like, "Great." And so anyway, there was no like heavy pursuit from him towards me at that stage. And then so as a result I follow him on Facebook and then within weeks I start seeing him advertising about this school that he is starting and I was like holy smokes I'm joining it. I joined the day the enrollment opened. So I joined school started that following September. I was extremely active in the face. So we used Facebook groups as sort of like the forums for the like class discussion. I was extremely active in there and um by March of 2014 um his right hand Lindsay Wallace approached me about a job as her personal assistant. And so that's how um I got involved in actually working on staff. I think by the next school year I was in like a director position because the school was so big. Um the type that type of work comes very natural to me. I mean to this day I make my living as an executive personal assistant. So it's extremely easy for me. Um anything logistical um administrative you name it. And so I was like in I was the school director I think of like year one. So like all incoming brand new students and that evolved over the years and um up until the May of 2017 when I got was put in place as the COO of Welton Academy. And the reason I got into that role is that Lindsay had to leave because of extreme health issues. Um, so her role had to be replaced and that's where everything started to change. So yeah, it was in that May that I was given this new position. Um, which I have to say I was extremely excited about. It felt like a humongous honor to me. Um, at that stage of my life, I was Jonathan's biggest fan and I used to tell him like, "We're going to work together till we're old." And I thought that's what I was doing with the rest of my life. And so this was very important to me. And it was really fascinating. So I'll say like yes, we were aware of the past. None of that was an issue to us. Nothing was an issue. We were steady moving forward. We were a freight train going 100 miles an hour. I don't think a large a bigger advocate existed next to me.

Within 3 days of me taking on this role, I had this dream that rattled me to my core. And in [clears throat] this dream, Jonathan and I um were at a conference together, which was something that we did do in real life. I would travel with him at times. And we were leaving the conference room and walking down this hallway. And as we're going down the hallway, there's all these rooms on the side. And we pass them. We're passing these rooms. And we as we're going down the hallway, we look to the side. And in this one room, um, there's people in there filming a pornography film. And we were like, "What the heck is going on?" And so we just keep walking. We round the corner. And as we round the corner, Jonathan is like, "I'm going in there." And I was like, "John, don't do that. There's people in there. There's cameras. They're going to see you. Don't go in there. Don't go do that." But he didn't listen to me. And he went in and in the room, it was like a table in the middle and cameras all the way around. And there's a girl laying on her back. He goes right into the room and I follow him and he gets on top of this girl and starts having sex with her right there on this table in front of everyone in front of the cameras. And I'm standing so close to the table that I can like feel the table touching the side of my leg. And I realize he's whispering something to her as he's having sex with her in front of all of these cameras. And I lean down to listen and he's whispering her like god-given identity to her while he's having sex with her. And that's where the dream ends. And I had no idea what that dream meant at that time. It wasn't until a couple of years later that I really understood. But that shook me. And I woke up that day and I was like, is he having a real like I took I take dreams seriously. That's extremely bizarre for me. Um I thought it meant something, but I didn't know what. I was afraid to share it with him. I can tell you that. And I never did. And I didn't share it. I only shared it with two people until way later when the school closed and I started to share it more often. Um, but at the time, um, I just thought, is he having a relapse with the porn stuff? That's what I thought it was. I thought maybe something was going on with the pornography and it was just a warning that he has to deal with that issue again. Again, not not many alarm bells, just a concern. But because I had this new role, I was in charge of the staff in a different way than I had been previously. So, I need to be communicating with them all the time. And what began to unfold over that summer was two things. One, the staff started opening up to me in a way where they would say things like, "What do I do about the inappropriate text messages that Jonathan sends me and then tells me I should delete?" Or, "What do I do when he sends me like lots of kissy emojis?" What do I do when it makes me uncomfortable when he asks me to send him a selfie and I don't want to? And my mind is basically like I had no idea this was happening years. I had been with John. I'd been at the school working since 2014. I had no clue. And at that same time, he also started to like slowly test how perverted he could get in his language and jokes with me. Again, at that time, I think I've said before, some of that stuff just kind of rolled off my back. I was the type of girl that like hung out with all the dudes when I was young and a teenager and stuff. And there I have like a certain capacity for certain crude joking and language that I would attribute I would say I attribute to guys just being guys. Um, right or wrong, that's where my mindset was at the time. And so some it was very light. I know now he was really just trying to gauge. Um but that got deeper and so that was unfolding across the summer of 2017. Um by the end of the summer um he's pressing further with me and he and I have this conversation where we were talking about him he and Karen potentially um lending us a sum of money as a loan. And he was like I don't know. Let me talk to Karen. I'll come back to you. And I said okay sounds good. We talked literally I think it was the next day and um he was like, "Hey, we talked about it. We don't think it's a good idea." And I was like, "Yeah, actually after further consideration, I didn't like the idea in the first place." And he said, "Um besides, if a beautiful woman was going to pay me back for anything, I would prefer that she pay me black and back in [ __ ] rather than in cash." And that was like a moment for me when I realized his um capacity for perversion was way worse than I really understood. And I don't know why, but it has always stood out to me. He said he starts the whole thing off with besides. He's like besides if you were going to pay me back for anything, this is how I'd want it. And I don't know why that stands out to me, but there's just something where he was like really laying it down. Like if you ever owe me, this is how I want to be repaid. Like just so you know, this is really what I'm about. You know,

if you're really repentant at any level, you don't you don't joke. You don't you don't go near that subject.

You don't do that no matter what. But even if that were on any level acceptable speech for for someone who has struggled with that, you don't

say it. The uh the first thing that Eric Gregson confronts uh Jonathan Welton on is that they went to BJ's Pizza and he kept on joking, I love BJ's and this pizza.

Like this is an obsession. This is something he keeps bringing up. There was one time when he specifically asked me, "How much do you like doing that? Do you like doing that to your husband? How often do you?" And I was just like, "I'm not answering this. This is so disgusting." Um, he was very blatant about it. And he got, and I'm not the only one. I mean, he asked that of everybody. If he got if he felt like he had the room, he would find out. He would ask a woman how much she enjoys that. And he would joke about it all the time. There was so many memes. It's like you lost track of how many memes he would send about that topic. It was his obsession. So after that encounter happens, I say to him, "Hey, like you can't be talking like this. Imagine if I This was all via text." I said, "Imagine I took a screenshot of this and posted it on the Facebook forum and all of your students could see." And he just laughed and said, "I'd get away with it. I don't think anybody would believe it was real." And that's um just a testament to how flippant he had gotten, how brave and bold and caress that he really had become at this stage of the game. Um, again, I didn't understand at the time that that's what it equaled fully. I was definitely disturbed that he didn't seem to have a care in the world. Um, but I know now that it was just like the escalation of, you know, what would cause things to explode. So, um, yeah, that's maybe Septemberish of 2017. Um, I'm very uncomfortable at this stage with him, with the things that I know about the other girls. And I'm still in this phase of, mind you, postdream. So, I'm I'm in my dream job, my dream role, the spot I believe I'm going to serve for the rest of my life, and I'm immediately confronted what I'll now say God gave me this dream to just be like, "Hey, there's stuff going on here, [laughter] you know, and huh, bummer. What is that going to do?" Um, the girls are sharing all this information. He's pressing more with me. I'm trying to figure out how do I handle this. This is not anything I've ever been through before. And there's really nobody in charge beyond Jonathan. And I knew him well enough to know that you can't confront him because if you do, he'll deflect and probably cry. [laughter] Um, he has an onoff switch for the tears. So, I knew that I had to treat it with care. it. I was very I felt very serious about it especially for the other women you name it. So I'm moving slowly on my side then. So that's about September October we are in um up in Rochester for the 2017 annual summit. Um we through that weekend a couple of different things happened that really pushed me over the edge. The main one being one evening after one of the meetings, we were all back at his house like we often did. And here's one of the most bizarre things about all the stuff that adds to the confusion is that Karen was around so much of the time. So he's he jokesly in front of her to us. He touches inappropriately around her. Um and so you go, "Is this wrong? She's right here. She's not saying anything. Does she care? Is this abnormal? Is it me?" The confusion is like endless. And so again, I he didn't do that with me too much up until this point. And so we're hanging out and we're sitting on the couch and she's right there and he reaches like with her on one arm. He reaches around and um puts his arm behind me and starts like rubbing me on the back of my neck. And I froze because I all I could think about was how the heck does he do this and Karen's right there? There's no way she's not furious. And and

except that that's part of the groom. He

it's part of it's part of and he realized later that she in my personal opinion was totally groomed to believe all of that that was completely normal. He needed it etc. I had no idea at the time that like she wasn't a viable gauge. [laughter] And so anyway, you become afraid because it's like I'm of I'm of like sound mind, I believe. And so of course you're thinking of the wife that's right there. Um but you freeze. It's like a body response. You can't hardly help. And um I eventually pull myself up up off of the couch. And I believe that I left the building. I left the house and I went home and I called Lindsay Wallace right away and I basically was like, "I have a bunch of stuff I have to tell you. I need you to give me perspective because Lindsay had been Jonathan's right hand for years and years and years and years." And I was now in her role. I take over her role. I'm immediately introduced to all this sexual activity behind the scenes. And so I call her and mind you, she and I were very close friends. And I and she had never said a word to me all for years. And I was like, I have all of the stuff I need you to tell me, was this happening when you were here? And that opens up the can of worms where she basically says, "Yes, and it was happening to her and to the other girls." So I call Lindsay and I'm just like, "What's going on?" And she basically spends the next, you know, half hour to an hour just downloading to me everything that had actually happened with her that I never knew about and she never told me in all those years. which again, if you know her, if you've ever met her, you would be absolutely shocked. I was shocked. And um and so that preceded to me going, we have to do something about this for sure. I knew definitively at this point. So over the next couple of weeks, I try to gather people together that I felt like understood and could hear it enough that they would join in me having conversation with John, which I can say at the time I because of the way he taught us about his story, I really thought it was just connected to like he had relapsed into a pornography issue. That's what I thought it was connected to. And so, um, myself and Lindsay and, uh, if I remember correctly, three other people, it was two other staff members. And one of the men on Jonathan, he had this apostolic board. It was like the main leaders who were teaching all of the apostolic tracks in the school. And one of the guys um, agreed to be on this meeting with us. It was kind of like the highest level of authority we felt like could maybe bring a little bit of weight to the conversation with John. I knew that as his employees, let's say we're talking to our boss, there's only so much we're going to be able to do. So we'd have this conver we we arrange this Zoom meeting. We completely confront him and all of these things we see, even the one one of the staff members was the male, the one who eventually gets fired. and he was like, "Jonathan, I've been trying to confront you for years about your inappropriate hugging with women on the road." Because he would travel with him at times as well. He was the videographer. So, all of the filming that took place for the classes for the school were filmed by this guy. So, he was in a lot of locations with Jonathan and would see John and and he had apparently confronted Jonathan on it numerous occasions, which we came to find out as a slowly enrolled that a lot of men had done so through the years. So, um, we have that conversation. Jonathan cries and cries. He's trying to clean up his mess, so to speak, for like weeks. Lots of follow-up conversations. I'm doing he he goes to a Tony Robbins event. He at the event, he supposedly confronts his like inner self, goes through all of this transformative work, and he comes home and declares, "I'm changed. I'm 100% different." And he also becomes completely obsessed with Tony Robbins at this time. I could tell.

Do you have a question?

Yeah. So, so just just so we're tracking the amount of magic here as we have so far, we've got um Eyes of Honor.

Yeah.

And and now I've gone from a Saul to Paul transformation. And I don't even think about women in that way anymore.

Yes.

And then it's like oops, I still do. Wow. Tony Robbins totally has changed my life. So now we're at two magic cures, but there's a few more that's to come. I think [laughter] uh later right

yeah so he goes through the Tony Tony Robbins event he becomes an absolute guru what we realize what we don't understand is happening now he becomes a guru of Tony Rob he becomes a guru of the guru uh no shade to Tony Robbins um which is kind of funny so Jonathan what we realized was happening over time is that he was constantly assessing everybody around him whether it be through questioning do or creating questionnaires and giving them to you. He would spread them across his staff or some of his private special groups and um certain students that maybe he was interested in or whatever the case was. There was that or you were taking the MyersBriggs test or you were taking this test or that test. He was constantly gathering information and we slowly realized over time it was so that he could manipulate us. And [laughter] so the more he could understand and because he does he's got this brilliance where he really can understand like the minute like minutia you could say about a person and sort of what makes them tick and how you can get up underneath of their skin and the way that they think and he was so good at that. And anyway Tony Robbins he goes to an event and he comes home I wouldn't have been able to say this then I could say it with hindsight. He comes home knowing I have found my next best tool to do what I want to do and to uh further my cause. And he starts implementing Tony Robbins stuff in staff meetings, in policies, in you name it. Everything becomes about Tony Robbins. He starts paying for staff to go to his events. Oh my gosh, it just goes on and on. He's transformed. And so all the while, mind you, I'm still the COO, but I'm letting Jonathan know, I believe in you and I want to believe in you and I want you to be better because I care about this school deeply and I want the school to continue and I want this cause to continue. So I was on the good side of Jonathan and anything that he told me he had changed, I believed. And anything that he was like repentant of I accepted. Um he asked me to forgive him a few times. I always did. I mean you there's emails that span time um you know through these like ending years of the school where he wrote me and said will you please forgive me? And I absolutely did. And I was an absolute advocate for him as a person in this school. But at the same time I'm still noticing red flags. Um, one of them being that amongst all of this, he decides we're going to fire the only male staff we have on on board. And not only that, I'm going to do it. So, he preps me and gives me a script of exactly how I need to fire this guy. Although, one thing that is interesting is that Jonathan never fired anybody. Everything was always a transition. So, we were going to transition him out. and he laid out this like elaborate spreadsheet as to why it made sense to do this. [laughter] And if you disagreed, then you just didn't get things. I called him and uh I basically said, "Look, I don't actually understand, off the record, I don't actually understand why I'm doing this, but I have to do it and please forgive me." And I fired him.

And anyway, [laughter] it was a really awful moment. So, I did that. We move on.

Um, and what I can say is that from there through spring, so we're moving into early 2018. One of the things that he promised, Jonathan promised us when we had that confrontational meeting in October, uh, late October of 2017 was that you need to tell Karen that this is going on. You need to tell her that you are communicating with all the women on staff like this. She's your wife. She has to know. And we also want you to express all of this to the rest of your um apostolic board and he said absolutely. So he assures us he's going to do this.

Well, over the next few months I asked him a few times like hey have you told Garen yet? Hey have you talked to all the guys yet? And the answer would either be no or some like I'm waiting for the right time or whatever. There was always an excuse. Again, I take his word, but it's also like a red flag. And I just I'm understanding the lack of clarity that is beginning to happen and unroll here. No more stories of abuse is what I call it continued to come forward to me at that time.

Um, he, I, I would make up because this is what he always does is he is extraordinarily talented in compartmentalizing people and then teaching you how who to talk to and not talk to. So they were not expressing that stuff to me so much. Plus, I think he also knew that he needed to be extremely careful. So I'm not sure he was u really crossing the line with that as much as he had been.

However, spring of 2018, u my family and I were on a vacation or on a trip to we were in Southern California. Eric Gregson's church was there. We visited his church on a Sunday. Um, I, of course, know him quite well. So, we hang out um after service is over. We're chit-chatting, catching up, and I basically posed the question um something to the tune of like, are you privy to everything going on with Jonathan? Has he like, has he told you guys? Do you, how do you feel about it, etc. Something in that vein? And he more or less looked at me like, what in the world are you even talking about? And I feel like the blood rushed out of my body because I realize now we're in March. It was March. Um, and we had talked in October and he had not told the men. None of them. And I also go, I told him, I said, "I bet you he hasn't told Karen either." [music]

Now, you're about to hear from Eric Gregson, who is one of the teachers at Welton Academy and was instrumental in confronting him.

I uh, I pastored a small church for about 15 years. Um, and uh, in that time of pastoring um, I got connected to a mutual network uh that John and I were both a part of and um, he'd seen me teach at a conference. I was familiar with his school that he had, he had recently started called the Welton Academy. There seemed to be a little bit of synergy between him and I. We, we both were students of the Bible and were fans of the Bible and teaching the Bible. And so um, eventually he asked me to come on and teach at the school. I became a uh, a third-year teacher. So I, I would teach students who had gone through two years of the school and they were starting a third year. And so um, I primarily taught a course on um, how to study and teach the Bible.

One of the things that I experienced about John, he, he used a, he used a lot of inappropriate humor uh behind the scenes primarily with his female staff. And so one of the, one of the first times I went to dinner with um, him and um, some female staff members, he started making some inappropriate jokes. We'd gone to the uh, the restaurant BJ's Pizza. And so um, he kept making this joke over and over while we're there between him and one of the female staff that he said, "I love BJ's and this pizza." And he, he just kept using that um, over and over. And so it was something I actually addressed with him because I, I thought it was highly inappropriate. Um, you know, someone who pastored a church and um, I had women who worked alongside of me. Uh, that was just something that I would personally never do. Um, that seemed very out of line for me. And so it was something I addressed with him and, and we had a long conversation and he basically assured me that it was just a joke and that him and his wife joked this way also with the female staff and that um, the way he would put it is, see, he was so entrenched in the depths and ugliness of ministry that sometimes you make crash jokes cuz it just helps to relieve the pressure. I let that go and I didn't personally hear them hear him make those type of jokes in front of me um, really ever again. But that was, that was one of the first incidences I had with him.

Within probably about 6 months to a year, there was something else that had come to my attention that I addressed with him, which is we were, we were speaking at a conference together and the conference was basically over. We were sitting in the green room and I saw him um, he sat down next to one of the female staff members and the way he was touching her and holding her hand um, I thought was highly, highly inappropriate. Um, so inappropriate that um, I actually called him the next day and confronted him on it because I, I just thought it was, it was very out of line.

And it was in this conversation that Jonathan um, how would I say it, started, I, I, I thought was like his first manipulation tactic in which he um, I, I experienced him him using uh, the Bible, using theology to, I, I would say, groom me as a character witness. And so um, you know, so I, I called him, I confronted him on this on him touching this woman and holding her hand and he starts sharing with me um, about an incident that had happened um, years ago when he was at Randy Clark's ministry uh, which if, if you've seen any of the stuff that's come out about John, this is something that's gets referenced but also he wrote a book about it called Eyes of Honor and so um, for anyone who was a part of the school, especially the first, I think it was the first two years, Eyes of Honor was required reading. And so I was familiar with the book. Um, and so basically long story short is he shares with me um, that he had previously had an affair and that he'd gone through such a restoration process that his heart was so turned towards women that he could not help but see all women apart from his wife as either, you know, spiritual mothers if they were older, but but primarily the women at the school were um, all like spiritual daughters to him. They were all spiritual daughters. And so he was talking to me about how we need to understand affection in the kingdom of heaven. And we need to understand affection in the new covenant. And that this is something that him and his wife are fully on board with. And she's on board with him showing affection to his spiritual daughters. And, and so, you know, again, for me, that did, that didn't sit well with me. That, that wasn't something that I was personally comfortable with. He didn't see it as wrong because for him it was just affection. Affection between him and a daughter and basically I wouldn't understand because I don't have spiritual daughters and I didn't go through the process that he went through that was so eye-opening that he could not help but see all women with this deep level of honor and respect.

One of the things he really touts is that he supports women in ministry. He says he's such an advocate for women in ministry. So he was, he was wrapping this up in that concept that he's just, he's actually such a champion for women that it's okay that he shows them affection, you know, or the fact that he shows them affection is just a sign that he's such a champion of women. And one of the things that we had heard is that when John was a global awakening, he had started to position himself as a, his spiritual father, kind of mentoring women and primarily going after women to establish himself as a spiritual father. And according to testimonies we've heard, it's he was using the same grooming tactic of of pressing on their boundaries and so asking them to do things like sit on his lap because you um, need to understand uh, intimacy, you need to understand what it is to be loved.

There was actually one other incident. Um, we were talking about personality types at one point. Um, our, when I pastored the church at one time, we had everyone do person, you know, like the personality quizzes. We were trying to figure out how to connect with each other better and understand each other. And one of the things that was interesting to us is, uh, is I found out every single one of my leaders, male or female, um, had had a common uh, strength in their life. You know, I think in the, in the Strengthfinders book, they call it belief or something. And I remember talking to John Welton about this and he told me at the time, you know, so I was like, "Yeah, it's so fascinating. Despite all our differences, we all have belief." Like, isn't that interesting? And, and, and John told me at the time that um, he had also been studying personality types and that he would not hire someone if they knew they had that strength. And I, I was curious like, why, why wouldn't you hire someone if they had that strength? And he said, "I, anyone he hires, he wants them to do what he says without question, without questioning him." So, he's, he's looking for specific personality types that will not question what he says.

And so, by the time we get to March of um, I believe it's March of 2018, yeah, um, one of the staff members comes to me. She asked me if John had shared with us another issue that had come up. She let me know that for months and months um, a few of the female staff and um, and I believe one of the male teachers had been confronting John because John had shared with one of the female staff members. Um, he, he, uh, she had, long story short, she had, uh, she had um, asked him for an advance or a loan on on one of her pay subs or something and, and he said he, he wasn't sure if he could do it because he wouldn't want her to pay him back in cash. He would want her to pay him back in [ __ ]. And um, yep, highly, highly inappropriate. And so she had brought it to him. She had brought it to another uh, female staff member, brought it to one of the um, other teachers, one of the male teachers, and they had been confronting John on this for quite a while. And one of the things that he told her is that he was going to tell the rest of the five-fold council. And so, if you can imagine, this conversation happens between her, cuz she's finding out there's some issues. She has her own issues, but she's being told that Jonathan is informing us that he had made this uh, very inappropriate uh, response to her request to her, which we found out, no, he, he never said that to us ever.

So, this for me personally is extremely alarming and, and eye-opening. Being a parent myself um, there are things I would never say to my children. You know, I um, I would never touch my children inappropriately. I would never make sexual gestures to my children. And John was such an advocate for quote unquote women in ministry, but how he saw them as daughters. I mean, he would stand up in front of us and cry, you know, and weep in these heavy tears on how passionate he is about his spiritual daughters coming into their calling and it was so significant to them. And yet there's this pattern happening underneath all of it, which is these, these sexual advances. Um, and then knowing that that was, that was something that had happened in the past.

So I began calling um, some of the other female staff members and, and asking if they had experienced anything similar and the ones who would talk to me start sharing stories and I found out that um, his, this type of behavior isn't just with this one staff member, it's happening with a lot of them. And so I confront John. Um, this is, this is sometime during like March 2018. I tell him he needs to tell his wife about what's going on. Um, you know, he apologizes to me. He said he's repentant. Um, he said he's going to talk with his wife about it. He felt very sorrowful in our conversation. So that was good to hear. And so I let it go and I told him I'd love to for him to follow up with me and, and let me know how it goes after he speaks with his wife. You know, at the time I thought I was just dealing with um, a leader that was struggling with something and I was hoping that we could get it resolved and he can get it resolved with his wife. And so, so I let it go for a couple months. Um, he had been, he was traveling at the time. He was out of the country doing different things and so it was, it was hard to get a hold of him. But um, after a couple months, him and I, him and I followed up and um, I asked him if he'd um, spoken with his wife and shared with her what had been going on. He assured me that he did. And so um, I asked him if he'd tell me what his wife's response was. And when I asked him that question, it was like a deer in the headlights. It was very much a, um, yeah, uh, she was upset. And I sat there for a moment. I was like, "Well, yeah, of course she's upset, but like, what did she say?" Oh, she was, uh, yeah, she was upset. And as he's rambling for a moment, it just hit me. It's like, "You didn't tell your wife, did you?" And, uh, and so I, I confronted him and I said, "You didn't tell your wife, did you?" Like, she said specific things if you would have told her. You did not tell your wife. And after arguing for a little bit, it, it came out that he didn't tell his wife. Um, but in this confrontation with me was also this other eye-opening moment where this was a, John had threatened me um, in the call. You know, he accused me of being a, you know, I'll just say the word and obviously you can bleep it out in the interview, but he called me an [ __ ]. Told me he was going to fire me from the school. Told me he was going to tell everybody that I'm such an [ __ ]. And, uh, you know, so it, it went from this repentant John to as I confront him on the fact that he hasn't told his wife, he immediately turns on me, threatens me that he's going to fire me, threaten me, threatens me that he's going to smear my name to everyone.

But I was really heated. So I just said, "Go ahead, man, cuz I'm going to tell everyone what you've been doing." Um, I said, "When we hang up the, when we hang up the phone, I'm going to call your wife." And he immediately snapped, goes from um, you know, this angry threatening guy to he just starts crying. "I'm so sorry. I'm so broken. Please forgive me." But as human beings, we're wired for empathy, right? And so when we see someone cry, when we hear someone cry, that moves us and it should move us. At uh, at this point though, I had had this reoccurring experiences with John, not only watching him on stage, watching with other people and how he had respond to me that it, I started to, I started to get this idea that like, is this fake? Like, can you, can he just turn on tears? Which I, I'll jump ahead a little bit in the story, which we'll come around to later, is um, the, our interactions with John got so severe that as he began to get exposed, we actually had um, two uh, psychologists involved. One of them did a full panel on John. Like he did a full psycho, psychological evaluation and we found out not only does he have narcissistic personality disorder, um, he's also diagnosed as a sociopath. And um, the one person that did the um, did the full, like review on him said it's the worst case she's seen in her 30 years of practice. I'm con, I'm having this encounter with this guy who can just turn tears on and something feels off on him. Like, what, what feels off? And so to later learn, it's like, oh, he, he has antisocial personality disorder, he's a sociopath. You know, and if any, anyone can go on Google and read like, can sociopaths cry? Can they cry in command? Yeah, it's part of their tools. It's so, so I'm experiencing this now. Now things are hitting even more severe for me because not only does this guy, am I seeing this pattern of um, grooming and grooming towards sexual encounter and lying and manipulation, he'll also try and lie and manipulate me. And he, he's very good at it. He can just turn on the tears. He can turn on the sorry. He, he'll threaten me one moment and if I don't back down to his threats, he'll, he'll jump right into tears in the next. And so this, this puts me into fight mode. So I, I, I am seeing this pattern here. And not only has he not addressed it and not told his wife, it's, it's becoming really clear and obvious that he's doing whatever he can to minimize it and cover it. And um, so I start going to some of the other staff members. I start going, I start speaking with some of the women. I start collecting more stories. I start finding out how grievous um, his actions are, how far back his grooming goes. And then it's extensive. You know, he has, apart from the, the few male teachers, he has a primarily female staff and he has a whole cohort of women that he is um, moving towards what he like calls his apostolic track, you know. So he's, he's building this group of women that are are students and what he's calling spiritual daughters and he's spending a lot of time with them. Um, quite a few of them are foreign. He's bringing them into the states all the time. And so there's a lot of interactions with with these different groups of women that it's becoming extremely apparent, become extremely apparent to me that he's grooming them towards sexual encounter.

So I begin filling in staff members, collecting stories, and this creates some major pushback. And so this go, this goes on for months and months until eventually um, I resign from the school. Uh, Tommy Green, one of the other teachers, resigns from the school. Uh, staff members, you know, Renee, uh, one of the primary staff members and whistleblowers, um, resigns from uh, being on staff with him. And so this, you know, so in March is when I had this first conversation with um, with John. By the time we get to August, uh, August 2018, a handful of us has have resigned and Jonathan Welton sends a letter out um, to all of the staff saying that he's dissolving the five-fold council. And so now he's, he's starting to put his manipulative tactics in a, in a written letter, you know. So, so I've resigned, Tommy's resigned, and he's telling us that he's dissolved the board and, and also in his letter, he's um, he's calling for uh, a way of communication with him between his staff that as I read through the letter, I realized this guy's trying to cover all this stuff. He's, he's literally telling women that if they've had a poor experience that they cannot go and talk to anybody else. They have to go directly to him. And so, um, you know, being someone who's been a pastor and um, I had owned my own company for years, there's just something I understood about whistleblower laws. It's like, yeah, you can't do this. You're literally violating whistleblower laws. And so, I respond to his email um, informing all the staff that what he is asking you to do violates whistleblower laws. He, he cannot tell you um, that if you have had a problem or where you feel like there's a sexual advance or anything along those like, anything inappropriate that you have to go direct directly to him to talk about it. That's, that's highly inappropriate. It's illegal.

This is a pattern now. That's like the pattern is growing that he um, he is not repentant. He's telling some people that he's sorry. How would he say it? He was inappropriate in his affection. That's the way he put it. Um, he made some inappropriate jokes, but that was it. That's as far as it goes. But I'm watching him minimize and minimize and groom and um, and push people away.

>> In his uh, you know, I'll share this. This is his bio right now. He's describing um, part of what you are in the middle of sharing right now. He describes it this way. Uh, this is just evidence of the minimization. Uh, Jonathan has always been a figure who sparks contro, conversation and debate. Whether through his teachings on end times theology, his strong advocacy for women in ministry, or his unwavering political stance for a constitutional republic, he has brought a fresh and sometimes controversial heavento-earth perspective. However, his journey has not been without personal challenges. Jonathan walked a long road of repentance and rebuilding of trust after a very public moral failure. His chosen path.

Oh, hold on, >> bro. This is different. >> He's changed. >> He changed this. He just changed this. >> Yep. He just changed this. >> Yeah. Okay. Well, >> he, he perfect. He uh, before he called it missteps. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, he just changed this. It used to be um, in, in preparing for this interviewing the narrative. >> Yeah. Per personal uh, he says has he has faced public scrutiny over personal missteps. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Um, that's, that's what he had to say about about his actions. >> Yeah. And then he calls some of them exaggerated.

We're about to hear from an alleged victim of Jonathan Welton who is going to share part of her story. She's already shared a bit of this with the Royport, but not even half of her story is shared even in this video. Um, there's so much more than has been shared and there is a lot more about Welson's past that has been shared with us than we are even putting in this video. So, without further ado, here is Renee Lorraine reading this victim's testimony.

This uh, story is entitled From Spiritual Father to Abuser, my story with Jonathan Malton. If you are reading this, it is very likely that you already know me. In case you don't, I want to introduce myself. My name is and I'm going to tell you a true story that happened to me and the methods my abuser used to harass me, silence me, and blame his victims because sadly, I wasn't the only one. It's also necessary to clarify that this blog contains adult language and graphic information. Next, I'm going to relate some of the episodes that took place between my abuser and me throughout those four years, as well as episodes that occurred with his parents. The story begins with a hug that is too long and ends with premeditated sexual abuse.

At the end of 2014, I was a middle-class young Argentine woman who was taking her first steps in the faith. And this is when life crossed with my abuser, Jonathan Welton. Back when I was a young Christian who was eager to learn more about the supernatural. Jonathan's only book published in Spanish back then was School of the Prophets. In English, that's School of the Seers. [snorts] Came. It came to my hands and I read it in a few days. I immediately wanted to know more about the author and so I found a Facebook group dedicated to the book. There I found out that Jonathan had an online school, Welton Academy, and I quickly signed up as someone I didn't know offered to pay for my tuition for the school. I felt that the supernatural way I became a Welton Academy student was proof that God wanted me there. Therefore, one of the first things I did was start translating one of his books into Spanish just to be able to apply and teach the contents in the local church that I was a part of. Thus, from 2014 to 2017, my freelance work for Welton Academy began. I started translating books and blogs into Spanish and creating content for the academy social media in Spanish. In 2017, Jonathan included me on the official staff of Wilton Academy, my position being first year director.

In early 2015, I was part of Wilton Academy's first mission trip, and it was there that I finally met Jonathan Welton in person. The year is 2015, and I am in Mexico. This is my first time ever going on a mission trip. It's the first time I leave Argentina. The first time I've traveled by plane. It's the first time that I've been part of a ministry. I just met Jonathan Welton for the first time two hours ago. We are in the lobby of the hotel and heading to our rooms. I'm nervous. There's something about Jonathan that makes me feel uncomfortable, and I don't really know what it is. I attribute my feelings to my natural shyness and embarrassment and speaking broken English in a group of Americans for the first time in my whole life. I'm about to enter my room when Jonathan, a stranger to me until 2 hours ago, takes me by the elbows and says, "You don't have to be nervous. I already consider you my friend, and I want you to see me as a friend, too." I answer nervously that it's okay, that everything is fine, and that I'm just a little tired. Jonathan hugs me, and it is not a normal hug. This hug, and the ones that followed through my relationship with him, last several minutes and include stroking my back and inappropriate kisses on the cheeks. What the hell? I think when I realize this hug is too long. This doesn't feel right. This is wrong. He's a married man. I'm a single woman. And besides, I just met him. I think again. One of John, Jonathan's hands is now very slowly stroking my lower back. What the [ __ ] I just, I just want to disappear into that hotel corridor in which we are absolutely alone. At the same time, I think he's a man of God. He wouldn't hurt me. I'm a bad person for thinking bad of him. Something is wrong with me for thinking like that. Now Jonathan is holding my face with both hands and gazing into my eyes. I feel like he's about to kiss me and he does, only that he kisses both of my cheeks. I feel like running away. I don't understand what just happened. Finally, he lets me go and says, "I'm very affectionate. I hope it doesn't bother you, but I noticed you're very nervous and it has been proven that physical affection reduces stress and I thought it could help you feel better." I said it's all good and entered my room. I feel confused. I spent sever, several hours thinking there's something wrong with me. I think a man of God, married with daughters, has second intentions with me. I had read in his books that Jonathan believed that Christian leaders could be affectionate with hugs. But was this genuine affection? And if it was, why did it feel so bad? I didn't expect to get so emotional. Holy smokes. Shoo. [sighs] But was this genuine Christian affection? And if it was, why did it feel so bad? Was there something wrong for me for thinking badly of him? Also, he has said that he had hugged me for a long time to help me and his intentions were good, right? But even when my inner voice told me that something was off, or part of me was thinking, "You're overreacting. It's a hug." That long hug, which always included strokes on my lower back and kisses on both cheeks, became a ritual every night before entering my hotel room in Mexico and the hotels that followed in the following years.

I'm not a person that has a problem with physical affection at all. In fact, in Argentina and in all Latin America, I suppose we tend to be more physically affectionate than the Americans. But this type of hug and the feeling that I experienced right after was totally different. One morning when the missionary group was free, Jonath, Jonathan and I talked for a while. I shared with him some of the things, some of the things from my past and I also confessed that his hugs made me feel uncomfortable. He said that genuine affection, that is his hugs, made me feel uncomfortable because of the things that had happened to me in my youth. Basically, he told me that it was my problem and not his and that he could help me heal. I considered Jonathan, as some of you who are reading this still do, a man of God. He was a person who had written books and had a school. He was a world-renowned leader who was listening to me talk about my past. He was a husband and a father of a beautiful daughter. He was a man who had gained his popularity by being on Sid Roth's show, saying that he could see in the spirit, a skill that I now re, really doubt he ever had. While I was a young woman who had never been on a mission trip before or talked to someone who had written a book, so why would he lie to me? Why would he say something like that that could hurt me? I immediately assumed that I was the one who was wrong for thinking badly of him. From that day on, I ignored my inner voice when Jonathan's hugs felt uncomfortable. Later during that same trip, I witnessed Jonathan hugging other women on the mission team in the same way, affirming my misconception that Jonathan was expressing genuine affection and that I was the one misunderstanding him. That became his modus operandi. Jonathan pushed my limits and then turned it around and made it look like my problem. For example, if his hugs made me uncomfortable, I was traumatized by my past. If his obscene jokes bothered me, I was a religious person. If I didn't want to share something with him, then I wasn't being a good spiritual daughter. If I disagreed with him, I didn't understand him or his doctrine. All of his arguments to justify himself had a spiritual and intellectual tinge. Jonathan was very quick-minded to justify his actions and make them look like a problem of ignorance or spiritual nature. And if that was not enough, he would victimize himself and say that nobody understood him. Jonathan had created a culture of affection which he used to carry out his abuse in which if you were not affectionate like him or if you told them that you didn't like his affection, you were wrong. Thus, he started pushing more and more the limits of his victims.

It's May 2016 and we are now in Argentina. This time the missionary trip is in my country and along with Jonathan comes, comes a group of 14 missionaries. I am his interpreter and all of the churches he visits and for this reason we spend a lot of time together. One day at the end of a long teaching day, Jonathan and I get in the back of a car while we wait for the driver to take us back to the hotel. It is a cold and dark night. The car lights are off and the car is not yet running. The driver is taking too long to come. Jonathan rests his head on my shoulder and puts a hand on my right thigh. Where he rests his hand, he strokes my leg in a circle with a thumb. My heart starts to race in dread. I've already normalized the hugs, but what about this? I freeze. I do not know what to do. H Jonathan inhales and exhales deeply while making a sound of pleasure. His mouth is inches from mine. I'm afraid and I want to disappear. The avalanche of sensation that I have in this moment is something like this. He wants to kiss me. If he moves a few inches, he will totally kiss me. But no, he's a man of God. He's a family man. He loves me genuinely. He won't do anything to hurt me. I have a suspicious mind. This is something wrong with me. God, forgive me for thinking wrongly. God, I feel uncomfortable. Does he want to kiss me? Does he do this with the other women of his team? What should I do? I'm fully aware that if the driver arrives at this moment, he will think we are kissing or having some kind of intimacy. I feel dirty, impure, disgusted, sick in my stomach, and guilty. At the same time, I'm certain that if I show him the slightest interest or reciprocity, he will kiss me. He's just waiting for me to respond. Finally, Jonathan returns to his seat and I move even more against the window on my side. The driver finally arrives and he and Jonathan strike up a conversation. I feel like throwing up. When I entered my apartment, I cried. On one hand, I was repulsed at the idea of having experienced a situation of intimacy with someone who did not appeal to me and furthermore who was married and a leader whom I admired. He was giving me the privilege, that's what I believed at the time, of being his interpreter. On the other hand, I feel guilty for not having done anything to get him off of my body and for having allowed him to do something with me that I would not have allowed with anyone else. Sitting in my apartment crying, I thought it would not have cost me anything at all to push him off of my body because what he did made me feel gross. But it wasn't just anyone. It was Jonathan Welton, whom I considered my spiritual father. And at the same time, I knew I couldn't tell anyone else because they wouldn't understand. Because even when I felt that what had happened was wrong, I did not want it to happen again. I still had the urgent and sick need to take care of Jonathan and protect his reputation. Even though it was me who he was harassing, I felt extremely confused.

With me, Jonathan used phrases like, "Only you can understand me. With you, I can truly be me." He shared with me his marriage problems. He even made sarcastic comments about his wife at times. I was a pastor at a small local church at the time and he used that to his advantage by saying things like, "I know you can really understand me because you're in the ministry and we have the same personality. My wife doesn't understand me like you do." So he created in me a need to protect him from other people who didn't understand him despite the abuse.

Sometime between 2017 and 2018, Jonathan began to develop a new level of control over his victims and started to cons, call himself a spiritual father over various people. Of course, I was included. The peculiarity of this group of spiritual children was that it was only made up of women, all of them beautiful and a large percentage single. For that, I think he only claimed to be the spiritual father of mine and another girl from Europe. But now he was enlarging his list. The same happened with the staff at Welton Academy Workers. Except for only one male who over time Jonathan ended up firing, the rest of the approximately eight members of staff were all young and attractive women. The excuse Jonathan gave to justify the absence of males was that God had recalled him to restore a place of authority to women. This place of spiritual father gave him the right to justify himself when he was too affectionate with his hugs and caresses. He said, for example, that parents are affectionate with their daughters and that his true love of a healthy father would help me heal the lack of affection for my earthly father. And I believed him. But believing him didn't mean his advances stopped bothering me. I hated it. But I thought I was the problem for thinking like that. And if I confronted him, Jonathan justified himself by saying that he was like my father and that he had no bad intentions, that everything he did was for my good. Also, every time I did not want to tell him about my past, especially anything related to sex, he would say that I was not being a good daughter. I must clarify that all of his daughters had to answer questionnaires from time to time where he would ask us what we expected from a spiritual father along with other personal information. I believed at the time that he was taking care of us, but today I understand that he was studying us. In addition to using some personality test indicators like MyersBriggs, he asked us questions about our past. He did all of this for him to become exactly what each of us needed and to have more information to hold on to and to control ourselves more and more.

Reading these stories, you might come to think that Jonathan was a 24/7 pervert, but he was not. If he managed to gain access and trust from so many people and fool them, it was because it was slow, deliberate work. He studied the victims and trapped them by becoming whatever he, whatever they needed. He did so by knowing their personality through MyersBriggs or by knowing their past. Most of the time he was a normal leader. But then to test if someone had the potential to be his victim, he would start by taking seemingly normal and spiritual conversations to a wicked side. But he did it in a very subtle way. If the woman he was studying reacted, he discarded her, sometimes by completely ghosting her. But if she didn't say anything, he went on with his slow, deliberate work of driving conversations deeper and deeper into perversion. If Jonathan went overboard and someone confronted him about it, he had four alternatives. First, he would turn around the situation and make it look like you had a problem and not him. Second, he would spiritualize the situation. Third, if none of that worked, he would victimize himself. Fourth, the final solution of firing or disowning a person who confronted him. In the third case where Jonathan would victimize himself, he would make himself seem very sincerely hurt. He would cry and say deep words and always end up convincing me that I was the one who could only understand him. In this way, he sought to soften me up so that I would not reject him. The type of people who are diagnosed narcissists as Jonathan is usually copy, copy and mimic true repentance when confronted. They also cry and pull your empathy when they want to manipulate you. In Jonathan's case, he often dismissed people by completely ghosting them, who did not buy his sorry character when confronting him about his actions, although he clearly did so under another excuse.

It was sometime after I recognized him as my spiritual father that Jonathan felt more entitled to control more parts of my life. He asked me quite personal and private questions. If the answer was superficial, he said he wanted more details. He justified himself by saying that everything was for my good. Jonathan checked my social media and controlled everything I shared from the photos I uploaded to whom the likes I received were from. Once he pointed out the fact that I did not upload photos of myself to social media. He was right. I didn't do it very often. He asked if I was nervous about being complimented on my physical appearance and I said yes. Without knowing it, I gave him the information he needed. He told me that he had a task for me. I had to take a selfie every day for 21 days and send it to him. Thus, he was going to tell me something nice about my appearance, but without double intentions like other men would, he said. And in that way, he was going to be able to break the shame I felt when someone flattered me. Embarrassed, I accepted. The first comments I received from him were the type of, "You are beautiful," or, "You look good," which bothered me, but didn't seem out of place either. Later, he started adding requests to the selfies I sent him. I had to put on a top that showed more skin. I had to show my clavicles more. He was particularly obsessed with that. I had to put on more makeup. I had to emulate a sexy pose of a model that he sent me in a, in a photo. And the list went on. "You look so [ __ ] sexy," he told me when I sent him a photo wearing an offthe-shoulder shirt. "I like when you're sexy," he added. I only responded with a haha because I felt uncomfortable confronting him. I went to clarify that my photos were normal selfies. I never sent him a nude or anything like that. Again, the avalanche of the avalanche of thoughts and sensations. He's my spiritual father. He loves me. He has no double intentions with me. If someone else told me what he just told me, what would I do? I would say something. I'm sure. But he's not just anyone. He's Jonathan. He doesn't have bad intentions, does he? But what if he has bad intentions and ask, and asks me for selfies to use for his benefit? What if he's touching himself with my photos? Just thinking that Jonathan was jerking off to my photos made my stomach sick. My inner voice was telling me that something was off. But who was I going to tell? I believe that no one would understand me, that they were going to blame me. And I also felt the need to defend Jonathan, as stupid as it sounds. That day, I didn't reply to any more messages, and I went to sleep with a knot in my stomach. I hate this part of the story. Okay. [snorts]

After finishing the 21 days of challenge of selfies posed by Jonathan, I posted a selfie on my Instagram account that I did not send him first. Jonathan was offended and from then on he was always offended if I uploaded a photo to my social media and did not send it to him privately before uploading it. He also used to take screenshots of my Instagram stories which are automatically deleted after 24 hours. And he would tell me things like, "I'm going to save this photo for myself."

Once the challenge of 21, 21 days of selfies was was finished, he convinced me that now my self-esteem was healthier and that I should make a live video in the spiritual daughters Facebook group. Although today I have improved a lot, my spoken English is not perfect and if I am nervous, my accent is stronger and so not everything I say is understood. I think Jonathan knew that because before going live, he told me, "I want you to tell them what the challenge was about and how your self-esteem is better now." So, in that video, I expressed myself as best as I could, and I repeated what he told me to say. I now understand that he was using me to get the other women in the group to do the selfie challenge with him as well.

In late 2017, I'm in Washington, DC. Jonathan invited me to be a part of a prophetic group at the massive event where thousands of people prayed for the United States in indoor tents representing each state. At night, he invited me to his hotel room to see a movie. I don't see anything strange about the invitation. When we were in Mexico and Buenos Aires, he invited me and other members of the group to watch movies in his room. I also know that when he traveled with other people on missionary trips, he usually invited them to his room. And sometimes, and that other, and sometimes he and that other person were alone. He always left the door open. I want to say no because I had a long flight and I'm tired, but I feel an obligation to say yes. The movie starts. Fortunately, he doesn't quite turn off the lights and leaves a bedside lamp on. He sits on a smaller sofa and I'm on a larger one. After a few minutes, he changes place and sits next to me. My heart races because I already know what's next and I'm scared. He puts an arm around the back of my neck and tells me to lay my head on his chest. I feel like disappearing. I tell him that I'm fine the way that I am. So, for a few minutes, so for a few minutes, he stops insisting. I'm petrified. And again,

The avalanche of sensation hits me. Now, from a distance, I see that sometimes me refusing to do things that he asked created a challenge for him rather than a deterrent. Almost like me refusing him made him even more interested.

Sometimes I would confront him about what he was doing, but he would turn it around and he would end up ministering to me. The confusing tactics were endless. A few minutes passed and I'm petrified. He still has one arm around my neck and with the other he takes my leg and pulls it up against him, telling me to turn on my side. I should have known he wasn't going to stop. I ended up with my head semi-resting on his chest. A part of my shirt uncovers one of my shoulders and he caresses me and says, "M, your skin is so soft."

I feel sick to my stomach. And there's an inner voice that tells me to run, but that voice is silenced by the other voices that tell me, "He's your spiritual father. He will not harm you. He is a man of God. He has no double intentions. There is something wrong with you." I'm petrified. It disgusts me to think that he is aroused at this very moment. But I am fully aware that it is a possibility. I feel nauseous. At the same time, I feel guilty for thinking about thinking that way about him. What would his wife think if she sees us right now? I think and I add, what would the people of your congregation think if they see their pastor in such a situation? My stomach is upset. I feel sick.

The movie ends and I immediately get up from my place. I must get out of here. Jonathan says goodbye to me with one of his typical hugs. I go in my room and cry silently, trying not to wake up the other girl that's been invited by Jonathan to the event. I feel guilty, disgusted, and dirty. I feel like a joke, double-sided, a hypocrite. But at the same time, Jonathan was constantly making it clear that this was genuine love, that it had no double intentions, that his display of affection was healthy, and that those who saw something bad were legalistic and religious, or worse, that I was a bad daughter for rejecting him. At the same time, I loved him, and I didn't want to hurt him. After all, he believed in me by letting me go to conferences with him and asking for me to represent him in Latin America. I believed him more than my own inner voice.

Because when your abuser is your spiritual father, it is not that you stop having that alarm that tells you that you're in danger, but you begin to doubt it. You doubt yourself, what you feel, and what you believe is true. Like I shared before, one of the things Jonathan began to tell me that he felt from God is that I had a calling to be an apostle. That year, he had been anointed as an apostle and he became obsessed with the subject. Welton Academy had been transformed into a school of ministry. There were five different tracks that you could take. People could choose according to their calling. Pastor, prophet, evangelist, teacher, and apostle. This last track was different from the others because it was dictated by Jonathan personally. The others were dictated by other people and could only be accessed by Jonathan, who he considered to have an apostolic calling, aka people he thought he could control 100%. As you can imagine, at this point in the story, only a selective group of women qualified. There was a total of four of us and every week we had a group call with Jonathan where he gave us homework and we talked about different topics. At the time Jonathan was very into Tony Robbins teachings and the tasks basically consisted of watching videos of him doing the exercises that Tony said in his teachings. Thus he started collecting information about our pasts, our limiting beliefs, our thoughts. He was studying us and we didn't realize it.

One of the themes that Jonathan put a lot of emphasis on with the teachings of the apostolic section was about feminine energy. Despite being one of the least masculine men I have ever met in my life, he puts himself as an example of masculine energy and taught us that on the contrary feminine energy was slow, soft and had to do with the here and now with enjoyment etc. which is true, but he used that concept for his own benefit since one of the car characteristics according to him of the feminine energy is that it's an energy of submission. Masculine women are tough. They live on the defensive. Feminine women are delicate and submissive. What he wanted with that was that we accept what he told us without questioning it. To be part of the apostolic track and to continue to belong to it, Jonathan had to know your past in detail. He was giving us a platform by being the first apostles at Welton Academy. But in return, we had to be 100% controlled by him. Thus, he managed to extract sensitive information from our past by each of the women who were part of the apostolic track. Each of us exposed our hearts by telling him our fears and showing him our most vulnerable side. We did this because we believed that we were in a safe place that our abuser would and that our abuser would make us apostles.

Now, every time I confronted him about something, Jonathan had the perfect excuse. So, you're operating from a masculine energy. And if that was not enough, he would tell me again that I had things from my past that I needed to sort out. Something that Jonathan also taught us was a concept by Tony Robbins, which consisted in saying that human beings have six basic needs: significance, certainty, variety, love, connection, growth, and contribution. Although the concept may be true, Jonathan used it to extract sensitive information from us, his victims. Thus, he told me after telling him things from my present and past, that my main needs were for certainty and meaning, and that this was going to bring me a lot of pain. To avoid the pain, I had to put love and connection first. One day, I told him I was thinking of going back to school. He told me if I was going to do the apostolic track, then I needed to be prepared to travel and that the studies were going to distract me from that. I told him that the university was partially remote and that I saw no impediment in doing both. That's when he got the chance to use his new weapon to manipulate me. He told me that I was putting certainty and meaning as my first basic needs again, and that's why I wanted to go back to college. Remember that having two needs in the first place are going to bring you a lot of pain. and I want you to be well. Then he prayed for me and I ended up deciding not to go back to school.

It's May 2018 and I'm in Peru with Jonathan. I am his translator for a conference. Every time we go to a country where he doesn't know the language, he asks me to be with him all of the time, as if he was afraid, even if other people spoke English. In addition to the two of us, a new member of the work team, although he was not part of staff, joined us: a boy who was filming for a series of video blogs. Jonathan and I arrived in Peru the day before this guy because his flight had been delayed, so he invited me to go to the movies. I'd never gone to the movies with him before, so I accepted his invitation. As soon as the lights went out, Jonathan sat closer to me, and after a few minutes passed, he grabbed my hand. I jumped, but as always, I did not know how to defend myself, so I froze. Inside, I was thinking, if someone saw us right now, they would think we are a couple. And I started thinking of his wife and daughters and how they would feel. I also started to think about what if people of the church where I pastor, what they would think if they saw me grabbing hands with a married man. I wanted the movie to end as soon as possible and for the lights to come on so Jonathan would let go of me. I was afraid. Finally, the movie ended and my abuser released me.

At the end of the conference in Lima, we go to Machu Picchu. On the train, on the way to the ruins, Jonathan insisted on me sitting next to him. Again, the same story. Again, the same discomfort. I will not describe my feelings once again because it would be redundant at this point of the story. The manipulation and power he had over me back then was much greater than at the beginning, even though my inner voice of alert never faded. On one of the routes, I sat in front of Jonathan instead of next to him. Next to him was the guy who was filming the video blogs. Jonathan texted me on my cell phone asking me to tell the guy to change places. Jonathan could have asked him, but the coward asked me to do it because other men intimidated him. And I did it. And I felt disgusted again, but at the same time, I didn't want to contradict him. I wanted him to like me, as sick as that sounds.

We spent the night in Machu Picchu Pueblo, a little town at the foot of the ruins. That night, the three of us decided to go out to a bar. I am a person who gets drunk with just one beer since I am not used to drinking. I had just one drink and already felt dizzy. Jonathan insisted that we keep drinking. "We are drunk in a place no one knows us," he said. However, I did not drink much more and that bothered him, which led to yet another talk about feminine energy. He started asking me questions about my past and kept drinking. When he saw that he was fulfilling his objective by guiding the conversation towards a sexual area, he asked the guy who was filming him to give us some time alone at the bar and the guy obeyed. It was already late, like 1 or 2 in the morning. And there, Jonathan began to shoot a series of questions about my sexual past and the things I had done in sexual matters before meeting the Lord. All in order to help me heal because once I healed those areas, I was going to be able to connect with my feminine energy. He said it was all very subtle. It wasn't like he was suddenly giving me a police interrogation. On the contrary, he asked the questions, quoted verses and advice from Tony Robbins, recounted some things from his past and what he felt from God and so on. He made his wickedness look like he had real interest in helping me. Some of the things he asked me, I answered, and others I did not because it seemed too much to me. "I want to know more about [ __ ]," he told me in a joking way to close that conversation. I laughed at my nerves when I heard my spiritual father refer to my past as [ __ ]. I was disgusted and besides my nervous laugh, I couldn't tell him anything. What I did not know was that he would take that as a personal challenge to decipher my past in that matter. And he would not stop until he achieved his goal.

If I can interject something here, one of the things that we did know about her is that, um, you know, coming from a third world country, some of the women have options available to them for survival that are different than here in the United States. And we do know that she had what people would call sex tapes in her past from before she met the Lord. And that was something that we knew and understood of her and we all had grace for. But we didn't know much about them. And why would we care? We never asked any questions. So, what we know is that here in May of 2018, Jonathan is aware that they exist, but he is getting to the point where he wants to know more. And we do know that he begins over the course of that summer pressing her to actually view them. Um, she doesn't put that here in all of this writing. Um, but she did confirm that that did happen. So, that's what's happening. So when she says, um, "What I did not know is that he would take it as a personal challenge to decipher my past and that he would not stop until he achieves his goal." What he began to do is just press more and more into her sexual her past sexuality and videos and things like that that he was hoping to view, which she never did divulge.

July 2018, the entire Welton Academy staff along with some of the students and Jonathan and his pregnant wife gathered in Chicago to participate in Unleash the Power Within, an event organized by Tony Robbins. What I didn't know is that Jonathan Welton was going to try to sexually abuse me on that trip. The lure was an offer that I couldn't refuse: tickets to a Taylor Swift concert. I'd been a fan of hers since I was a teenager and he knew it. He told me that after the conference in Chicago ended and the staff members went home, the three of us, Jonathan, the guy who filmed all the time for the video blogs, and me would drive to Cleveland, Ohio, where her show would take place. There we would spend the night in an Airbnb. The next day, we would go to the show, and the next morning, I would go back to Buenos Aires.

One of the things that I also must clarify is that the payment method Jonathan had used to pay me was cash since it was and still is very difficult to send money to Argentina from abroad due to the communist characteristics of my country. So since I used to travel to the United States twice a year, he used to pay me 6 months at a time. On that trip, he was supposed to pay me for the first 6 months of that year for the time I had already worked. I reminded him of that detail before the trip. Then the first day of the conference and then a third time as we drove to Ohio. He told me that he had everything under control. I didn't even have the money to take an Uber or buy a bottle of water. I'd come to Chicago without a single dollar. I remember two things while we were in Chicago. First, I saw him twice looking at my body. I discovered him looking at my breasts on one occasion. And on another, I saw him spying on my butt through a mirror. I'd never caught him looking at me in that way before, although it was very likely that he would have done so without me being aware of it. Second, I remember that he asked me a very weird question. I tried to spend more time with other staff members and not so much with him. He texted me before I went to sleep asking me if something was wrong with him or if I was angry with him because I wasn't paying attention to him. I thought that was ridiculous when his wife was there with us, too. I didn't even reply to his message.

On the way to Ohio, Jonathan drove, but he seemed nervous during the 5 to 6 hours of the trip. And to tell the truth, it was an uncomfortable road trip for everyone. We got to the Airbnb and we watched a bit of TV and quickly all of us went to our rooms because we were tired. Midnight, I got a message on my cell phone. It was Jonathan asking me if I was awake. I answered that I was, and he invited me to his room for a while. I assumed he wanted to talk. At some point in our relationship, Jonathan had taken me as his confessional. He used to tell me everything that was happening with him. Or so I thought. Now I know. He told me what he wanted me to know. He used to say with me that he could be himself without fear of being judged. Since I had seen him nervous on the trip to Ohio, I thought he was feeling bad about something that happened to him. Not in 10,000 years would it have occurred to me that minutes later Jonathan would try to sexually abuse me.

I entered his room in my pajamas. He was sitting in the upper right corner of the bed. It was a very small room and there were no other chairs. So, I sat on the bed too, but in the lower left corner diagonally to him. He left the door open as he always did. Then Jonathan confessed to me that the reason for his nervousness, a former staff member was accusing him of making inappropriate jokes. And now she's going to all of the churches and telling all of the pastors and leaders that I'm a perve. He started to cry. I believed him, not knowing that it was crocodile tears and that he was simply testing the waters. I knew it was very likely what that girl was saying was true, but seeing him so vulnerable, I felt the need to protect him. I mentioned to him that he would always be able to count on me and that I believed in him. We continued talking about the subject for 5 minutes when suddenly and without any preamble, he got up from the end of the bed where he was sitting. Went to the entrance of the door to the room. Then he closed it and locked it. I feared something very bad was going to happen. He went back to the corner of the bed where he was sitting. Only this time he lay down. It was all so fast. I didn't know what he was doing until he grabbed my right arm and pulled me onto the bed with him. I laid on my side and he laid next to me in the typical spooning position. He put his left arm under my left arm and grabbed me. With the other hand, he moved my hair out of the way and began to kiss my neck.

"What the [ __ ] is happening?" My mind is screaming at me. This was another level. I wanted to push him off and run, but the fear was so great I could not move or scream or do anything. I was totally terrified and paralyzed. I felt nauseous. The room around me was spinning. I wanted to run out of that room, out of that house. But Jonathan had not paid me. I was alone in Ohio in a house in the middle of nowhere in a town where I didn't know anyone without a dollar to my name. I have since come to believe that Jonathan didn't pay me on purpose as a means of controlling me further. I don't know how many minutes passed while Jonathan is pressing his body against mine, kissing my neck, and pulling me tight. To him, all entirely against my will, but he finally released me. I guess in his mind he must have thought that I was going to respond to his abuse and he thought we were going to have consensual sex. Instead, I was about to throw up. I guess he wanted to be sure that any act was consensual, which was the only reason he stopped.

As soon as he released me, I quickly sat up on the bed. "I'm tired and I'm going to sleep," I said in a small voice about to cry. He quickly got up to open the door, but before letting me go, he blocked my path and hugged me. I did not respond to his hug. My arms hung dead at my side. "You are my daughter and I love you as a father," he said, hugging me seconds after he abused me, kissed my forehead, and released me. "Many say that such a situation does not qualify as sexual abuse, but it left me traumatized."

I closed my door behind me and I started to cry. I've never felt so dirty, so guilty, so disgusted. I wanted to get out of there, but I didn't have any money. I bathed and showered twice because I felt unclean. I felt that something inside of me had been broken and I didn't really know what. I had a hard time falling asleep, so the next day I woke up late. I felt like my soul was raped. My body ached. I waited in my room until I heard that Jonathan had gone to his room before I felt safe to go down for breakfast. Minutes later, he sent me a message telling me that in an hour we would go out to eat with some friends that were students from Welton Academy and that we would go see Taylor Swift.

In the car, we almost didn't talk. I was distant and afraid. I wanted to go to my home. Even the idea of seeing Taylor Swift didn't cheer me up. That night, we were also supposed to stay in the same Airbnb. But Jonathan again started acting strange and told me the guy who accompanied us that he would pay us a hotel for the night and that he was just going to drive home that same night. Upon arrival, we said goodbye. There was no sign of paying me the money for the 6 months I had already worked. Since the next morning I would be traveling to Argentina and I wouldn't be seeing him for another 6 months, I asked him if he was going to pay me. He told me that he did not have the cash with him and that he was going to see how to send money to Argentina. I told him that that was very difficult, that it was preferable if he went to an ATM right then, but he refused. He didn't even give me cash to have on hand, not even $10. The hotel didn't have a shuttle, and I didn't have any money to get an Uber to the airport. Thus, I had to beg a girl in the hotel lobby if she would please pay for me to take an Uber. I think she agreed only because I started to cry at the idea of missing my flight and having to stay alone in a place where I didn't know anyone, without any money, and without a cell phone signal.

The next day, I arrived in Argentina and I had to pay rent, the bills for electricity, water, and gas. I didn't have a single penny. Consequently, I had to look for another job while I continued to work for free for Welton Academy. The one who said that he loved me as a father not only abused me but he nearly put me out on the street. I think that in Ohio Jonathan Welton had the money with him the whole time. But I think that he simply chose not to pay me as a punishment for not responding to his abuse and to manipulate me financially as well. In fact, looking back, I think I was never truly qualified for the position of director of the first year at Welton Academy. My English was not perfect and in that position, I had to interact all day with people who only spoke English. I believe Jonathan only put me in that position so he could control the one area of my life that he didn't control: my economy. That, and because I also fulfilled the fundamental requirement to be a part of the Welton Academy staff. Jonathan considered me physically attractive. He used to say, "I keep hiring the women of my dreams," referring to his staff. Of course, I can see this all clearly now for what it is. Back then, I believed that being a director was a promotion from God and that Jonathan had chosen me for my qualities and talents. Now he knew exactly when I was working, how many hours a day, and how much I earned and when I was paid.

As I mentioned, Jonathan did not pay me for the first half of that year. And in order to not end up living on the streets, I had to look for another job. However, when he found out that I now also worked elsewhere, Jonathan was offended. But of course, he did not say it straight forward. Once he told me that he wanted me to think, live, and breathe Welton Academy. Even so, it took him almost four months to send me the money, and he was only able to send less than half. "I can't send you the money because of your shitty communist country," he justified himself. I had already explained to him hundreds of times that it was almost impossible to send money here. Still, although he wasn't fulfilling his obligation to pay me, he was mad at me for working somewhere else besides his company.

July to August 2018. In the weeks after the abuse, I hardly spoke to Jonathan. I did not reply to his messages, or I did so with one-word answers. I felt like I had passed a limit that was already beyond a hug that was too long. Those were strange days to me. I lived in constant fear and I did not really know what I was afraid of. I could not connect with God. And yet, I had to continue pastoring my local church. I couldn't sleep well. And yet, I was asked about how the trip had gone. I always answered that it had gone very well because I still felt the need to defend Jonathan. I felt that no one was going to understand what happened. In fact, I didn't even understand it very well. I felt dirty, fake, guilty. I felt like I was carrying a 1,000lb stone on my back. I started having anxiety and panic attacks. But since I lived alone and was alone most of the day, I didn't tell anyone. And no one ever found out or suspected. I knew perfectly well that in order for no one to suspect, I had to act like I was happy, even if it was at least for a few hours that I saw people in the week. And it worked. On social media, I portrayed myself as very happy, but inside I was slowly dying.

After the abuse, I started working out in the gym for hours every day. Sometimes I would take two CrossFit classes in a row, exercising until it hurt, until I was out of breath, until I was exhausted physically and mentally, and the strange way I was punishing my body. Of course, I didn't understand it like that back then. I think there are some things that are more clearly seen from a distance. During those times, I also became obsessed with my diet because my body began to develop all kinds of allergies. There were foods that gave me endless stomach aches, migraines, cause vomiting, and other gastrointestinal issues. Everything that went into my stomach made me sick. I was pale, skinny, muscular. Everyone told me that I looked so pretty. Not one, not a single person could see behind the mask I was hiding my pain.

Jonathan kept trying to get my attention by texting me that he missed talking to me or sending me memes, all sexually related and the vast majority related to oral sex. He was obsessed with that topic. The only connection we had back then were video calls from the staff and the apostolic track. Other than that, I didn't feel in a position to interact with him. Now, I had good excuses to avoid it. If I wasn't working for Welton Academy, I was working at my new job. On one hand, my mind told me that I had to protect him, that no one else understood Jonathan, that although he had a strange way of showing affection, he loved me like a father. On the other hand, my mind kept telling me that Jonathan had hurt something very deep in me, and that I was in eminent danger. I couldn't stop torturing myself, thinking about what his wife and daughters would think if they saw us in that bed, and what my church would think about seeing their pastor in that situation. I knew that I hadn't done anything, but I hadn't been able to react either because my body froze and I felt anger and guilt for that. It was hard for me to identify the sexual abuse because part of me could not see Jonathan as a predator. Yet, it was what he had done. My mind was torn between denial and undeniable reality. Even when it all came to light, even months after Welton Academy closed, even until many months of talking therapy, I couldn't say sexual abuse to refer to what Jonathan had done to me by locking me in that room in Ohio. Jonathan screwed up my mind and judgment to such an extent that I had a hard time accepting the facts as they were, even when the victim was me.

Finally, one day, I confronted Jonathan about it. As I explained, I refused to talk to him outside of strictly necessary video calls. So, he used to ask me for selfies because he missed my face. One day, over a month after the abuse in Ohio, I texted him. "[Sighs and gasps] I don't know what the [ __ ] happened in Ohio, but I don't want it to happen again." He told me that he felt sorry, that he was under a lot of stress, and that when he felt like that, he did a lot of stupid things. He promised me it would never happen again. He told me that he loved me and that I was his daughter, that he only had good intentions for me. He told me that since he had followed Tony Robbins teachings, that he had changed and I believed him. It's funny how Tony Robbins saved him but not Jesus.

As I mentioned earlier, Jonathan wanted to know more about my past. And he called my old self [ __ ] or alpha [ __ ]. Since I started to stop answering messages when he asked me questions that were too out of place, he began to instead give a spiritual tinge to his interest in knowing more about my past. It was after a meeting of the apostolic track in which we were to talk about our past that Jonathan began with his not so new mission that I tell him everything I had ever done in sexual matters. Obviously, it was very subtle. He started by texting me telling me that he saw after what I had shared in the meeting that there were things from my past that had not been healed. He told me that in order to help me overcome the traumas that according to him, I needed to tell him what I had done. "You are single and I want to make sure that in your future marriage there's no trauma when you and your future husband go to bed," was one of the phrases he used. I told him that I was not going to tell him that part of me. He kept insisting for days using the following phrases: "Married men watch porn because their wives won't do certain things. Women watch Disney and get married expecting a prince charming. Men watch porn getting married expecting their wife to do what they see in XX movies. And in the end, they both end up dissatisfied. The biggest cause of divorce and adultery is sexual dissatisfaction. If your future husband traveled for work or ministry, would you send him videos or would you let him film you while you were having sex?"

Some things I answered, and others not. When I told him that it made me feel uncomfortable talking about such things with him, he told me that there was just a sign that I had not healed from my stuff in the past. "Remember, I'm asking you this as your spiritual father. I have no other interest than to help you be the best version of yourself." Finally, he gave me a new task. "I want you to make a list of everything you can do in bed," he said. I told him no. He told me that the only purpose of his interest was to know if my future marriage would be healthy because men were only happy if they were sexually satisfied. According to him, his interest was based on a feeling from God, which told him that I had areas that needed healing when it came to sex. One day, he prayed for me and for my healing. As he prayed, he mentioned facts from my past that he knew would make me cry because they were very painful. After praying, he said, "See, that's why I asked you all of these things to make you feel uncomfortable because I want you to find healing." Immediately afterwards, I accomplished the task he assigned me. I sent him the list. I again fell into his lies. I believed that Jonathan really wanted my healing and freedom. I thought he had changed since that episode in Ohio, but in truth, he just wanted to get to know an intimate part of myself to satisfy his own sexual needs. After sharing that information, I felt naked. Now there were practically no more things about me that he did not know. As a joke, he said I had very good qualities to be a good wife and that one day I would make someone very happy. I know at this point you may come to think his intentions were too obvious. But from my point of view back then, accepting Jonathan, accepting that Jonathan wanted me sexually was accepting that our entire relationship was a lie. It meant destroying the belief system that I had been upholding for almost four years. So I ignored all of my inner alarms.

It was around that time that another victim, Don Weaver, decided to speak. Don sent him a letter with the details of the abuse Jonathan committed. Then he forwarded the letter to me and asked me to tell him what I thought. Before I read the letter, he called me crying and said, "I can't believe how much I hurt her. I feel horrible. I made a big mistake and asked for her forgiveness for that, but she doesn't listen to me. I'm telling you this because I know that you can understand me. I want to know what you think about what happened to her because if you move away from me, I would be [ __ ] sad and devastated. She's a very innocent girl and she is traumatized by things that happened to her. Deep down, I understand her. She's not to blame. I know that you are going to understand me because you have a past like me," referring to the fact that I had sexual experience. "She is seeking to destroy everything. She wants to destroy Welton Academy." I believed that he was truly sorry, but that he was manipulating me before reading the letter so that I could see and understand only what he wanted. [Snorts] He would do that stuff all the time to us. It's so frustrating. Anyway, when I read the letter, I knew the victim was not lying in what she relayed. In fact, she mentioned things that he had done with me, like the hugging and going to the movies to hold hands as if they were a couple. But Jonathan had convinced me that she was exaggerating and that she was very innocent, that she did not understand him, and therefore she misunderstood any shows of affection and sexual interest. I found myself at a crossroads. On one hand, I knew that everything this girl was relating was true. But on the other hand, Jonathan kept telling me over and over he had changed. That what she was doing was unfair because it had happened before the Tony Robbins teachings came into his life and he changed 100%. So since the idea of accepting that my spiritual father as being a predator would break my entire belief system, I decided to agree in what he wanted me to think. I told him that I could see she was very hurt, but that it was unfair that she judged him for the things in the past that he has now changed. "Very good," he said. "I want you to write her an email telling her what you think and what you are sharing with me." And I did. I sent Don a very harsh email saying that she was exaggerating, that she was not forgiving, that Jonathan had changed and that she was a bad friend, and that I felt that I could not trust her again. [Gasps]

Side note, another pattern John Mark to mark it is that he would position us to go defend people for him like he had done. He tried to get me to ward off um Eric. That was very common. Without me being aware of it, Jonathan was dividing us by attempting to turn us against each other so that we could not come together and share what he had done to us. In addition to me, he also convinced other people who were under his influence that he had contact with Dawn to do the same and send her emails or messages treating her as a liar or an exaggerator. Nowadays, I feel ashamed with what I did. And I thank God Dawn's heart is so big that she not only forgave me, but that she understood why I did it. She was one of the biggest cheerleaders to tell my part of the story. She is an inspiration to me. Her bravery, her fearless heart, her passion for freedom, her sweetness makes her one of my best friends to this day.

There was a modus operandi from Jonathan to his staff when the victims started to share their stories. To some, he told us one version of things, to others, another. To all of us, he only gave us a percentage of the information. In this way, we were all confused and no one really knew what was going on. For example, I now knew the full story of what happened with that first woman that Jonathan had told me a watered-down story of in Ohio the night he sexually abused me when he then victimized himself to make me feel bad for him. Within the staff, he also had begun to create a division. On one hand, some had begun to doubt him and believe the victims, or at least to remain neutral in the faces of these cases that were beginning to be heard. He began to exclude this group more and more. On the other hand, there were other staff members who were much more manipulated by him who defended him at all costs. I was in the second group. Jonathan had even set up two separate chat groups: a general group chat with all of the staff where general information was shared and another select group with the defender staff where he shared racy jokes with total impunity. Talked about the victims who had spoken out like they were pests, made jokes about some members of the general staff and victimized himself so that we would lift him up. Thus, day by day, he turned us against each other. Sometimes he would call each of the staff members individually and very subtly let it slip that so and so staff member did not like another staff member. I remember he told me directly that certain members of the staff did not like me. He made up stories and lied to me so that I would only trust him. He told me, for example, that some other women on the staff were jealous of me and the father-daughter relationship that we had. Clearly, they were pure inventions of his own. But in this way, he managed to keep me cautious and closed off with respect to the other members.

After the victims started talking and more people started to be concerned about Jonathan's behavior, weekly Zoom meetings with staff members focused more and more on him and his repentance. What she means by that is that he—I was not on staff at this point, but he was pulling the staff together to host meetings so he could share with them how repentant he was. That's what she's describing. Once he thought that if he shared a part of his past that he had never shared before, that all the members of the staff would believe his change. But because he was ashamed to do so, he convinced me after spending an hour on the phone prior to this Zoom group call that I also had to share something very sensitive about my own past in the group call. Thus, I would pave the way for him and he would not be so ashamed to share a part of his past. He used me as a shield to hide and tell a story from his past that he was ashamed of. What a coward. And this was the same person who put himself as an example of masculine energy.

The day I spoke in Welton Academy closed late August, September, or early October 2018. The accusations of these two victims gained more and more weight despite Jonathan's attempts to silence them when he could no longer silence them to show false signs of repentance. Every time Jonathan repented, something new was discovered to show that he was lying. Jonathan was accompanied by a restoration board or simply the board made up of several pastors, leaders, a psychologist, all led by Danny Silk. One of the first measures of the restoration board was to take away his cell phone and access to social media. The staff was told to continue with normal assignments. The new school year was to start in September, so there was a lot of work to do signing up the new students, but we had no firsthand news about Jonathan except what members of the restoration board were sharing with us. It was unknown what was going to happen to Welton Academy. The only thing we did know was that no one wanted to close the school and that no one wanted the staff members to lose their jobs overnight. Continue with everything normally was the only thing that we were told and we did so for several weeks. It was then that we were informed that we were going to have a video call with a member of the board about the future of the school and Jonathan's present. In this video call, we were read a letter from Jonathan to the staff where he admitted to having deceived us, manipulated us, etc. The person from the board, however, told us that the leaders accompanying Jonathan's restoration were quite optimistic because they saw that Jonathan was for the first time showing signs of true repentance and that although they considered that Jonathan could not come back as the CEO of Welton Academy, they believed that if he continued in that direction, the school would not close. We agreed that the following week we were going to have another video call to update us on how things were going.

It was a couple of days after the video call that I received the first anonymous message in my mailbox, which of course was Jonathan, which he did later admit to. On the Welton Academy website, there was a section where people could contact me directly. It was a form that people could fill out. If they put their email address, I could answer their questions. It had also had an option of having people send messages without entering their email address. Thus, anyone could put a false name and write anything and it was going to reach my email anyway. As I was saying, I received three anonymous messages through the Welton Academy website contact form. The sender called himself TS. I immediately thought of Taylor Swift and Ohio and Jonathan. It was a desperate and sick method of letting only me know it was him. The first of the messages read, "Beautiful. I care about you and your friend Jonathan. This is what I can tell you. The team around him is going to expose him hard and publicly. The best thing you can do for him and for you is to erase all the text messages between you and him and anything else that can endanger him. Technically, he can't reply to the messages that come to him, but he can see them. And since he can't communicate once you've deleted everything that could make him or you look bad, post two heart emojis in the staff group chat." It was a simple act of reading that message that finally made me understand that my spiritual father was a total sociopath. The inner voice that made me doubt fell silent. The inner voices that made me doubt fell silent. On one hand, he had sent us a repentance letter to the staff. But on the other, he was sending me anonymous messages asking me to erase all the written evidence where he admitted about what had happened in Ohio and in which he told me everything in my story that others didn't know yet. My world was coming off its axis and I was blind with anger. So I played along. I did not delete the messages. Rather, I ensured that they wouldn't get lost. Then I also sent the two heart emojis in the chat because I wanted to see how far it would go and wanted to continue gathering more evidence.

Two days before the second video call with the staff member of the restoration board, I received another message from anonymous Swifty. For those of you who don't know, Swifty is the name by which Taylor Swift fans call themselves. Again, Jonathan wanted me to know it was him. The message read, "The next staff meeting is going to be a blood bath. I suggest you make an..."

Excuse at the last minute, and you don't participate. You can send them a message and ask them to record the meeting for you. The last message I received was a day before the video call, and it said, "Your friend Jonathan is going to be exposed, but you don't have to take the fall for him. If they ask you about the night in DC, say you went to the lobby and talked, but don't say you were alone in his hotel room because that would be inappropriate."

He was referring to the night we saw a movie in DC, and that I had previously related. He cared more about the night in DC and not in Ohio. Although in Ohio he sexually abused me, only because he knew that in DC there was a witness who knew I had gone to his room with him.

On one hand, I had an urgent need to tell everyone what Jonathan was doing to me because now, to protect himself, he was trying to engage me in his lies and asking me to lie for him. On the other hand, I knew that if I spoke, it would mean the end of Welton Academy, of my work, of my ministry, of everything I had invested time and energy in for the last few years.

I did not participate in the video call, and not because of Jonathan's request, but because I had no longer cared what they said about him. I already knew that Jonathan was a sociopath. I just needed time to gather enough energy to contact the restoration team and show them the messages Jonathan had sent me from anonymity. And I finally did it. I got tired of hiding information and that he believed he had me on his side. And I told everything, not only the messages he sent me, but also what happened in Ohio, in DC, the hugs, the comments, the jealousy, everything.

With this latest information from the anonymous messages, Jonathan was fully exposed. The last of the anonymous messages had been sent hours after he had just been crying in front of the restoration board, showing repentance. So, the decision was made to close the school for the good of all. And Danny Silk sent a letter that I guess everyone read, communicating the closure of Wilson Academy. Jonathan did not show any signs of repentance, and to this day, he still doesn't.

It took a weight off my shoulders, but I was left with nothing except for the satisfaction of knowing that I had done the right thing. Not only my spiritual father wanted to have sex with me, our entire relationship had been a lie. The person I had opened my heart to and allowed to have the most influence in my spiritual life was a predator. Taking the weight off my shoulders also meant destroying the last five years of my life in which I had genuinely believed I was serving a ministry that was changing the world. Jonathan, for five years, made me believe that he was freeing me when in reality he was putting me in a smaller and smaller cage.

At the same time, I blamed myself for everything that happened, for not having stood up for the girls who spoke, for not realizing such obvious truths. And I blamed my body and my beauty for the attempted sexual abuse that Jonathan committed against me. Jonathan always liked my long dark hair. So when everything came to light and I could finally see the monster that I had for a spiritual father, I wanted to be ugly. So I cut my hair very short, in a cut that was not flattering. I blamed my looks for everything that had happened, especially in Ohio. I also couldn't bear to see my hair color that Jonathan liked so much, so I later bleached it blonde. If I had already hid everything that had happened to me through sports, now I was doing it much more. I trained like crazy. I lost too much weight to the point of losing my curves, and food allergies intensified much more.

The last Welton Academy summit was held in October of 2018. I traveled to the United States, not wanting to return to Rochester, but with the sole reason that they pay me. Remember, I was paid in cash every six months. At the summit, many members of the restoration board prayed for me, as well as many students. But when I was back in Argentina, no one else contacted me.

One of the restoration board members called me only a few days after the summit so I could recount the Ohio episode of abuse. He actually wanted to know if Jonathan and I had sex. I explained no, but I told him everything again in detail. He didn't ask me how I was doing. He just used me to get the information he wanted from me. That was the last time I had direct contact with a member of the board until today, June 15th, 2021, when she wrote this down. The abuser got all the attention, and the victims were left alone to drift. The restoration board was just for him. I was almost 6,000 m away, alone, without work, with no one to talk to, and with a local church that rejected me and kicked me out through text message when I told what happened with Jonathan.

It has been over 3 years since the first victim spoke. I received psychological help that literally saved my life, for which I will always be grateful. I am convinced that it is the first time that the former members of the board know my whole story. And not because I was not willing to tell, simply because no one cared to ask. To this day, there is still an odd silence around what Jonathan did to his victims that is insulting. Nobody knows anything about what happened or what Jonathan did to his victims. And that is why I decided to speak. He speaks on it himself, but as many words as he uses, he really doesn't say anything of substance.

Danny Silk, currently the sole member in charge of Jonathan's restoration, put out a book months after Welton Academy closed, telling part of Jonathan's story and therefore mine. He started making money off the story of Jonathan's victims without even asking us once about it. Danny Silk thus gave Jonathan Welton a pedestal where, as we all knew it would happen, Jonathan got on to declare himself restored. I never spoke to Danny Silk except at the last summit of 2018. He never called me, never heard my story firsthand, and yet he considers himself authoritative enough to declare someone restored and to speak on behalf of victims.

Danny Silk sent one last letter in which he considers Jonathan fully restored and as a person who lives truly in the better covenant. The same person who never contacted any of the victims is the same person who is now taking advantage of his fame and power, signs a letter of regret, whatever that means. None of the former members of the board agree with what is stated in that letter signed by Danny Silk. It should be noted that to this day, Jonathan has never apologized to any of his victims.

Although at the beginning, he was not allowed to use social media. As soon as he was able to do so, he sent the former staff members a YouTube video of himself reading a letter. In that same video, Jonathan thanks us for exposing him. So, you're welcome, Jonathan. I know you're going to read all of this. And basically blames his parents for his disorder. He never asks us for forgiveness. He still doesn't even seem to know what he's apologizing for.

Do I believe a narcissistic person can be healed and restored by the power of God? Absolutely. Do I want Jonathan to be healed? Yes, I do. Do I believe he is restored and healed from his pathology? No. And I believe he's dangerous and he shouldn't be allowed to work with other people's emotions or spirituality. I would only believe it's fully restored if another letter signed by a psychologist, both chosen by the former staff members, telling Jonathan has signs of zero narcissism and sociopathy, is released. If we wait to see X-rays or the blood tests or any other medical study to confirm a complete healing in the physical body, why don't we do the same with a person with such a dangerous mental pathology? A letter signed by Danny Silk means nothing without the proofs needed. He constantly ignored the psychologist that was the adviser for the board.

She now goes on to share some more personal things, speaking to the audience. My reasons. I'm not counting all of this for myself. I'm doing it for the women who come after me. For those who at this moment are being manipulated. For women who believe that no one is going to understand them and that they do not have a voice. I do it for them. If it were up to me, I would have done it a long time ago. But I'm not looking for self-righteousness. I hope that this never happens again and that the church can be a safe place for women who found their abuser in their family of faith and the Christian community. I seek that there is true equality and that all the voices have the same weight. I seek that the voice of the senior pastor or apostle doesn't carry more weight than the voice of a woman just because of the place he occupies in leadership. That begins by breaking with the false belief that when a leader makes a mistake, it must be resolved indoors. Silence the victims and call it honor. It begins by calling the sins by their names and calling abuse abuse.

I do not write all of this to find healing. I write because I found healing. I have no personal problem with Jonathan Walton or any other leader mentioned directly or indirectly in this blog. I just hope that all the voices will have the same weight and place in the church. And that's part of the reformation that God is doing. We cannot keep allowing pathological liars, sociopaths, and narcissistic manipulators to remain at the top of our church leadership. We cannot continue to let the thread always be cut on the thinnest side and silence the victims because if we expose a leader who sinned, we make the church look bad. This must end. Victims must have a voice. A letter signed by a leader, no matter what fame and influence he has, is not a sign of true restoration. It is the fruit sustained over the years that show real change.

>> This is this is johnwelton.com. He wrote this article in response to the Royy's report, who did a whole story on Jonathan Welton, interviewing many witnesses. And one of the things that he took, um, specific umbrage over was actually, uh, the story of, and there are several points here that we could bring out. And Ron, I don't know if there's some things that you would like to highlight first.

>> Yes. Uh, yeah, there's about halfway through. Uh, so, you know, one of the reasons that Jonathan is telling this story is because of the Royy's report article that went out and, um, gave the testimony of, of many, many witnesses against him. And he is, this is a defense, like, I'm not as bad as they said I was. And he says, "Only recently in the spring of 2023, as I made an announcement that I will be making my old school teaching videos available again, some of my former staff members have and stirred up, remember that word, stirred up, to make good on a threat that they made years ago. They had threatened that if I ever tried to go back into ministry, they would paint me as a serial sexual predator and make sure I can never restore my reputation."

What we know is that at least from, I think it was 2009, there is a history of about a decade of of predation, of using his role as a spiritual father to manipulate women to do things, whether it was, uh, uh, sending selfies of themselves to him for approval, and, and the language he's used, too, you know, joking about oral sex with with staff members and women. So, yes, they are trying to get people to understand that this man is dangerous, but it's not we want to get even. That's not what I'm sensing from any of these people. It is, we don't want people to be taken advantage of like we were taken advantage of.

He says, "Over the last 5 years, I have been slandered, maligned, and written about by my extended family, my former staff, and my former friends. My response has been to own everything I can and acknowledge the pain I caused, as well as express my regret. This is the first time that I will be explaining and rebutting what is being said about me."

Back to Jane Doe's story. Back to Jane Doe's story. She claims that I trapped her in an Airbnb room, pulled her close to him on the bed, and kissed her neck as he pressed his body against her when she resisted. She says Welton told her, "You are my daughter, and I love you as a father," before he let her leave. Doe said he never, uh, pressed charges against Welton because her immigration status was uncertain at the time, but within 6 weeks, she left the ministry and moved several states away.

You Renee, uh, told TRR that Doe's life was really torn apart by Jonathan. Doe said Welton has never owned or apologized for what he did. The problem with this account is it's 100% [ __ ]. The only part that is true is that I haven't owned it or apologized. I haven't because it's not true. Notice who the victim is here. You know, like, over the past 5 years, I have been slandered, maligned, and written about by my extended family. Does this sound like a really repentant guy to you? But then he, you know, he calls account 100% [ __ ]. Let's read Welton's account of it, right? Says, "When I read this account, I finally understood why Weaver and Gregen have been so adamant about resisting my return to ministry. They have been lied to and manipulated by my former staff member. Thankfully, I have the receipts to prove it, which I will share with you in a moment. But first, here is what actually happened that night. I wrote up this account for my wife and Danny 5 years ago."

>> Oh, this is why Danny said it was a, he said, she said thing.

>> Yeah. Well, well, let's let's read let's read his account and see how different it actually is. Uh, I was in my room down the hallway from Jane Doe's room. I was unpacking my bag and I invited her in to chitchat. She came in and sat in the armchair and we talked for a bit. Then I hugged her goodnight and she left. Um, maybe one of those six-minute hugs, I don't know. About an hour later, we texted about both being up and not able to fall asleep. So, let's hang out. I was sitting up on the left side of the bed against the pillows. She came in and closed the door behind her. Uh, she closed the door behind her and came and sat on the middle right side of the bed where we talked for a bit. She laid down next to me and we were in a spooning position for about 10 minutes. Uh, I, they tripped. He just tripped and fell and they just happened to be in a spooning position for about 10 minutes. I think we both felt uncomfortable. I'm sure he did. I knew I knew for myself that I had crossed my my line. Then I said, uh, we should say goodnight. And we both got up and walked her over to the door. I gave her a hug and let go and let go. And she kept squeezing. So I hugged her again and let go a second time at which point she let go and headed out. We don't, uh, we didn't talk about it until a few days later when I texted her about how I needed to have better boundaries and that my behavior was across the line. She deflected the behavior. Didn't see anything wrong with what had occurred, but she was willing to work with whatever I needed, as seen in the texts from July 22nd.

>> Oh my god.

>> Was this wrong and inappropriate? Absolutely. Was it, uh, her being trapped, groped, kissed, and resisting? Not at all. I want to go back to, um, what you said, Renee, about Danny Silk saying it's a he said, she said. Let me just say this, and I want to be as respectful as I can to Danny. It is not a he said, she said when there are 12 shees.

>> So, I, if I, part of being a good groomer, a good predator is that you leave no witnesses. You have somebody, who has sort of gone through a restoration but not really left that before it was over, allegedly, as far as I understand. Uh, you've got all these other women. So, you don't give him the benefit of the doubt. You don't say, "Well, gosh, we don't know who to believe here. Do we believe that this, this innocent, poor, sweet girl who came to Jesus, got born again, and has been under this guy's spell, or do we believe the guy who is possibly a pathological liar?" It doesn't, you don't give him the benefit of the doubt at that point. So, that's the first thing that jumps out at me.

>> Yeah. Well, not not only that, just read the account. How different is it from account? The only thing that are missing are sort of the internal details about how these, how these interactions were affecting her.

>> Let me tell you another reason why I don't believe him and I don't believe him [snorts] is because he gets tickets to a Taylor Swift C. Can you, I cannot imagine. I cannot imagine. I have worked with many women over the years. I cannot imagine a scenario where I am getting tickets to a Taylor Swift concert and taking my international employee. I'm flying her over from another country to come meet me in a city that I don't live in where we are now going to rent an Airbnb together.

>> And I'm going to get her alone. Was there another guy in the Airbnb or guy in there? Yeah.

>> So, he's sleeping somewhere. All right. So, there's three of them.

>> I guess that makes it plausible. Hey, you know what? Do you mean there's three of us here? But he's in his own room and then he's texting, "Hey, come visit me."

>> Um, I cannot even. I'm just trying to put myself in that scenario. I would be gone. I'd be, even if nothing happened. It is the appearance of evil. But then you invite her to your room and you're admitting that.

>> There are so many red lines and, and, and that's what now again, he does admit at the end that, yeah, was it wrong? Yes, it was wrong. But he doesn't understand how wrong it is. It's like, really, really wrong. And, and again, he's calling her a liar. It's not 80% BS. It's not 90% BS. It is 100% BS. And yet it's really almost the same story. As you pointed out, John Mark, there's very little difference. And, and this is, this is the witness, uh, that Jonathan had to pretend to be somebody else in order to get her to delete all the texts, cuz he knows.

>> Which he admitted he was the anonymous person.

>> Yeah. He knows that if those texts get seen, he's done.

>> Yeah.

>> So, he, so like, you know, but it's 100% [ __ ]. So, so if I read this, uh, this narrative and I, I'm supposed to believe that, okay, he's back in ministry. He's good. Danny's given him the seal of approval. And then I, and he's a phenomenal Bible teacher, I'm told. Phenomenal Bible teacher. People hear him.

>> He teaches that the church is the fourth, fourth member of the Godhead. He's, he's technically a heretic, but we'll leave that.

>> I'm just going to assume that he is the best. Based on everything I know, would I send my daughter to be in the same state as him? And the answer is no. I would not let my daughter anywhere near Jonathan Welton. There is no way on earth.

>> I wouldn't let her go to a Bible school that he, I wouldn't let her go to a service he was at. I would not let, I literally would not let her be in the same room as him because, uh, he might notice her and I don't trust him. And that is the issue. The issue is, it's not, are you better, Jonathan? You may be, you know what, you may be 100% better. It's that you have no trust with the body of Christ because you have abused the sacred trust that God put in you when he called you to be a minister. You use that trust to manipulate women, and that is why you are disqualified.

Now, further in Welton's own defense, he he goes on to say, "Was this wrong and inappropriate? Absolutely. Was it her being trapped, groped, kissed, and resisting? Not at all. Here's what she said about it 4 days after it happened. See text messages." All right. So, this is four days after the, the, uh, event at the Airbnb, which he is acknowledging happened. "First of all, I think Don, um, that's, uh, Don Weaver, who's, uh, in this video, heard a very distorted version of what really happened, which makes me very sad and mad. Despite that, she shared with me like two years ago that when you were here in my country, that she felt this arrogance issue with you. She was just mad and disheartened because of the missions department being closed. At that moment, you and I weren't very close yet. So, I was just a pastor with her and provided comfort. What she's sharing in the email, it's not new. So, this is Dawn having confronted, uh, Welton over what, what our witness has told Dawn happened. And now she is confronting Welton over this incident. And now Welton is going to, uh, our, our witness and complaining about it. And she is consoling Jonathan Welton because she still has a trauma bond with him, which we're going to get into in a moment. But that explains exactly what's going on here. What she's sharing in the email, it's not new. She's been carrying that pain for a long time. Second, I agree with her that in the past you wouldn't have received any confrontation, but I do see you're now taking all this with great humility. Um, in this very, in this very, uh, article that he's posting this, he calls it 100% [ __ ]. And that's not exactly what I would call great humility. But I do see you're now taking this with great humility. In the past, if someone would point something to you, you may twist it. I know because I was the same. Shame is a b- word. Third, I am proud of you. You're admitting your mistakes and cleaning the mess. I feel this really shows how you're now valuing love and connection over significance. But like I told you a few days ago, it's also time to set new boundaries and have a better communication with the five-fold council and with the people you trust enough to share your heart with. Lastly, sounding, uh, what lastly reading what you said about self-medicate with your female friends, I'm thinking of our own relationship as somehow a way of emotional leaning or escape or something. In that case, I'm okay if you want to set some kind of boundary. I personally don't think in our relationship in that way."

>> So, she's making it clear. I don't. She's saying I don't need a boundary. You might need a boundary, but I don't need a boundary.

>> Yeah. I, she says, "I personally don't think in our relationship in that way, but since you're addressing that as an issue you want to clean, I'm okay with any decision you want to take. I love you and I want the best for you. Um, I don't care about being affectionate myself or you being affectionate with me." Uh, and those are important terms because these are terms that Jonathan has, uh, through his, uh, grooming, through teaching from the pulpit about affection, which we are going to get into later in this video. He has, he has created this, this, it becomes a gospel issue with him that if you don't, if you're not comfortable with affection the way that he wants you to be comfortable with affection, then you're defective. And so now she's saying, I, well, I'm not one of those defective people that has problems with affection. I don't have that problem. So I don't have a problem with you being affectionate with me. I trust you. I've been treated as an object so many times by incont. That's, uh, uncountable dudes. Countless dudes that treated me like, um, the sword that now I know the difference. I've learned how to say no in the same moment I feel uncomfortable. The questions I have now are these. Uh, what have you learned about all this? What decisions will you take? And two, how your relationships with female friends will be in the future after all of this?

>> Um, Ron, you have had experience advocating for people who have been victims of grooming. Um, does this appear out of the norm from your perspective?

>> Not at all. In fact, uh, we, I did an interview with Deborah Perkins and Tammy Woods, who were both, uh, survivors of Mike Bickle. And I, I did this because of our good friend, podcaster Heather Shot, who, uh, convinced those of us who were advocating for Sarah Monk in the Dr. Michael Brown issue, as convincing her she was a victim. And, and so one of the things I asked Tammy and Deborah is that, is it normal to go a long time and not realize that you've been victimized? Of course, I knew the answer because I'd read their testimony, and, and it is very normal. They call it delayed disclosure, where you, when somebody is grooming you, there is so much mental gymnastics going on. Part of the grooming process is to confuse and to blur the boundaries, and, and keep in mind, oftentimes, like with Tammy Woods, when her and Mike stopped being physical, she's still probably in her late, later teen years. She said, "I determined to take this secret to my grave so that she could protect Mike and he could go on to fulfill this awesome call of God on his life." Like, in her mind, she was believing, well, I'm going to say convinced, but, but from her perspective, she believed that it was her duty to God to protect Mike because of the call in his life. I believe that he clearly manipulated her into thinking that was her her duty. She may or may not remember that, but, but that is what a skilled groomer does. It is very normal what, uh, Jane Doe is going through here, where she is still confused, and what she sees, she sees in her mind Jonathan taking accountability, and she's cheering for him because she does see him as a spiritual father, and she does care for him and love him in that sense, but she's not attracted to him romantically. So when he is saying, "I'm dealing with with my issues," she's encouraging him in that, and she's trying to lessen the responsibility. So, no, this is absolutely normal, and any psychologist who works with victims of clergy sexual abuse would tell you that this is normal behavior.

Well, uh, not just psychologists, so will lawyers. In fact, this is from O'Brien Law Firm. And he's talking in this about understanding trauma bonds, why some victims protect their abusers. He says this, this is halfway through the article. He says, "Why trauma bonds are so hard to break. Confusion and self-blame. Children in trauma bonds often believe the abuse is their fault. They may cling to the relationship to prove they are good enough to earn affection." And this isn't just true about the grooming of children. This is also true of the grooming of adults. Um, there's threats and intimidation. Abusers frequently use threats such as harm to the child, siblings, or parents to maintain control. These threats make children or adults terrified to speak out. So we have, for instance, um, the implicit threat that you don't have to take the fall for our friend Jonathan in these, um, these, uh, text messages that are that are sent under a false name, a pseudonym from Jonathan to this Jane Doe, convincing [clears throat] her to delete text messages, which, by the way, if these text messages are used to exonerate, if you're, if you're going to use text messages to exonerate yourself, Jonathan, why are you getting her to delete text messages? Um, if, if all these text messages are, you know, just paint you as being totally, totally innocent of everything, and, and she was totally fine with how you were treating her, why are you getting her to delete text messages? There's hope for change. And you see that in this message between Jane Doe and Jonathan. There's this hope for change. The moments of kindness offered by abusers create hope that the abuse will stop. And this hope makes children or adults more likely to stay loyal. And, and that's absolutely, that's absolutely true. In fact, what you have is the sunk cost fallacy. So, put yourself for a minute in our Jane Doe's, uh, position. Her whole life is now devoted to the Welton movement. Um, she is an ambassador for the Better Covenant and for Welton Academy in Latin America. From Jane Doe's perspective, her relationship to Welton is so integrally tied to her calling, to her destiny. I mean, he, he begins to do this immediately through these prophecies and like, I can, I can begin to open the doors for you, and you're my spiritual daughter, and my job and my role is to help you become who God has called you to be. And so you begin to think of yourself as part of this narrative. This is what God has called me to. And Jonathan, if he's not who he says he is, my life is a lie. And this sunk cost fallacy, it begins like, my whole world falls apart if Jonathan isn't who he says he is. And so that creates this, this hope for change. Like, you, and you're clinging on for dear life to that hope that something would be different.

Now we look at this, the impact of trauma bonds on survivors. Delayed disclosure. Many survivors do not disclose abuse until years later, often well into adulthood. Trauma bonds can prevent children or adults from recognizing their experiences as abuse. There's guilt. And Ron, you mentioned this already, right?

>> Yeah. It's very normal for, uh, a victim of sexual abuse, whether adult or teen, for it to take time to sink in that they were not a willing participant. And, uh, in the case of, uh, you know, so many of the people that we've talked to, you know, the penny drops years later, and they realize that they're manipulated. Right. Then there's guilt and shame. Uh, it says survivors may feel ashamed for defending or protecting their abuser. This guilt can persist into adulthood, complicating healing. We saw this from every single woman that we have interviewed.

>> Yeah. And so many of the groomers and abusers that we've come across, they're very intelligent people, and they're very gifted, uh, you know, at defending themselves, and, and the victim is oftenly not as skilled in, you know, rhetoric, and, uh, it's very easy to confuse them and to make them blame themselves. You know, in one of the situations that we have has come to light, you know, one of the defenses of the groomer was, "But she emailed me later. She sent me pictures of her kids." That is normal. Don't, don't go by what you think is normal. Go and talk to experts. Read the books written by the experts, the people who have interviewed dozens and dozens of victims, and they will tell you that the way that Jane Doe reacted to Jonathan is completely consistent with the way victims of sexual abuse respond.

>> Yeah. Now, I want to go back and look at Jane Doe's response to, to the text messages and how she viewed them later. And she can speak for herself. "Finally, one day I confronted Jonathan about it. Um, the, the incident in the Airbnb. As I explained, I refused to talk to him outside of strictly necessary video calls. One day, weeks after the abuse in Ohio, I texted him." So, this is weeks later. This is, he's, he's giving text messages from 4 days later. Now, weeks later, she's coming back, revisiting the thing. And she says, "I don't know what the f happened in Ohio, but I don't want it to happen again." He told me that he felt sorry, that he was under a lot of stress, and that when he felt like that, he did a lot of stupid things. He promised me that it would never happen again. He told me that he loved me, that I was his daughter, that he only had good intentions for me. He told me that since he had followed Tony Robbins teachings, he had changed, and I believed him. It was easier for me to believe that Jonathan was repentant than to accept that my spiritual father was a predator. I decided then to pretend that the sexual abuse had never happened. I buried it deep in my mind. I convinced myself that it had not happened, and my relationship with Jonathan went back to how it was before. But then later, is it, this is after this is still the amount of control that Welton still had over Jane Doe. I want you to make a list of everything you can do in bed. Jonathan Welton, after already promising that he wouldn't abuse me sexually ever again. As I mentioned earlier, Jonathan wanted to know more about my past, and he called my old self [ __ ] blank or the Alpha [ __ ]."

In speaking with, uh, Don Weaver and Renee Lorraine, they both said that this particular Jane Doe was the last one to have the scales fall from her eyes, and she was the one who was the worst treated that they know of. It was not until she received this email from an anonymous source that she finally understood exactly what was going on. I'm going to go back and, and read this from Jane Doe's account. It was around that time that another victim, Don Weaver, decided to speak. Don sent him a letter with the details of the abuse Jonathan committed. Then he forwarded the letter to me and asked me to tell him what I thought. But before I read the letter, he called me crying and said, "I can't believe how much I hurt her. I feel horrible. I made a big mistake." And asked her forgiveness for that, but she doesn't listen to me. I'm telling you this because I know that you can understand me. I want to know what you think about what happened to her because if you move away from me, I would be effing sad and devastated. Um, this is more of the, the grooming that's happening in the middle of this. And then she says this about her own, her own mental state. "I believed that he was truly sorry, but he was just manipulating me before reading the letter so that I could see and understand only what he wanted. When I read the letter, I knew that Dawn was not lying in what she wrote. In fact, she mentioned things that he, that is Jonathan, had done with me, like hugging and going to the movies and holding hands as if we were a couple. But Jonathan had convinced me that she was exaggerating, that she was very innocent, that she did not understand him, and therefore she misunderstood any show of affection as a show of sexual interest. I found myself at a crossroads. On one hand, I knew that everything this girl was relating was true. But on the other hand, Jonathan kept telling me over and over, that he had changed, that what she was doing was unfair because it had happened before the Tony Robbins teachings came into his life, and he had changed 100%. So since the idea of accepting that my spiritual father was a predator would break my entire belief system, there's the sunk cost fallacy, I decided to agree in what he wanted me to think. I told him that I could see that she was very hurt, but that it was unfair that she judged him for things from the past when he had changed. Very good, he said. I want you to write her an email telling her what you think and you are sharing with me. And I did. I sent Don a very harsh email saying that she was exaggerating, that she was not forgiving, that Jonathan had changed, but she was a bad friend, and that I felt that I could not trust her again. Without me being aware of it, Jonathan was dividing us by attempting to turn us against each other so that we could not come together and share what he had done to us. In addition to me, he also convinced other people who were under his influence and had contact with Dawn to do the same and send her emails or messages treating her as a liar or exaggerator. Nowadays, I feel ashamed with what I did. And thank God that Dawn's heart is so big that she not only forgave me, but she also understood why I did it."

These are text messages from a woman who is under a spell. But later, that spell broke. Later, she confronts Jonathan. And then she begins to see exactly how she was treated. Her world falls apart, and so does her health. The effect of Jonathan's treatment on her has this, has this, um, severe impact on her life. For those reasons, um, because of Jane Doe's own testimony after the fact, because of the pain that it had inflicted on her, the fear that she experienced because of his treatment, because he kept pushing the envelope with the sexual jokes, because all of these things, I do not believe in any measure that those text messages by any means exonerate Jonathan of anything. In fact, I think his use of those text messages to try to soften the severity of his abuse is evidence that he does not understand truly the impact that he has had on these women's lives.

>> [music]

>> You're now about to hear from Lindseay Wallace, who led worship for Jonathan Welton and also served as chief operations officer. She was also a victim of Jonathan Welton.

So, I met Jonathan early 2012, um, at a conference, and he had invited me a few weeks later after that to come and be the worship leader for their then events called boot camp. So, him and Karen would put on boot camps. It was like a weekend or a week-long school. And then by 2013, he decided to start Supernatural Bible School, SPS, which later became Welton Academy. He had asked me to become the executive director of the school at that time. So gladly, I was very on board because we were, you know, changing the world. And, um, so [sighs] through the years, um, of working for Jonathan, I went from the executive director to the COO of Welton Media. I had a whole bunch of really cool staff members. We were located all over the world. So we always communicated via phone, email, but we would get together, um, for our summits and for staff retreats. And that's kind of where our relationships would deepen. So, um, as a staff, it was all women save Jonathan, and then later on another male came on staff. Um, so we bonded really well. We got along really well. Um, uh, basically we became this little family where we felt compelled, the women on staff felt compelled to protect Jonathan at all costs because he was this man of God and he was being attacked by one thing or another. Jonathan always had some kind of a victim mentality. Someone was always out to get him or his ministry. He would task me with managing social media where he would tell me, "This person has been attacking me and saying these false things about me. Go and delete them, block them, uh, basically just scorched earth on them." And so I would do that, and I would, I would scour his social media, the comments, and delete anything that was negative because in my opinion, or my mind, or the, what I thought I was doing was I was protecting Jonathan. And so I became this bulldog where I would basically attack anyone because I was just so loyal to a fault that, um, if you would attack my people and my family, then I'm going to come after you. And so, um, it wasn't, it never clicked to me that any of these threads of people saying the same thing over and over again that there was any credibility. It was just me taking Jonathan's word for it that these people were out for him and they had nefarious intentions.

Jonathan used to go by the moniker rogue theologian. So it was almost like he was begging people to fight him on theology, but then when anyone would disagree, he would shut him down. From the time that we started, it was, um, very slowly, like the, the frog coming to a boil, like the slow temperature change over time. And we had no idea what was actually happening to us because we didn't have any training in this type of pathology. We just were like, we're changing the world altogether, and, you know, we're a big happy family, and sometimes we have coarse joking. So that's how it was painted. Um, our culture was just a little different than other people's. But the slow change started happening when, um, like I started to get texts from Jonathan that weren't just work texts. Um, he would challenge us to take selfies and post selfies because he wanted to see our faces. Of course, we're all women that he's challenging us to do this. For me personally, he would take a screenshot or save the photo that I had uploaded on Instagram or Facebook, and he would text it back to me and tell me how beautiful he thought I was. Um, and he'd use some foul language. The majority of the time I would try to play it off because it was so uncomfortable that I would say, "Haha, my husband or Mike thinks so, too." Because I wouldn't know what to say. It wasn't like I, I never said back to him, "Oh, I think you're gorgeous, too." So, there was nothing reciprocated from my end that way. But it started to make me feel very uncomfortable.

>> Right. So, I have some screenshots of those texts right here. So, this is Jonathan. He's, he's texting you. "I just realized something about our staff. What's that? About half of us were homeschooled and a third of us were PKs. That's pastor's kids. Keep, I just keep hiring my dream girl."

>> I'm the best of the dream girls just because I'm super competitive and I was just like, "Yeah, I'm, I'm the best."

>> So, in that moment of it, yeah, go ahead.

>> Right. That I mean, that kind of illustrates the grooming nature of these. It's the slow boil. It's the, it's the, um, it's like inappropriate jokes and then they're inappropriate comments directed at you. He says, "Bluey, ginger, worship leader, damn girl." He says, "You are [ __ ] beautiful. Homeschools or not."

>> So,

>> That's that's a crazy thing for a pastor to say to a female staff. Um, that's obviously intentional. And so he used to, he, he would, he would try to normalize this within this context of, well, this is what, this is what affection looks like in the kingdom.

>> I, I haven't asked Eric Gregson this. Maybe I will. I don't think he was sending these texts to Eric telling him he's handsome. It, it's embarrassing to look back on it, but like I said, I don't have guilt, um, or shame anymore about the whole entire thing other than that I feel incredible regret for not seeing it as it was and protecting the women instead of, I was protecting Jonathan. You know, when allegations started to come out about what he was doing, he would give me a call and he would tell me that all these women are, he would say that they were crazy. They were trying to take his ministry away from him. They were blowing everything out of proportion. And I believed him. And he would, I would say, "Well, let me, cuz I was always the problem solver. Let me call them and talk with them about it." He'd be like, "No, no, no, no. We're figuring it out. The accountability board or the advisory board, we're figuring it out. We're talking about it. You don't need to talk to anybody." And I would believe him. [clears throat] My life was busy. I had four kids and, you know, it, it was busy. And so I didn't, that's the, a huge regret of mine was not contacting these women that he was accusing of, um, lying about this stuff or being crazy. Um, I didn't ask, ask them what their side of the story was. I totally believed Jonathan. M so, um, when did that shift for you? And, and bear in mind, like, oh, yeah.

>> You had already had some of your own experiences with Jonathan.

>> Yeah. So, I had had, um, it.

was [sighs and gasps] came. It went back far.

So, um, spring summer of 2015, we had a graduation in, um, Europe in the Netherlands and we had toured down to Germany and then we flew back to Rochester for a second graduation, our East Coast graduation or summit. And um, I was the lone traveler from the States with Jonathan. We met up with other team members in Europe.

But when we were traveling back from that particular trip, um Jonathan had a first class seat ticket and I was back in, you know, economy plus or something cuz it was a really long flight. Um and he actually came back to my seat and traded his first class seat with the guy who was sitting next to me back in coach. And I thought that was really weird. I was like, "Why would you give that up? I wouldn't give up first class. Are you kidding me? In an international flight, I I want to go sleep."

So, [laughter] um I just thought that was like, "Wow, that was really weird." Um strange, but um >> interesting. He didn't give it to you. >> I know, right? He just wanted to text me. So he it through the course of that flight um he feigned tiredness and then put his head on my shoulder which migrated down towards my chest area and I couldn't breathe. It was one of those times where I couldn't move. I didn't know what to do. My heart was pounding out of my chest. I thought I was going to have a panic attack. I knew there was like high anxiety. I just didn't know what to do because this wasn't something that I was on board with ever um with anyone other than my own husband.

So, it was one of those things where I'm like, well, I mean, he does call me his best friend literally every day. Um maybe he just needed to rest. He's asleep. So, I kind of like tried to shove like shove him off me or shrug him off me, but he it would just continue to come back. And and I think that triggered something in me because that was the first time I really remember him crossing a line physically with me other than the really long hugs and the kisses on the cheeks, which was also something he normalized within Welton Academy and the staff. And so, um, that was the first time that I really remember.

And right after we got done with that East Coast graduation, I got incredibly sick. um like death sick. I almost died like three times. I was hospitalized for three weeks and um I came out you know by the grace of God I survived um what had happened to me and it was an acute attack on my immune system. It was nothing that I had previously um diagnosed. I had I had nothing else like this before in my life and just a sudden attack where my body tried to kill me. And >> did you have any family history of this? >> Zero family history. >> So no family history, no personal history. >> Suddenly this guy lays his head on your chest and it's the next day. >> No, it's like the next week cuz within that week I had gotten really really sick or I guess probably within the next few days I started to show signs >> um of being really really sick. I was like lying on the floor crying because I couldn't move during the middle of this conference um that we were at. So it was very shortly after. >> So it's an autoimmune disorder um that you developed uh and you almost died. >> Yeah, it was um inflammatory bowel disease. So I developed um ulcerative colitis, acute sorry acute ulcerative colitis with a toxic mega colon within like a week. Um which means that my entire large intestine dilated up and was just air like hemorrhaging basically. Um but it it dilated up to 10 cm and I had to have emergency surgery to remove my entire large intestine. So, it took a year and a half of a ton of reconstructive surgeries and my life still is not the same. My life was forever changed physically >> because of that. And then also there was a lot of mental stuff that goes along with medical trauma. So, >> I wasn't I wasn't there. And that was one of the reasons why I resigned from Wilton Academy was because I just didn't feel like I could function mentally as well anymore.

>> Yeah. So, you know, we just learned about uh the story of Madison Deiri um who was under Jeremiah Johnson's >> uh ministry. She she was Jeremiah Johnson's worship leader. And she had had some autoimmune stuff before, but when she started working under Jeremiah, it turned up to 11. and and it just exacerbated to the point where she's having multiple micro seizures in the middle of the night. She's having these demonic things appearing to her, you know, like um you know, all this stuff. And it's just absolutely terrible. When she leaves Jeremiah's ministry, um she it stops. Um it's it's not it's not as though she's like perfectly healthy or anything like that, but um it stopped. >> Yeah. >> Um it was something was it something similar like that with you? >> Um the well my body stopped fighting me. However, I was put on some really crazy medication that I had a a lot of um side effects from. So I don't really know. However, I haven't had a flare up in over six years. So, um, I'm not on any kind of medications anymore. You've >> roughly about the time that you're no longer dealing with Jonathan. >> Yep. >> Is the time when these things stop. >> Yeah. Actually, it's kind of funny cuz we kind of um hinted at this a little bit, but um I I'm a recording artist, so I wrote a whole entire album basically about my journey and my struggle and beginning again after all this. and I released it in 2020 and that was pretty much the last time. And I had felt it was a release of me saying I'm done. >> So, >> um that was a it was I think it was a prophetic act of myself and um just saying I'm going to send out this simple album just to be like I'm I'm done with this.

As you're moving forward, some of these uh women start raising their voice and you are defending >> Jonathan. Um when did things shift for you when you stopped being his defender?

>> Um fast forward a few years, we were at again in Rochester, New York doing a summit. It was the fall of 2017. I was pregnant with um our fourth and um I remember vividly because after this after the meetings generally as a staff we would go to a movie or go do something like laser tag. This particular time we went to a movie. Jonathan had mentioned to Renee when we got to the theater, "Hey, make sure Lindsay sits by me." Which was really kind of strange to me. I'm like, who cares? We're all together. Um, so he sits next to me in the theater and we're watching a movie and um, Jonathan reaches over and grabs my hand and laces his fingers through my fingers. And [snorts] this just totally took me by surprise. He had never done anything like this before. It scared me. Again, I had this panic like I don't know what to do with myself. In my brain, I'm thinking he literally just got done with a marriage counseling session with Danny and Sherry Silk at at, you know, like an hour or two before he came to this because Danny was speaking at our conference. And so I was like, is there something wrong? Does he just need a friend? So it was kind of like I squeezed his hand back and then made an excuse to get up to go to the bathroom. I had a great excuse because I was pregnant, so I was just like, I got to go to the bathroom. Um, so I was able to break away, but all the while I'm in the bathroom like, "What the heck just happened? I don't understand why he's showing this towards me when this is not something I have ever indicated that I'm okay with." I mean, we playfully with the text back and forth kind of a thing. I'm trying to brush it off, but I've never reciprocated any um romantic affection back to him.

So, I get back to my seat. And I'm scooting over as far as I possibly can to um Rene's on my other side as far away as I can to her. But then Jonathan comes over and again leans his head on my chest. And that was the second time. And so I'm like, "Somebody's got to see what's going on." Renee actually had no idea. It was dark in the theater. The seats were big. And it was just one of those things where I'm like, "I don't know what to So, as soon as the movie was out, um I first called my husband. I was like, "Mike, what? You won't believe what just happened. I don't really know what to do. What do I do?" And so, he's just like, "Well, maybe try to figure out." My husband's precious. I love my husband, how he um approaches these things. He's he's like, "Well, maybe find out what's what he's struggling with and and why this might be happening." But then I didn't want to approach Jonathan. I was too ashamed um and too scared to confront him. So, I actually started talking with Renee. I told Renee what had happened and then she because she had taken over my position um as the CEO of Wilton Academy. She's just told me all these stories that she had been collecting from all the staff members of very similar things happening. The handholding in movie theaters, the um you know the laying on you, your shoulder migrating down to your chest kind of a thing. and just so and I started hearing more and more stories from Anat were just mind blown about all the things putting all the pieces together and that's when it switched for me.

We gathered um the executive staff and one of the five-fold ministers set a time and um confronted Jonathan over Zoom. So it was the executive staff and Ivan Roman. We got on a Zoom call with Jonathan. He said, "Thank you guys for being great friends. I'm sorry I messed up." He cried a lot. And he said he was going to clean up his mess. He would he would call me occasionally and say things like, you know, so and so is uh you know, not telling the truth or they're crazy. Again, he was trying to tell me that all these people were on the war path trying to destroy his ministry. Um, and again, I believed him over and over again to the point where he actually before he had his restoration board, he had an accountability board and he put me on it. I was actually on the accountability board when um Danny Silk saw that when he became when he got involved, he saw that I was on the board and he was like, "What is Lindsay doing on this board? She's one of the victims." And to me, I still hadn't even grasped that I was a victim.

>> And it wasn't until later that summer when another um pastor who was involved um in the advisory board called me and said, "Lindsay, he's lying to you." >> And those words hit me to my core and everything crumbled and I never spoke to Jonathan again.

You're now about to hear from Don Weaver, Ashley McCreary, and Eileen Corona. They all are going to share their stories of abuse that they experienced. And and I'm going to be weaving in between their stories to highlight the parallels and the patterns that Welton followed as he was grooming some of his victims. You're also about to hear from Jill Monaco who was a student at Welton Academy. She is a survivor of abuse, though not particularly the grooming sort of abuse from Jonathan, but she has become an advocate for those who have suffered SA at the hands of clergy and her input is also very valuable and I want to thank all of these women for their participation in this video. Thank you guys so much.

So, I grew up in Montana and uh had a really wonderful upbringing, wonderful parents, um knew Jesus from the time I was 5 years old. That's when I gave my heart to Jesus and it was real. Um so, I've I've walked my entire 37 years with Jesus as my best friend. So, at at the time that I met Jonathan, I I think I would have been either 23 or 24. I think his his current like hot book at the time was School of the Seers and I think he may have just written Raptureless. And so he was kind of hitting this the the itinerate ministry really hard. The associate pastor at the church I was going to at the time um decided to invite him to come and speak um at one of our conferences. And he lo and behold did decide to come and we were all kind of surprised. There was always this aura around John that he was like pretty big, pretty important. He was connected to all these people and we were just like a tiny little church out in the middle of nowhere. So, it felt like a big deal that he was coming. And um when he got there, his teaching was so impressive and um to me definitely um led me into what I would consider as my theology. Now the way it was presented was very much as if he was the one who had come up with and he was the the holder of the knowledge, you know, but at the time he just he came across as very persuasive, very charismatic, very charming and extremely humble and very uh almost shy, I guess, or socially awkward. And the reason I'm bringing all of that up is because I think it's important to remember that he seems now to be extremely trustworthy and sincere and humble and all these things that he also seemed then. And so this is where it gets tricky with someone like John. How do they convince you that they've changed when they always seemed so sincere? They always seemed so honest. They always seemed so humble. He seems exactly like he's always seemed um when I watch his videos now.

So, here's this, you know, very um humble but but powerful speaker. And I I was very taken in and I did really appreciate and still do appreciate some of the things that he was teaching. And so, um this was just before he was starting Welton Academy for the first year. I enrolled um pretty much right out the gate. He said I didn't even know he knew who I was. I didn't speak to him personally that time. Um like I said, I'm pretty introverted as well. So, um I didn't know he knew who I was, but for whatever reason, he decided I was not going to have to pay for the school. So, I've never paid a dime to Walton Academy going through the entire time. Um, so I automatically feel like, "Oh, that that's really cool." I, um, I feel really honored that he would do that for me. Um, he started following me on Facebook. Um, again, we've never spoken to each other, but he's following me on Facebook. Um, he came back the following year, uh, to speak again. Same conference, same time of year. And, um, at this one, first night, I'm sitting in the front row. Ju just to be clear about something >> back then I don't think he followed you on Facebook. He probably friended you, right? So he would have to respond. >> That's true. >> My only point is that >> it's a very strange thing when a minister is reaching out to a single female. >> Uh I mean obviously we we're friends and with people from all over the world, but it's just a little suspect.

So I think my first encounter with Jonathan Walton was through reading his books and I think he came to a church in Colorado probably I don't know maybe 2013 2014 maybe I don't really remember. So I had read his books and then he started his online school and so I was following him at that point and um signed up to be part of the school. And then after that at some point I think I had messaged him um just to thank him for his books and the impact they've had on my life and and I'd also gotten a scholarship to the school. >> Did you got a scholarship for the school so you didn't have to pay anything? That's that's true with every one of the girls I've talked to. >> That does not shock me. [laughter] >> So, uh, he gave you a scholarship. Did Did he reach out to you and like offer you that scholarship personally? >> If I remember correctly, yes. Um, it would have been through I think Facebook was when we first started interacting back and forth. >> H Okay. So, your friend's on Facebook. He gives you a scholarship full ride to the Welton Academy. >> Yeah, >> you're probably feeling pretty good. >> And >> I was totally psyched. M >> um and then I think at some point, probably within 6 months, he reached out to me again asking if I wanted to be on his staff um as Rene's personal assistant, which of course I said yes because, you know, one, it felt good, you know, to be personally asked by Jonathan Welton to be on staff. Um, and just what I'd seen of the staff, they were always very nice and I just thought they were really cool from the little interactions that I'd had with them. And eventually John gave me more responsibilities until eventually I was, you know, director of the third year program.

I grew up in the charismatic movement. Um, I was four years old speaking in tongues. Like all of that was just very um that's all I ever known. I was homeschooled, so like literally my entire life was the church. My parents were elders and kind of just grew up in that. Um I when I turned like I was always doing worship stuff, so like leading worship in youth group, even speaking at youth group and that kind of was what I felt for me was my calling um for my entire life was to become a worship leader and a pastor. And that was it. Um, one of the big things that I started noticing early on was how difficult it was for women to have a voice within the church. And so going into adulthood, um, and really then at that point making strides in becoming a worship pastor and becoming a speaking pastor. And around that time, I think I was probably like 19 or 20. and that I was part of this woman's group um where we had like a spiritual mentor and she um invited Jonathan Wilton um over to speak to us and that was really early on in his like ministry career. I don't even know if he had written one book at that point. he might have, but it was very very early on. And his whole message to us was just like this women empowerment and how, you know, God wants to use our voices and, you know, talking about all the women around Christ that were um commissioned to go and spread the gospel of Jesus. And uh such an empowering and powerful message. And for me it was like the first time I heard uh a man who had you know leadership like recognizing what was in us and what we had to bring and what God was calling us to do. And so since then um I you know we built this friendship with Jonathan um and he would I live in California so he would come and visit and that was for like 10 years before I started working closely with him. Um and so knew him really well. Um I also was going most of my life I um I had experienced as young as nine I had experienced um abuse within the church um sexual abuse within the church by multiple different people at different stages of my life and obviously trauma from that. Um, and a lot of it was hidden for me because the amount of shame that I felt as a victim as if it was my fault. And even like the first time it happened to me, I was 9 years old and at nine I felt like it was my fault. Nobody told me that it was my fault, but I already like absorbed that. So going into you know adulthood and hearing having done like I said multiple times like from youth pastors, speakers that had come to visit our church, elders sons, all of this like multiple times of this happening. So then I you know am in such a vulnerable state and again the shame that comes with that most of those stories went untold. I didn't tell them. There'll be no justice for a lot of them because there was I just it was all hidden. Not even my parents knew. And so going into this as an adult um and then having somebody like Jonathan who seemed like such a safe space for me um and knowing all the trauma that I had been through, knowing about the abuse, um knowing about some very very hard things um that have happened to me. He was such a safe space and it was like he felt like a big brother to me. Like he was he was like a big brother that not only was safe but that believed in me and was like encouraging me to go after the calling that God had placed on me. And so after like about I think we'd been friends for like nine or 10 years at this point and um I had gotten married um because of a lot of the trauma that happened in my life. my husband and I's marriage probably the first five or six years was was very challenging. Um, and we had a lot of healing to go through and we did do that. Like we did all the things like we were going to pastors for like therapy for marriage therapy but it was pastor there wasn't an actual therapist. So we're like going to these counselors and none of it helped. Like we were struggling and um it it was it was really hard. And so Jonathan kind of knew about all of that that was going on because it was such a heartbreaking thing for me. Um and it was what was happening in our marriage was just like eating me up. And so he was very aware of like all of this that was happening. And so at this point um I decided to join Welton Academy because he had started Welton Academy. And um I had already gone through the Bethl School of Worship. And at this point I was also the main worship pastor at a church up um near near Bethl and they were sister churches with Bethl. So like Danny Silk, Bill Johnson, Chris Velton were all on our board and uh so I was leading worship there, leading for like School of the Prophets and very involved with with all of that. Um, and so then at that point I was like, you know what? I I want to get more theology if Blake could understand it. I mean, I feel like I could quote or I used to be able to like quote the Bible from front to back, but like I was like, I really want to do like a deep dive. And so then um Jonathan's like, I'm opening up the school like you should join. And so I was like, sure. So I I even think he like let me join for free. He was just like, here's come, you know, be a part of it. Which we were poor. We were worship pastor. We weren't making any money. Uh, so I was like, "Yeah, awesome." And while I was in there, I was like probably halfway through, he um asked me to come on staff and I was like, "Absolutely." And up until this point, I had been doing all the marketing for our church anyways. So, I'd like handled all the marketing for their school worship, for events, for everything. So, he was like, "I need you to help me with marketing." I'm like, "Sure, I'm on board. Like, tell me what to do." So I jumped in right away, started helping him. Um, and then he eventually asked me to teach some classes on worship. We started working more closely. And right around this point is where he started a Facebook group page, Daughters of Jonathan. I don't think that's what it was called, but basically [laughter] that's what it was. You know, a lot of a lot of victims are easy targets because they've been abused in the past. um or or especially if they grew up with abuse at home. I feel like I was so protected and so sheltered. Um like not in a controlling or bad way, but like my dad was a really wonderful dad. My brothers were wonderful brothers. I was so cared for by the men in my life that it made me an easy target in a lot of ways unfortunately because I just although I knew there was a lot of bad in the world, I cared about, you know, social justice, human trafficking, all that stuff. Um I just would have never imagined that somebody who's supposed to be in a position of trust would break that with me. And so, um, I don't remember feeling weird about that at all. Um, I more felt maybe a little bit like special, like, oh, that's cool. Like, he wants to actually be friends or like keep track of me or whatever. Anyway, which weird now to think about keep track of me. Um, and I think that is exactly what he was doing because he knew all about what I had done on the the time between the two years that he came out and spoke. And so he came out and spoke uh the second year and um he the very first night called me up to prophesy with him. And I remember knowing he was going to do that. I was sitting there in the front row and he said, "Tonight I'm going to do something a little different. We're going to start out by prophesying. I'm going to ask a couple people to come up and do it with me." And as soon as he said that, I was like, I'm one of them. And I was I was one of the two people. Um had a great time. Loved doing that. And he then um after um he sought me out, we sat down, had a conversation. He asked me what my I felt like my calling was. He he just wanted to get a feel for me and and what I wanted out of life is basically what he was asking. and he was putting it in Christian terms of um what what do you think your calling is? What do you think God wants you to do with your life? And at that time, I I really wanted to um be involved in anti-trafficking work. And so that's what I told him. And he decided by the end of that weekend, he gave me his personal cell phone number. He asked me, "Please, please call me. I actually I know people. I can get you connected. I can I can make sure that you are able to do what you feel like God wants you to do, [laughter] which looking back is so ludicrous, like God needed his help, you know. Um and and again felt really flattered. I did think it was a little weird because I didn't I'd only talked to him very briefly. Um so for me, I was just like, I'm never calling you. Like I don't barely call my best friends. Like I'm not calling you. Um but I had his phone number and um I was still attending the school. I reenrolled for the second year. At some point during that year, he decided he wanted to um start a missions program within the school and he was looking for a missions director. They sent out an email to all of the students basically saying if this is something that interests you, please apply. I didn't see the email so I didn't respond. Um, I doubt I would have even if I had seen it because I was not technically qualified for a missions director position. He contacted me somehow and asked me to give him a call um because he wanted to talk to me about the open position and he asked me personally to apply for it which I did. I ended up getting hired and I worked there. I think that was 2014 and I I only did two years. At some point during those couple of years, I think John started to realize that I wasn't as easy of a target as what he initially thought I was going to be. Um, I have a lot of inner strength and inner resilience and intelligence that I don't think he was banking on. And I started to get even though there was there's a lot of confusion happening, there's a lot of cloudiness, there's um desperation in a lot of ways. We were being gaslit like crazy. I started to through all of that mental fog realize that something wasn't feeling right and my response was to start putting up like boundaries to him. Now this is somebody who from the very beginning was sort of mandating an openheartedness. He was mandating transparency and vulnerability. Um there was never the sense that he needed to earn that vulnerability to be close to us. It was just this is part of our culture and you will be vulnerable and open with me or there's no place for you here that was implied at the end of that. So, um, at some point in that second year of working for him, I really started to push back on some of that. And I didn't like him, um, dictating certain things. And, um, I didn't like the way he was responding to me, the way he was speaking to me when I did give him push back. Um, and so there was some tension with us. This made him want to do what he has done with everyone that's ever given him push back, which is to slowly push them out of his life and to do it in a way that um benefits him. I I don't know how he did it, but somehow he managed to to convince the rest of the executive staff that I wasn't the right person for the position. Ultimately decided that he just wanted to close the the department. and he was trying basically to push me out just far enough that I wouldn't have contact with anybody else who worked there. But he still wanted to have contact with me. So he was proposing all these other things that possibly I could do. I could be an ambassador for Welton Academy. I could this. I could that. And um I ultimately ended up the last missions trip that I led for him was to Buenoseris. And in that I the very last night I had a very very clear open vision um in which God told me I was on a chess board and God told me to kill the queen. And I looked at him and I was like why would I nobody kills their queen in chess. Why would you kill your own queen? And he said well who do you think the queen is? And I said well Welton Academy is the queen so you got to kill the queen. And so I walked away from that knowing I needed to leave. Um to which I did. I I resigned with the >> Go ahead. >> Question about that. Did you know about Jill Monaco's vision uh about the >> No, I've never heard it. I know that she had one. I know she gave a word of warning, but I I've never even heard it. >> Yeah. Interesting. Okay. >> Well, I'll let you finish your story. I I might I might put this uh put her vision into the into the video here because that's um she she had a vision that was about the pawns coming and uh uh it it had all everything to do with chess and it was kind of crazy. Yeah, >> that is really cool. I'm I'm very curious to hear about that. Uh so in year three when you're on the prophetic track, one of the things we were assigned to do was um write we the assignment was to pray and get a word for the movement at Welton Academy, which I find that word movement now is really highlighted so often. Um and so I did I went to prayer and the first word I heard was stalemate. And I had a vision of a chessboard and I saw the whole chess game playing out very very quickly. Um, I thought the word was positive in a lot of ways. God wanted to use women. And I saw the pawns taking land and taking the next square. And the warning part of the word was that we can't show favoritism to people that we don't consider as good. be careful of partnerships because we think of the pawns as a throwaway piece but actually the pawns are the ones that um if I remember correctly have something to do with protecting the queen and it can be very powerful piece and then also there was a warning in there that um once someone is taken out of the game they're taken it's called the endgame they're taken out forever and there's no going back they can't even scream from the sidelines because they're not part of the game anymore so there was a warning But I didn't know that it was going to hit so hard with Jonathan because I didn't know it was about him. I just had this general word. It lots of details. It's still on my blog. But when it got back to them, I never heard anything back. I didn't hear what was the response. What did the staff and people think? What I found out much later um from Renee, who was the COO at the time, is that she read the word and thought, "Oh, this this has to do with these problems we're dealing with." And Jonathan, from what I was told, was very angry. And that's when he started a campaign against me behind the scenes. And this is all unbeknownst to me at the time that he started slandering me. um you know telling people to avoid me like really the shunning the whole strategy of starting to ostracize or create a scapegoat situation um completely unbeknownst to me. I did resign. I can't remember what the timeline was, but I resigned. And this is another example of how good he is at convincing people of stuff. I said the words, "I resign. I no longer feel like I want to work for you." Um, we're still friends, blah blah blah, but I'm resigning. I said that with Lindsay Wallace on the phone with us as she was as the acting executive director at the time. So, she's on there as a witness. Years later, she and I are are making amends and and catching up again. And she tells me, "I'm so sorry I fired you." And I was like, "Lindsay, you didn't fire me. What are you talking about?" out. She said, "No, I I fired you." Said, "No, you didn't. You were on the call with me and John when I said the words, I'm resigning. You never fired me." And she was just mind-b blown. She was like, "I've thought all this time that John convinced me to fire you." But just another example of how he distorts things and confuses things to such a degree that you don't even really know what's the real reality that you're living in anymore. And um and it was very much to his benefit to for everybody to think that he had fired me. Um because then whatever I have to say, it's pretty easy to paint it as disgruntled employee, you know. Um but so that gets us through that. I did end up staying in relationship with him um to some degree. It was it was definitely um there was a lot more distance literally and and figuratively. I did go to one more Welton Academy summit and then I went to see him one time um when he was speaking near where I was living at the time and um that's that's when he held my hand in the movie theater, the one that I wrote about.

>> Can you walk us through that because so he's I I was curious about this. He just happens to be speaking near you. >> Mhm. >> And then invites you to a movie with him >> and it's just the two of you alone. >> Yep. Yeah. So after um after the I can't remember if it was a conference or what he was was speaking um I I went to listen to him and afterwards of course he's depleted. He's emotionally drained. I don't want to be around other people. I trust you. I know that you will be safe for me to be with. And as the type of person that I am, that's like >> makes you feel good. It makes you feel important. >> Yeah. And and it's literally like I love to be that for people. Every one of my friends will tell you I'm the safest friend they have, you know, >> and and so he's he's speaking my language and he knew he was doing that. And so >> and he's married. >> He's married. >> Yep. Karen was not with him, but Yeah. Yeah. >> His wife isn't with him. He's coming up to a single woman. >> Keep in mind, I've traveled with him all over the world. Um I I've been he's he's tried to have me alone in his hotel rooms. I have never I've always brought someone with me. You know, I he has been working at this for a long time. And I know what his he I've heard him say explicitly those things. So it was implied in the And he did say, "I'm depleted. I'm you know, I need I need to be just me and you because I'm depleted. I don't want to be around people." And you know his introversion was a huge part of how he manipulated as well as he did. Um and there was always a pulling on the he would identify the empaths and pull on the empathy [gasps] which I you know fell prey to that many times. So, um, and I remember thinking of the first time, the first time he held my hand in the movie theaters, I we were actually at a staff retreat and all of the staff was with us, including like we were sitting in the middle of other people who worked with us for him. And I remember justifying it by the fact that, well, surely people are seeing and nobody's saying anything. But I've asked the people that were around us and they said they they just never saw it. Um, >> and this is a pattern. I don't know, you know, I don't know the timeline, but we've interviewed I know I've heard this story at least two times already. >> It it seems to me that going to a movie is one of his emos. You know, it's dark, people can't see, and yet we're in public, so who can accuse me of anything? The whole team is around me. But this is the third story I've heard. Maybe we'll hear more of >> touching someone inappropriately in a movie theater. >> Yeah. Yeah. Really interesting. I know he I know he's grabbed um legs and and that kind of thing as well. I don't remember that with me. Um I just I the handholding just went above and beyond for me. I I can't remember anything else. um during >> so explain that you're sitting in the movie theater and then >> suddenly >> what happens >> suddenly he grabs my hand and um you know the second time that it happened I wasn't working for him anymore so there was a little bit more of a like a degree of equality but the first time he did it he was my boss and so let's keep that in mind as well I know it's a ministry, but he was my boss. My very meager pay, such as it was, was coming from him. There was always these implied um promises of, again, going back to the very first time I ever spoke to him, I'm going to make sure that God's call on your life comes true. And >> yeah, and he wasn't just your boss. He was a a spiritual leader, a prophetic leader in your life. Brought you up to prophesy. So this is somebody in your mind who hears from God, is anointed by God. So whether even after you were done working for him, uh he was still a minister of the gospel at least in in profession and he did have that place of uh position, authority, influence in your life. >> Yep. Absolutely. And um Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It's it's hard for me to wrap my brain around how there's still a I think it's the minority that I've experienced anyway, but there is a a contingent of people who think, well, you just get up and walk out. Yeah. If that's your trauma response, if that's what you do when you're afraid, you get up and walk out or you stand up and you yell or that's there are three four known I think four known responses. Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. And unfortunately, at least back then, I was a freeze and fawn type of a person. You go along so that you don't make it worse. and and um >> and and that is not abnormal at all because >> right >> what do you do? What if you just screamed right there? >> Then you know he lets go of your hand. What's the matter? Why are you screaming in a movie theater or maybe he doesn't mean it the way I think he means it? Maybe he's just maybe just being friendly. >> Ron, Yep. >> That is exactly Yeah, that's exactly it. I did I can only speak for myself. I'm sure it's true for others. I did the heavy lifting for him in that sense because I would convince my own self that he didn't realize he is because he he is socially awkward. He as charming and and as engaging as he can be, he's very odd person and highly introverted and he is just a little bit weird. And I consistently would convince myself that he just does not know how inappropriate this is. Now, of course, on the other side of it, I can look at it and be like, "Well, duh, dude." Like, if any of my other any of my guy friends, whether they're married or not, grabs my hand out of the blue without my consent, I'm bro, what you doing? Like, don't touch my hand like that. That's weird. You know, >> and it and it's not like, you know, when you join hands in a circle to pray type of hand holding, right? Like he's interlacing his fingers, he's stroking your fingers, he's caressing your palm. like, you know, there's it's it is >> and it's so shocking. I I know it's just a hand, which is why I entitled what I wrote. I titled it that way. It's it's so what? It's just a hand or I can't remember exactly how I worded it, but there is that level of like, well, it was just a hand. First of all, it was just a hand then and it was just a slightly too long hug before that and it was just a you know what I mean? like he's working up to something. He hasn't gotten to the something he's working up to, but he's working up to something. I remember my sh my breathing was extremely shallow. I am in extreme distress through this entire movie, hour two-hour long movie. It was the movie Split. So, however long that movie is, I'm sitting there in extreme distress. And there was absolutely no way he didn't know that I was in extreme distress. I never my hand is limp. I am not responding in any way other than to sit frozen and I I remember him trying to talk to me a couple times. I don't even recall, you know, what that would have been. I And no response whatsoever. He knew he absolutely knew that I was uncomfortable and he continued the interaction. But um but it is it is it's like you it's likening yourself almost to like a little bunny rabbit that's just like like literally in the fox's teeth and you're just trying to stay as still as possible so that he hopefully doesn't eat you. And um it is all primal. it. There's nothing. Do I did I not I never think about this anymore, but back when I was thinking about it a lot. Yeah. I would fantasize about standing up and smacking him or, you know, even just standing up and walking out and never speaking to the man again. You know, it's like something in that moment to um >> to break it would have been wonderful. But I there was no option available to me. I couldn't think of what to do. All I knew was to stay still. We walked out to my car. We don't know when we're going to see each other again. Turns out never, thank God. Um, but we don't know uh when we're ever going to see each other again. So, it's a long hug. It's me. I have my my car door open. It's a little Honda Civic. I have my car car door open and I'm kind of in between the car door and the car and he's still hugging me. And I remember him pressing me up back up against the car and he kissed

My one cheek, which was common. But then he also kissed my other cheek. And I remember the movement across my face was very slow. And we know when somebody is feeling it and wants to really kiss you. And I was like, "This man is about to kiss me." And I remember when he kissed my my other cheek and then kind of pulled back and looked at me. I was like, "Okay, got to go." and I just like dipped down and got in my car. It was like in that moment it did become run because I realized that freezing was not going to serve me any further. And I I actually did have um thankfully thankfully I had the ability to at that moment make a decision and leave.

Um, we went to Washington uh Washington state and like rented out at this big cabin and it was like a staff retreat um for a couple days. John was really pushing, you know, physical affection is really healthy. I'm like father figure, a good father like hugs his kids, kisses his kids. During that trip, like it was pretty late at night and we had all kind of been going to bed and like he walked up to me and said good night and like give me this really long hug which was like minutes long, like not just like a long hug, like it was minutes. Um, which, you know, for me, I have kind of like a traumatic like background with like father figures and stuff. So, in my mind, I was just like, well, like I'm just not used to physical affection. I'm not really a touchy-feely person. That's why this feels weird, you know, because I wanted to trust him and he'd put a lot of time I feel like it getting to know me better. Um, so I felt like he kind of understood me on some level.

We went to um a conference in New York, close to where he lives or lived. It was I think just about Wel Academy and I remember on that trip like there was at one point where we actually went to him and Karen's house. Me and another person named John were all in the same room, like the living room and there was like super long like awkward hugs, like longer than the ones like he'd given me before. And at that point, like that one did actually make me kind of be like, that was kind of weird. Like I was really fighting it cuz I was like, I don't want to I don't want to believe that this man would ever have any bad intentions toward me. Um, so I just kind of wrote it off. Like I was like, that was a little weird, but not all that. And then like I felt like he with that time specifically was trying to get me and this other person that was there like more connected because she was she came on after I did. I just remember it feeling like very weird cuz it was just this three of us on the couch and [snorts] like Karen like was never in the room. I was like, this is really odd. Like she could walk out here and this feels like odd.

You would do like weekly one-on-ones with me and then like we also would meet for work stuff. Well, during those like one-on-one meetings, there were always FaceTime. Um, and they were always extremely emotional and um, it was almost almost so much where I remember almost like not wanting to do them because I knew that if I got into these calls that it was going to really like bring stuff up, but I also thought that was part of healing, which I think it can be to a degree, but not the way it was done. And so we would have these like hour-long conversations and it was just he and I, my husband wasn't in the room. Um, and he would, you know, start asking like normal questions, but then he would always end up going really, like I felt like he would push the buttons of trauma that he knew I had and it would cause me to just become extremely raw and vulnerable and and then and then the conversations over time started becoming increasingly inappropriate.

It. I was one of the ones towards the tail end of before all this came out. So, I think had this been early on, my story probably would have looked different. It probably would have been worse. Um, but thank goodness um it was towards the tail end for me. But, uh then, you know, he would ask questions like cuz he knew we were struggling with our marriage and he knew about that. Um, he knew about past abuse for me and so he would then ask questions like, how are you and your husband doing, which is fine, but then it would be like, how is your sex life, you know, like, are you being satisfied, are you, you know, fulfilled in your marriage bed. I remember he said that one time and I and we were in a really bad place, so I would just be crying because like, I'm not okay and we're not okay and I don't know who else I can talk to about this and he has been a safe person for the last 10 years. Um, but also this feels grimy and I remember every time getting off the phone call feeling like like I got slimed and um, then that's kind of when everything started coming out.

>> So at the time you're like, hey, maybe this is kind of normal, like, you know, I've got to talk about this with somebody, might as well talk about this with who this guy who's sort of a spiritual mentor. He's kind of a a pastor figure, but then when you begin to realize that, oh, he's been grooming several other women and then he's um, you know, he's he has a history of clergy sexual abuse. Um, he is using his position of authority to um take advantage of others now in in his sexual way, whether or not it's like gone all the way. You're like suddenly beginning to view what was already sus behavior in a new light. And um, what was that realization like for you?

>> Yeah, I think it's um cuz you're right. Like I feel like like sometimes the questions that he asked, we had also answered in our marriage counseling with one of our pastors. However, the difference was my husband was also in the room.

And >> that was, I think, a big defining like moment for me was realizing that all of these conversations happened with him not being in the room. Um, and I think with being raised in the Christian church, um, you're often you're taught to really trust your leaders. Like that is they're the like you were taught to trust them. They have like God's will in mind and all of that. Um, and so I had my whole life been conditioned to answer questions that make me feel uncomfortable because God was doing work in me and it was uncomfortable because God was bringing it out. So at this point I had already shut down that mostly, I still had some of it, but shut down the um, the notion within myself to say, "Ooh, this is uncomfortable, I shouldn't go here, this is not safe for me." And I had replaced it with, "If it's uncomfortable, then it's God." And so when we're having these conversations, I am uncomfortable, but it's probably because it's God. And that is where the biggest issue was because he knew that. Um, so it would be easy for him to to to get me where he wanted me to go. I think it wouldn't um, I wouldn't have broken down the same way >> if my husband was with me. It would have been very different.

>> Right. So your husband was there also. The guy wasn't grooming, you know, >> right? >> 10 10 other women. So >> 10 other women. Yeah. Exactly. And then and then just hearing stories of finding out that you're not the only person that he was speaking to in that way and asking, you know, like hearing those stories from other survivors being like, well, we have a like it was a copy and paste thing, you know. So that was again, it was just a, yeah, it was really weird.

The way everyone talked about him in my life. He was like had like I know that he came out with that book like Eyes of Honor or something. Um, but like it was more for me cuz I didn't even read it, but like it was more being like, oh, but you know, he's he's everything that we should, you know, try to be like um, so I didn't know all of that. Um, and if I did, I must have like, >> you know, cuz you're kind of you have rose-colored goggles on. Almost came out like, if you have a problem with this, it's your problem. >> Exactly. >> Like maybe you need to check your heart. If you think like you're the one being perverted, if you think this is perversion, you're the one that's being perverted. And I I especially like with his whole hugs thing that he would do. [laughter] I have a friend that he would always give her such a hard time because she wouldn't give him like full frontal like 60-second hugs. She always did like a side hug. And every single time he would just like make fun of her for not wanting to do that. And at the time, I'm a hugger, so I it was never like an issue for me anyways. Um, but like at the time I was like, why don't you want to hug him? That's kind of weird, you know, like, are you sure it's not something with you? She had discernment and I just didn't see it.

So when um I was working for him, >> there was a few times where we kind of butt heads on graphics. Not a big deal, but like he looking back now again, it's one of those things where I was like, what? Uh, he wanted to use like Wonder Woman in one of his like ads or something because he was like super into Wonder Woman, >> which, you know, fine, but like let's not use it on a ad for ministry. >> Um, and I >> got >> So I like pushed back on that and I I basically was like, this is like 1990s colors. Like this is lame, you know? That's kind of where I was coming from. Um, and he didn't like that. And shortly after that, he sent me an email being like, "You're fired." Without like saying like very much like, "I don't think this is going to work out, but like I still want to mentor you." And so I was like, "Okay, fine. Whatever." You know, it wasn't my main gig, so I was like, "That's fine." I was doing it more of like I was a friend to him. Um, I don't even know if he was paying me. Um, and but I still kept that like relationship, but this was right at that like like maybe a month or two out before maybe even less than that, right before everything um came out. And uh when it did, I was at my job and uh all of a sudden and I was working in sales, so like I we I couldn't leave. Like I was at my desk and my phone started blowing up and he was just like calling my phone multiple times. I was like, this is super weird. Why is he calling me this many times? Like that he never does that. That's very weird. And before I had time to go back and call him, my best friend texted me and she just said, "Did you hear what happened with Jonathan?" And I was like, "No, but he's been calling me." Like, "Is he okay?" Cuz I thought like something happened to him. And um, she was like, "You haven't talked to him yet?" I said, "No." I was like, "But he's been calling me." And she said, "Before you call him, call me." And so I called her. She gave me the full rundown.

One of the biggest points of pain that came out from all of this, and I don't mean this to sound numb, but I've dealt with abuse my whole life. So, that didn't really rock me as much as knowing that he didn't actually see God's calling on my life. What he saw was a woman he was attracted to and was trying to exploit and take advantage of who was vulnerable. And for me, that was such a point of pain because I had never felt seen by any man in leadership that would trust me with the pulpit or trust me with leading worship by myself. Like, so this was a big deal. And um, that is probably for me what hurt the most because our relationship never got to an actual like straight up sexual abuse between he and I. It was definitely the grooming stages. Um, but that idea of being like the one person, the one person that I thought saw the gifts that God had given me, the talents, and was actually like encouraging that and was giving me a platform to use this. It was for his own gain. And that was like what destroyed me. That really hurt a lot. And even to this day, it still hurts to think about that. Um, and I've healed so much. I've been in therapy and like I heal so much, but like that like one like piece of being like, my entire life nobody saw me. Nobody knew what I had. And this one person did, but it it wasn't real.

>> And that was so painful. Yeah. >> What was the impact of this on your faith? I think that for me um up until this point my faith had already been unraveling for a lot of reasons. Um and now I am agnostic. Um I I know that there's probably like a there could be a higher being, a higher energy or whatever. Um and if there is, great. But if there's not, also great. And now I live my life in pursuit of peace and connection and unity and fulfillment with my family, with my friends, with my community. Um I'm an activist for fighting for those that are, you know, in need of fighting for the underprivileged. And I volunteer and do all of that. And so with what happened with Jonathan, there was already an unraveling. But when that happened, that was the green light for me to let go 100%. And um I remember telling my husband because so many outside factors were already breaking that down. And so I remember like I still this is like one of those core memories like we were driving in the car and I was crying about my faith unraveling and I looked at him and I said, "Honestly, if it wasn't for Jonathan, I don't think I could do this anymore." And this was probably like one or two weeks before everything came out. And so when it did come out and like I said the um that feeling of knowing that nobody had ever seen me and I was just being used my whole life by men in ministry like that's my whole life was like that. And so like that was it didn't it wasn't the sole reason and I will not give that to him. It was not the sole reason for my deconstruction of faith, but it was the final straw where I was like, "Yep, this is my green light that I'm done." Um, so I don't ever want to attribute my losing my faith to him because he's not that powerful, but it was a it was like a permission to be like, "It's okay. You can let go now." And that's that's what happened.

Would you at at this point still consider yourself a Christian? >> No. >> Did that have to do with this? You already had doubts, you know, right? But this uh is this the thing that pushed you over the edge then? >> Yeah. Yeah, it was it was the thing that pushed me over the edge just because you know there was so much correlation between you know John comparing himself to father God and you know for me having that connection was really helpful because I was like, okay, this is actually what it feels like to be loved by a father figure, like to be cared for and loved and have so on route for you. So when it all ended, you know, and there was no, you know, repentance or real apology, you know, it was just kind of, you know, the nail in the coffin. I was just like, I'm done with church and like all of these people cuz that's all, you know, it's all just manipulative, you know. Um, yeah.

>> So, Danny Silk gets involved. Eric, Gregson, Renee, you know, there's there's some people that are attempting to bring some accountability. When Danny got involved, uh, did Danny reach out to you? Like, did you have any support? >> Um, I don't remember him reaching out to me specifically. I remember there being like letters sent out from Danny that were just kind of generally to us. Um, I think when it all happened, we each got like six, four to six like therapy sessions paid for um by Karen. Um, I think that was because >> by Karen. >> Yeah. Um, I think I think it was because Danny like enforced that, but I don't remember um exactly. Uh, but there really wasn't any like direct like followup. I think the only person that reached out to me um was really just Renee um to see how I was doing. I was really disappointed in the reaction by most of the community towards the well staff and specifically towards the women who had been more severely abused by John. It was really disheartening to see so many people siding with him and it was really discouraging to hear like Danny Silk be like, "Well, it's he said, she said," you know, which is basically just, we don't really believe you. Like it might have happened that way, but that could be just your interpretation of it. And I think it just really got swept under the rug. I don't feel like any of us really got an apology, not a real one from John or, you know, Danny Sulk or anyone else that was involved. Um, you know, I feel like a lot of the women on the Well Academy team deserve a better apology than they've gotten.

[music] Danny comes around in early September and um and even though he's there, the girls aren't necessarily on board. I became like a trusted consultant to the board and therefore slowly kind of became like, let's just say like a liaison between the public and the board, the board to the public, the girls and the board through September and then I think into October. It wasn't until October that the girls on staff that were really tight with Jonathan. So, this is one of the things that's so bizarre about it is that although Jo although Jonathan is like showing up on these early meetings with the restoration board like crying and being all repentant and all of this type of stuff, well, the girls are still under the spell. So, what we know is that he was like still feeding them from the back end. He was still somehow getting to them. And so, they all start to like slowly put that together. But what really ultimately happened is that at a certain point um Robert Munzy and Joy Hogan get on a Zoom meeting with all of the women and that were on staff still and ultimately express to them the reality of everything that they have discovered up until this point. And the way they describe it is really fascinating. They say that they like almost just like watch the smoke release from their eyes all at the same time. It was like they were under a spell and they all came out of it and then they the way they tell the story is that they would just began to weep and they were all crying because they, everyone, like you said, there's so much guilt and shame involved when you're when you go through being victimized. Anyway, so that is when things really started to change and that's when all of the girls finally started to really share what actually happened for them. So it took until the school was closed. It took until there was multiple meetings. Um, it did take all the way into fall of 2018 um for things to finally really come to a head. And then um again, I feel like I say this all the time, but everyone dispersed and the it was like a new chapter, but that's when things almost in a way just got even worse with Jonathan [laughter] because you realized, oh, he's capable of so much and he did not stop for years. So, but as far as the girls are concerned, one of the things that was really challenging is that well, where do they go from here? They're what after are do we have for them? How can we support them? A lot of them lost the only job they ever had. Some of them took years to rebuild their lives. Some of them I don't know have actually fully rebuilt. Some of them have completely left the faith. Um, there's a lot of different stories that trickled out from there. And when we talk about restoration, it it, you know, immediately like this whole book, Unpunishable, it's all about restoring the guy who caused all that devastation, not the not the people who to no fault of their own were victims of this devastation.

>> And when we when we talk about restoration, that's that's what we should be thinking about. >> That's what we should be thinking about is um who is restoring them? But instead we is we don't have any interest in restoring them. We have interest in restoring the predators. >> Yeah. Yeah. And some of the people on the restoration board really did have a heart towards the women. But again, it is a very huge cleanup job. And it really takes a certain level of expertise and professionalism and and um education around the topic to really deal with them. And it's like and and a lot of them had fullblown churches that they were running and ministries and everything else and they don't have time. Um, it's like there's no there's not enough time, money, energy, resource for each of these restoration board members to it. It's it's like I see both sides of it. They they can't be running around making phone calls to 12 different girls all week long every single week to make sure they're okay and that they're restored, you know? And so um, there is that that is true. Um, some of them did get some counseling. Um, some of them wound up paying on it for it on their own. I know some because Jonathan and Karen were basically Danny had recommended or asked or demanded or required something in there that John and Karen pay for counseling for the girls. I don't know that that ever happened. I've spoken to one pastor uh [clears throat] very recently in in the last three weeks and he said he submitted multiple invoices that never got paid.

>> Um >> yeah, so there's some people got a few. I I know that. Um, but it says here >> um, this is part of Unpunishable. So it's documented in Danny's book that he recommended >> um, that Jonathan pay up to six months severance and counseling services. And one of the witnesses has told me that never happened. The six months severance never happened. >> Yeah, it's really fascinating because I know money did go out to some people but not everyone and for reasons that I do not totally understand. And then um to my surprise, >> it was Karen who it was Karen who had to administrate all of that, which is crazy. Like that that Jonathan would make his poor wife who is who is another victim of all this be the one to administrate this and clean up his mess. What a freaking coward. >> I'm sorry. I'm like, >> go ahead. >> I know. Oh, and mind you, tone it down a little bit. >> He was like seven or eight months pregnant at the time. >> It was terrible. It was terrible. It was so terrible. I can't I can't even tell you like the the layers of how awful it all was for all of us walking through it understanding that because at the same time we all felt very tons, we felt so much remorse to her. Um, at the end, it just got so hashed up. There was so much going on and then imagine, yeah, Karen, her world just fell apart. Her husband is clearly like um betrayed her on multiple levels and she's seven months pregnant and she has to figure out how to like shut down the school and pay the bills and everything else. I mean, it's so unfair. >> And pay the victims of her husband's predations. >> Exactly. >> They're their counseling sessions she has to pay for. >> Yeah. Yeah. So they did, she was gracious and did send me a little bit of money, which I felt was I was honestly surprised because I had quit. I wasn't technically there when the school closed. You know, I had resigned a few months prior. Um, but I I felt like it was just because I had been there for so many years and I only left because I felt like I got pushed to a breaking point. And uh, so when she offered, I said, "Absolutely, I'll take some." But I mean, it was like $1,500 bucks or something, [laughter] [gasps] you know, [music] >> like August 29th or something. Danny gets involved. He has a conversation with John Welton. Um, long extensive conversation, John with with John Welton and Danny and I do our first call together. And uh, I it I this will be significant to me forever. You know, we get on our phone call and the first thing Danny asked me, he says, "Why do you want to hurt Jonathan Welton?" And I was I was really shocked that he would even say that to me because it was very obvious that he hadn't spoken to any of the women and that he'd only spoken to John and he clearly believed John's perspective and was not interested in getting another perspective at the time. So, I went on to explain my position, explain all the evidence, explain what had happened with with a lot of the women, and Danny wasn't buying it. Um, he he just saw it as again, John had made a couple inappropriate jokes. That there had been, yeah, a few missteps and that we can address that and that I was overexaggerating and that the other staff members were overexaggerating. So, this is where the huge bomb comes in. Um, within a couple days of of Danny um addressing me and his involvement, uh, one of the I I I believe she was on staff at the time, but he was also one of his primary spiritual daughters that he was also moving into his apostolic track, reached out to some of the staff members. She was very afraid, very shaken because she had received an email um an email from an anonymous person and this email uh had been it was threatening her. It was telling in the email, it said, "You need to delete all your text messages from John. If he goes down, you're going down with him." And so uh I I have a a little bit of background in web development. Um, so the uh one of the staff members called me, said, "We've we've received this email." I spoke with the gal that received the email, who by the way um this is the same Jane Doe who went on the record at the Royy's report sharing her story about an incident that had happened in a hotel room. Well, I pull the IP address off the email from this anonymous email threatening her. And guess whose IP address it is? Jonathan Welton. So, Jonathan Welton had set up an email address pretending to be someone else. And then in this email threatened this woman that if she didn't delete all of her text messages from him, if he goes down, he's taking her down with him. He's so afraid about what she may say about him that he is threatening her, that he's setting up an email under a fake persona and threatening her. So, I I pull the IP address and I take this to Danny Silk. I take this to John's pastors at the time and uh and the remaining staff members at the school and expose the evidence. And to Danny's credit, by the end of September, he releases a letter to the school saying that Jonathan Welton is not fit for ministry. Up until that point, yeah, Danny had been fully convinced that it was just he said, she said, I was overexaggerating. The women were overexaggerating. It was just >> Yeah. mis inappropriate touching, but it was just affection. It was just affection. These are daughters. >> Yeah. So it was very downplayed. He he he had fully um he had fully bought into Jonathan Welton's story and it seemed seemed at the time had very little interest in hearing anyone else's perspective in primarily being the women that were affected.

>> Now you're about to hear from Steve Hogan, who was Welton's pastor at the time he was being confronted. Steve Hogan also served on the board that was assembled to hold Jonathan Welton accountable.

>> In all of my years of being an elder, uh, of being an associate pastor and even being a senior pastor, I've only ever kicked two people out of the church. Both were Jonathan Welton. We met Jonathan probably back in the 2012, 2013 time period. Uh, I met him at a local conference in Rochester, New York. Um, and it was kind of like an end time related conference theology. You know, we we formed a common interest and a discussion in that and even a friendship at that time. Um, and then, you know, over the years, he started to continue to write books. He started to attend our church during that time. I was an associate pastor at that point. Um, and the senior pastor and I agreed at that point to let him, and this was, you know, a few years into it. You know, you don't have to write at Starbucks. You can have an office in the church to do your writing, to do some of your ministry. He was starting to see some success. He had shared with us early on in a meeting. I remember we were out at Applebee's and he said, "I just want to tell you about a story in case you hear anything um that there was an incident when I was at Global Awakening and I went through a restoration process that Leaf Hetland was part of and and others there." Um, and it was nothing sexual happened, but it was inappropriate. Um, and basically that they didn't know what else to do with him after a year or two of working with him. So we thought, "Okay, well, he's coming forward."

>> True. Right there. There there there was sexual uh >> there was we didn't find that out till years later, but he he would deny say there was anything no sexual acts or anything happened, but it was inappropriate. We c we crossed some boundaries. Um, so we both thought at that point, okay, well, Lis is sharing this with us. That's good. Um, we never heard anything from anyone at Global Awakening. It was very hard to get any information on that. Nobody would talk about it, but we knew some of the people who were involved in and quote that restoration process that actually was dropped um because they they couldn't um no ground was covered. You know, >> I was told it was basically abandoned due to non-compliance. >> I think so. Yeah, that would be accurate. Yeah, that would be accurate. >> Yeah. And and let me [clears throat] just add that you you said that he said we crossed some boundaries and that would give anybody he's talking to the idea that this was a consensual relationship. We've heard so many stories now of of how he is skilled. Uh, so this, we don't know who this woman was, but she was clearly groomed. >> Yeah. Yeah. Definitely looking back at it now, it's it's very obvious. Um, and then after, you know, he he went through a very tough period of years after that, him and Karen and wrestling with things. Moved left Pennsylvania, moved back up to his hometown Rochester, which is how we got connected with him. Um, and started [clears throat] attending the church, came out with the book Eyes of Honor, which is like, you know, okay, I'm better now. You know, so all those problems I may have had, you know, here's how I can help you and and get free. And but the book was well-received, you know, there wasn't a lot of knowledge of what had happened there. Um, so he started his ministry started growing. He started writing other books, started having success. Um, you know, it was in the late 2017, uh, that my wife and I, we're we're pastoring the church. We're bivocational pastors. So, I'm in the business world. She's in the medical. We got a lot going on and we're running the church and uh letting them kind of do their thing with the ministry and they're they're having success. We're seeing growth at the church. um at the end of 2017, we didn't know it, but his own advisory council, which were basically, you know, paid, you know, kind of part-time paid people, great men, um, but like, you know, kind of in the apostolic roles and pastor, prophet, teacher, and and five of them, um, started to confront him on some behavior that they were hearing from staff. Um, we didn't know anything about it at the time, but they were met with resistance and, you know, gaslighting, turning it back on them. It was going nowhere. It had been going on for months. Um, we became aware of it in June of 2018, uh, that there were some allegations, things that were starting to come to light. It was very hard to get information on it cuz they were employees, uh, some of the ones that were bringing this stuff forward. Um, my wife and I started to confront him in the summer of 2018. We had some tough conversations at his house, at our house, at church. Uh, he'd be crying, uh, would take it all in, but would never really take any ownership of it and certainly was not sharing the full scope of what, you know, some of the sexual harassment and claims and things that would come out later. Um, everything hit the fan in September, mid-September of 2018 and very erratic behavior on his part. Um, sending emails now that he things were really coming out into the light and multiple women involved sharing their stories of sexual harassment. Uh, predatory uh, you know, preying on you know, young women, making them staff members, sharing inappropriate information, luring them into behavior that they would not otherwise have been you know, involved in. Um, explicit material, you know, pictures and things being shared back and forth, just you know, you know, pretty pretty bad stuff at that point. Um, all of a sudden, uh, one of his uh people on his staff who's receiving the emails from people that are interested in the ministry start getting emails from a fake email address saying, "They want to take me down and they're going to burn you and take you down with them." And it was shocking to everybody. Danny Silk had spoken there last year. We had a friendship with him at that point. Uh, we got to know him as being the host pastors. We thought a lot of them. We'd read his books in the past. We've been out to Bethel leaders advance over the years. Um, we felt a sense of connection there. Um, and he did get involved and he confronted Jonathan that next morning on those emails that the staff member was receiving. And at that point, we had now a lot of information and he was confronted with a lot of uh information and sexual harassment claims and things from the staff. Uh, and he did admit to those. He had no choice. Danny had him on a a Zoom call and uh he did admit to that that it was actually him. Um, so we were grateful for that for Danny for getting involved in that. Uh, we had called Harold Everly at the time too and Harold said, "I'll come out there. I'll help. I'll go to every church that he ministers at. He should not be ministering again." And people in the in the beginning were were helpful. And a letter went out to all of the Bethel um I think leadership team about Jonathan Singh. Danny sent out that we were involved when helping helping craft a pretty stern letter that shared details of the abuse, the covert, the manipulative behavior. Um, it wasn't long after that, right, that Jonathan went and took a psychological test. Danny shared the results of that in his book and actually calls it out as, you know, clinical covert narcissistic personality disorder. Uh, you that was serious and the most serious case that had been seen you know, by this individual in 30 years of practice. Danny I think writes that in the book. Danny puts together an advisory board or an oversight board and so um I'm asked to be one of the people on the oversight board. It was uh me, Danny, Harold Eberly, Steven Joy Hogan who are uh the pastors of the church that John's under at the time, um Bob Muny and Doug Johnson. So Danny puts together this advisory board, an oversight board, um to oversee this process with John. One of the requests of John is that he gets a psychological evaluation done, which we referenced earlier. And so he does he does a a gets a psychological evaluation. And the clinician who did it, um, this this was information that's given to the board. This is information that's in Danny's book. Um, and then information John's even done podcasts on this. He's talked about himself that he was diagnosed um with covert clinical narcissism. Side note though, also as a sociopath, which he doesn't talk about.

And this >> diagnos psychologist that diagnosed him with both of those things or is it two different uh >> same one psychologist. We later started working with another psychologist who will also confirm this, but this this was a first. This is a you know, this first diagnosis that we receive and and it's also shared with the that it is the worst case, the most extreme case of covert clinical narcissism and antisocial behavior that this clinician has seen in her 30 years experience. Um, so it's extremely heavy news um because now you know these this pattern of his behavior has not only become apparent to us. This is no longer about like theology or he said, she said or um, you know, he's just saying it was inappropriate humor. We have a clinician telling us, no, all of this, all of these patterns that you were seeing, this behavior that you were seeing, it is purposeful and and the and what his behavior is leading towards, it's about grooming women into sexual encounters. It's where he finds identity. It's where he finds power. And so, um, and also al also being a covert clinical narcissist, like he always has to be in the spotlight, he always has to be in charge. Which is, you know, when we look at the pattern of Jonathan Welton, that, you know, even though the school closed down, it's like as soon as he could, he's launching his next thing. But a clinician has shared this with our board so that we can understand who we're dealing with. We're not dealing with a pastor who, you know, was having a hard time with his wife and so he accidentally had an affair with a secretary. So things were hit hit the fan. We were um trying to support as we could victims that were coming out, trying to assemble a little pastoral team to be there to help them. I I wish we could have helped them more. We were just so inundated in this process with Jonathan and working with Danny getting letters out, sharing information. At that point too, we we kicked Jonathan out of the church, said, "You have to take all your stuff. You cannot use this facility anymore." So Jonathan, you know, gets kicked out of the church. Uh, takes his stuff, begins like a three-month process of just kind of wandering. He had like a month later he he had, we heard that he went to a clinic on the west coast. He took a, you know, the psychological test and went out there and they said, "Well, I I took another test and went out here and they said, 'You don't have that disorder.'" And, you know, you'd have something totally different. And, um, you know, we never listened to that. Of course, you, you know, figured out probably how to get around the test and come back with different results. It never got listened to and we never heard from it again after we just ignored it. Um, so I think at that point, he was working through his own journey of any repentance. What does repentance mean? You know, we were all saying in the beginning, we weren't going to look to Karen as the guide whether Jonathan was better or not because this had already happened once before, you know, eight years earlier, right, with another similar situation.

>> So, so you say that you say we're not going to look to uh Karen, Jonathan's wife, for to be the guide yet. In his book, Danny writes this. Karen echoed her husband. "Living authentically is something I've always wanted," she said. "And for me, that begins with our family. Right now, that's the restoration that's most important to me, to see our connection with each other and our kids grow strong and healthy. If we can build that integrity and our love and honor for each other, then any ministry God opens for us will be an overflow of that." When I heard these responses, I thought, "They're on their way. The first seeds of shalom are beginning to sprout in their lives. While I don't know all the steps ahead for them on this journey or all the choices they will make, I am confident that if they continue along this path of connection, we will see them back in ministry." So that is very clearly just looking to Karen as being the the guide for how Jonathan is doing. And whether and it doesn't matter whether or not Jonathan has been reconciled with his victims. As long as he and his wife are cool, then he's qualified to minister.

>> Yeah. And it never started out like that. I can remember our first meeting, which we struggled what to even call the board. We didn't want to call it a restoration board because we didn't feel Jonathan should be restored to ministry. He shall he he should be restored to Karen, to his wife. Get a real normal job. Start providing for your family. Why is it always ministry related? Do you have to gravitate toward what we know now? Uh, but Doug Johnson, who was on our advisory board and was involved in the first goround. Uh, he's he's a good man. He had said, "We cannot use Karen as the gauge for when Jon is better because this has already been missed by her once and she's partly a victim in this whole thing as well." And that was decided early on in the process that that was not going to be the gauge we were going to use. It was going to be how does Jonathan restore all of the relationships in his wake and that, you know, do the victims feel that Jonathan is repentant and has he cleaned up his mess with all of those around him? Then we would know. And there still was never any thought that Jonathan would be back in ministry again at this point. It was like that was not even on the radar at all. So we called it more of an advisory board to the process that Danny would say Jonathan has submitted to, but not a restoration board. We we never started with that term. Um, so so that's so you got after a whole blow up, Jonathan's kind of off doing his thing, working through his own repentance journey, not making very much progress. Um, we under Danny's advisement, he said, "I think Jonathan needs to understand how to be part of a local community and how to take guidance and, you know, correction from, you know, a local pastor." And and we agreed. We hung in there with him. We told him he could come back to church community in January of 2020. He was not going to be in any leadership role. And we were clear with him. We're like, "We don't want you to sit up in the front row. Don't sit up with us." You know, all these different games. Uh, we had asked him years ago, like even months ago, why don't you ever worship? We've never seen you worship during conferences. You're always sitting in your office. Everybody else is out here worshiping. You're never around. We've literally not seen you worship. Um, so we thought as as an opportunity, you know, we had talked about this with him and of course the first Sunday he's sprawled out on the floor up in the front so everybody can see him like, you know, okay, I'll worship. This is how I'm going to worship. Um, so that that was kind of humorous. We shared that with Danny as well.

Do you think that was for him a learned behavior? Uh, one of the things that folks have said, the different people we've interviewed, is that is that, you know, because he was

a diagnosed narcissist, that he, he's not capable of typical empathy or regular emotions. Therefore, repentance doesn't become some something inward that, you know, you're under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. It becomes a learned behavior. You see what people expect repentance to look like: crying, you know, "I forgive me." And so, you know, coming in and then not just worshiping, but on his on the ground, on the face. Did that just appear to be a learned behavior? "This is what people want me to do, so I'll do it." He was trying to find, "What are they looking for for it to be repentance?" Yes. That was one of the ways that he was trying to gauge, "Is this what you guys are looking for from me?" Like, um, so, and there were num numbers of those. We, we would chuckle, my wife and Danny and I, like [clears throat], "He's trying, he's trying to figure out what are we looking for, but we haven't seen repentance yet." So we would talk about that very openly.

Um, so that started the beginning of him, you know, integrating somewhat back into a church community. Uh, during the, and this was, I'm sorry, 2019, the beginning of 2019, he came back into church, into the church community, and attended. Um, unfortunately, throughout that year, we had a lot of discussions with him, and we would hear things like chuckling about the victims or, you know, minimizing the behavior or saying, "It wasn't actually that bad. I didn't have sex with all these women." Uh, there was, um, and even with him and another pastor friend that we knew, uh, who was out of the area, they would sort of joke about that and say, "It wasn't really that, you know, it could have been a lot worse. It wasn't that bad." So we would have

>> One of the one of the witnesses I spoke to, um, she she had been groomed, and there was handholding, and there was inappropriate texts, and there was all the all the things that that you see. Mhm.

>> Um, his response to her was, "Come on, it's not like I hand raped you."

>> Right. Yeah, that that sounds accurate. Yeah, it's, it, there was a lot of that this year. Uh, and we were trying to talk with him about, uh, what does repentance look like? Where's the change in behavior? Um, and it just was always him trying to find out what we were looking for or saying that we don't trust him, turning it back around on us and, "You guys haven't really been through this before." Um, so there were just a lot of discussions that year of that. During the year, unfortunately, this was his opportunity to like come back. We would say, "Be a normal human, be part of a Christ church community." Um, "just serve. You're not, you don't have to be the guy with all the answers." You know, his email is Professor Jay Welton. You know, it's like, "You don't need to be a professor. Just be a normal human. Start to love your wife, um, you know, the way she deserves to be loved. Get a real job. Start providing," 'cause, you know, he wasn't really working at this point. A lot of books were being pulled off the shelves. So, it wasn't an easy time for them.

Um, but he would start to meet with guys in the church and formed what he would call an informal men's group that now met regularly. Um, we had some people in the group who would share with us confidentially and say that now it is a confidential men's group. "We're not, we had to take an oath of confidentiality and we can't share anything that is happening in the group." Um, someone he ended up starting to give marital counseling to somebody in the group, which he should not have been doing. Um, it just turned into an opportunity for Jonathan to sow divisive, uh, you know, thoughts about us and the leadership in the church, get them to question everything. We had one of our friends say, "I would leave these meetings and I would say, 'I can't really put my finger on it, but I feel like I dislike Steve and Joy.'" And we, we were the senior pastors at the time. So, you're the senior, your p, you're the senior pastors now

>> And Jonathan is in your congregation, and he forms a men's group. Then he gets everyone to commit to confidentiality. So at that point, he can say whatever he wants with immunity because these guys, you know, they think they're part of some holy covenant, but in fact, he has created the conditions for him now to begin to manipulate them.

>> Yes. And it was unfortunate because, um, one of the staff members ended up losing their job as a result of it because they did turn against leadership and they were confronted on it and caught, um, and this was a direct result of a conversation I overheard on speakerphone with Jonathan and the staff member that I happened to walk into. So I was bivocational. I'm not up at the church during the day. I happened to go up there one day to check something, uh, and I walked in on this conversation. This is a couple months after Unpunishable was released. So Unpunishable was released in October of 2019. In December 2019, uh, Jonathan's pastors who are on the board come to us and let us know that they find out John has set up a secret men's group, uh, which he was he was not supposed to be doing. He was not supposed to be leading anything. He set up a secret men's group, um, using guys from the church. And in this men's group, he was he was telling them that this had to be, uh, completely confidential. There was actually like a multi-step confidentiality statement or agreement that they had to enter into to be a part of this men's group.

And one of the most vile, um, statements came out of this as one of one of the guys from the group started realizing that the stuff that's happening in this men's group is not healthy. So they brought it to the pastors. So the pastors are shocked that Jonathan's leading this secretive men's group, but also one of the things he's doing in the men's group is he's talking about the women that he had groomed, and he's mocking them because they need therapy. And so what he's telling the men in this men's group is that the fact that his victims need therapy is not proof of his grooming. It's only proof that they are broken. And so what he's telling these men is that, "I'm actually not bad. It's that these women were so messed up that when I made a joke to them, they had to end up in therapy." This is again, in Danny's word, a fully repentant John. And yet in John's worldview behind closed doors, he mocks the women. And the more severe his grooming was, and the more severe their psychological state was because of the dismantling he'd done to them, he only uses it as proof that they're broken and that he's healthy. So he's he's literally reversed the roles here. And so now he's grooming his next set of character witnesses that "Jon's better. There's actually nothing wrong with him. It's that the women he groomed, it's that they were already broken. See, they have to be in therapy," not understanding that their therapy is actually a byproduct of being groomed by a sociopath, someone who's dart who's diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, the worst that this one clinician had seen in our 30 years practice. And so this was extremely alarming to me because, you know, we're now coming up on, you know, close to a year or so of working with John, and not only has he not addressed the fact that he's groomed this woman, he's making a mockery of them behind closed doors. It's very obvious to me that he is not only not repentant, he doesn't even know what to be repentant of. There's no sign of it at all.

So, another example, this is this is happening concurrently to, or like at the same time as Danny is making videos at least to the student body and releasing letters saying how well John is doing. He's blowing up his home church. He's losing all of his real life relationships. He's making fun of the women who are in counseling for the things that he did to them, and Danny is on the other side of it public facing saying, "John's doing super well."

>> So, super big problem.

>> Same thing happened, um, way back in the beginning when they first shut down Welton Academy. There's this big meeting. Everybody's finding out that they're losing their jobs. The entire staff is there. They're finding out the school's going to be closed. You're losing your jobs. There's going to be a severance. Uh, we don't know when it's coming. Um, having the whole big meeting, right? He had specifically told one of the staff members who's a really good friend of mine that she should not come to the meeting. She should say she had something else that she had to do, and she could just watch the recording later. So she does this. He is using a pseudonyame texting this girl and saying, "You really need to delete all the text messages and the photos and whatnot." So, she's starting to realize this is a little weird. I might want to hold off. Um, anyway, so she watches the meeting, realizes kind of like the moment that I had with Renee that, "Wow, this is different than I thought it was. This is bad. He's losing the school. Like, this is for real." And so she reached out to me and she said, "Don, um, he asked me to delete all the evidence. I I'm freaking out. I don't know what to do." I find out from the people who were in the meeting with him, finding out they're losing their jobs, that he was simultaneously texting her and pretending to be somebody else. He was simultaneously in the meeting with them crying, repenting, saying how sorry he was. "I can't believe I've done this." He is not a person that can be trusted because he is able to misrepresent his intentions to such a degree that even the most brilliant people fall in line with him and will believe him whether or not he's telling the truth. Um, and so any time that I start to feel myself swaying [snorts] a little bit, I go back to that and I go, "I don't know how he can ever convince me that he would have to stop trying to convince in order to convince me." Like, if he just went off and did his own thing and wasn't trying so hard to get everybody to believe him, "I'm trustworthy. I'm trustworthy. I'm trustworthy." If he would do that, I would probably in the back of my mind go, "I think John got it. I think he finally got it. Good for him." And I would be so happy.

>> But that's not what he's doing. And unfortunately for him, his sincerity and humbleness cannot be trusted because it's always been there. It's always been exactly like that.

>> Now, this is from uh Unpunishable. It says this: "After Jonathan received the results of his evaluation and learned that he fit the profile for clinical covert narcissism, he wrote a letter to his advisory leaders in which he apologized for his behavior and announced that he was stepping down from his position as president of the academy. When I read this letter, I noticed that it was full of shame and self-punishment, but wanted to believe that much of his remorse was sincere." [snorts] "I am absolutely ashamed of my behavior and the hurt that I have caused. I have abused the trust of any person around me that would consider themselves friends. I abused spiritual language for my own benefit and prayed upon those that believed me to be a safe leader for them. But I am not safe, and I have created something that has caused massive pain to the people that have loved me the most. I have selfishly built a system which allowed me to exist this way without question. I was so manipulative of others that I even deceived myself and found ways to justify to myself the violation of my friendship. I am choosing to submit to correction in my life. Effective immediately, I resign from being the president of Welton Academy and hand the reigns to my advisory board. The best thing for those that have believed in me and cheered me on is for me to step aside from the public eye and seek professional counseling and begin to clean up my mess." Now, he writes this, and it seems very, very humble, contrite, sincere. This is, you know, you would think he's very repentant. Now, this is Dy's words about this: "However, less than a week later, or a week after Jonathan sent out this letter, it came to light that he had involved one of his staff members in an elaborate plan to cover up indiscretions he'd committed with her." Now, I have huge problems with the wording there. He didn't involve his staff member. He manipulated, uh, or attempted to manipulate by pretending to be somebody else. Um,

>> And it's not indiscretions he had committed with her. This is this is clergy sexual abuse we're talking about. Um, uh, and it says this: "This exposure made it clear to me that his letter had nothing to do with genuine repentance. It was a crafted apology that imitated conviction and empathy for his victims using the language of people who had confronted him with the goal of convincing them that he had punished himself and did not need to be punished by them. It was now abundantly clear to me that it was time to set a limit with a man who was not going to or was unable to repent."

Now, um, Ron, uh, you had some insightful things to share about that. So, you know, from everything that I've understood from talking to people that were close to him is that he, uh, he has learned the proper behavior, the, the despite using foul language in that letter we just looked at, that he has learned this is what people want to hear. It's like when we talked to Steve Hogan and he said, "We were concerned because Jonathan never worshiped during worship services. He would disappear, go to his office, and then we express that concern, and the next day he's on his face crying like, 'This is what I'm supposed to do.'"

>> Uh, and again, I want to keep pointing out, I don't want to analyze his behavior because I'm not a psychologist. I'm just going by what I've been told. Uh, so my question for Danny would be, "Why did you not believe him then, but now you do believe him?" It ju, you know, this is a man, and again, that's the problem with having narcissistic personality disorder, is that you are not capable of experiencing normal empathy and brokenness the way God created us, and therefore you have to figure out this is what repentance looks like, but it doesn't mean that it's coming from a genuinely broken person. So, uh, you know, my deeper concern there is that, you know, after Danny finding out that he, and again, just so the viewer understands, that is what talked about when he used a, uh, an email account that only she would check, and he connected to her anonymously and said, "Listen, delete all your texts, delete everything, you got to protect Jonathan," as if he's not Jonathan, "and protect yourself." Um, you know, why would he

>> This is partly blackmail because he says, "If he goes down, you'll go down, too."

>> So, so there's a threat that's involved here.

>> Intimidation, blackmail,

>> And so, [clears throat] you know, Danny finds out about that, but yet from what I've understood, he would not meet with, he did not want to hear her side of things. Like, he now knows that Jonathan was using her, manipulating her even after

>> everything has come out, and yet still he's, he said, she said, "Well, I don't you like, what did, would it have killed you to talk to the victim?" I mean, don't, if you're going to restore him, don't the victims deserve that to at least have a conversation with the one person in his board who actually believes he should be restored, as far as I know. I don't think there was any other, not the the psychologists disagree with Danny, the other members disagree with Danny, and yet somehow Danny writes a letter unilaterally restoring him, as I understand it.

>> Yes.

>> Yeah.

>> Accurate.

>> So, so, so this is the type of contrition he is capable of displaying while at the same time acting so duplicitously. Um, and we're just supposed to take, we're just supposed to take Danny's word for it that he's repentant and trust him.

>> And why? So they can be restored to ministry. I should say, he so he can be restored to ministry. That's the only reason.

>> Where is the concern for the sheep? When somebody has shown that they will do this over and over and over again, at a certain point, you got to say enough.

>> You're disqualified. You know, yeah, you're a good teacher, and you might have some good insights, even though we may have concerns with them. Uh, but it's over for you. Go get a job, earn a living. And that's part of the fear for a lot of these people. They are so addicted to being in front of the camera. I'm thinking like Todd Bentley, you know, that these people, they'll go to small meeting after small, like if that's what they're reduced to because they need that fix. They need that agilation for people to say, "You're amazing. You're unbel, you're a great teacher." And um, it's just not worth the risk to the body of believers.

>> He'd had an issue at Randy Clark school. He wrote a book about a repentance process that he never went through called Eyes of Honor. He made it mandatory reading, and that's one of the ways he'd prop himself up. So now these these these patterns and who we're dealing with, it's getting, it's ballooning, right? If you can imagine this from our perspective as this council that's supposed to oversee this guy, that he has a pattern now, um, of sexual sin, of grooming women, and then the way he deals with it isn't by repenting. It's just by becoming an expert in the thing that he sinned in. So, you know, so he has an issue at Randy Clark school, and he writes a book about the repentance process. Calls it Eyes of Honor,

>> Right?

>> And people endorsed it. People endorsed the book.

>> Yeah.

>> So again, this is part of the pattern which he's doing now. He's coming out with his new books, right? Bulletproof Husband, and he's finding the next group of leaders to endorse him. Like he's he's figured out the game. But this is, I'm not saying this as just like my suspicions. I'm saying this as someone who is on the board who was advised by, uh, two clinicians on how this man works.

>> There were a lot of things other ministers confronted John about his need to always be in charge, to be able to, you know, tell everyone else what they should be doing. Now he's the expert on what repentance means. And I'm not even kidding. We had discussions that year, and now he's telling everybody what repentance actually means, uh, in restorations. "Today, what we're going to talk about is apologies. I'm not here to apologize to you. I'm here to help you learn how to apologize." So, so that that was a tough year, and it wasn't a year of much progress. And we confronted his behavior in September of 2019. Um, and he denied it all. Uh, so we didn't make a lot of progress. Um, and in that same month, now it's been one year into this process, right, with an advisory board, we received in the mail a copy of Unpunishable, a book by Danny Selk, who is on our advisory board for this process. Um, we were shocked, and we received an advanced copy as part of, you know, the book release in September 2019. Uh, I think the book was released, you know, a few months later, but um, it was quite surprising. It makes it sound like that he must have been working on that months or at the beginning of this whole process going back a year.

>> So I I had found out several months before the book came out that he was writing the book. But what we what we were not aware of, or at least I'm, and I say "we" because he he'd sent something to the board that this book was coming out, and he said that he was going to put this portion about John in the book. But what was communicated to us and what I thought the book was about. I thought this portion, like, so we had no idea what the totality of the book was about. But when he shared with us, and primarily a lot of the communication was done through his assistant, um, that what the book was about, or the part that were going to be shared about John, was how the repentance process actually wasn't working. That's what I thought it was going to be, the portion of John. And I thought it was going to be this, you know, this snapshot of like, "Here's a picture of when repentance does not work or doesn't actually." Well,

>> We would always tell Danny, "We're at the ground level. We're your boots on the ground. You're 3,000 m away. You're working with someone who, as you write in your book, he's a clinical covert narcissist personality disorder strong case, and anybody can pull the wool over someone's eyes on a Zoom call. And we're here in his life. Stuff has to be worked out in the life of community, and if you're not doing well there, then you're not doing well." So we would share this feedback with him, and the board would listen to us as being boots on the ground. We're in his life. Um, you know, we know where he lives. We know how they're doing. Um, so it was surprising to get the book portraying it as positive when we were having a very difficult year as pastors trying to pastor the church, watch over this situation, and everything else that anyone knows goes on as a senior pastor.

>> I think it's just really interesting for me when the book came out. Well, mind you, the timing of it. So, it's like he writes that, and that's one thing. It's like, "Okay, great." You can notice that. But then he still releases the book [clears throat] um, only one year after the school is closed. At that time, there was all kinds of darkness going on behind the scenes of Jonathan's activity. And so the book was just absolutely confusing because it was like there was all this like dualminded thing with Danny that we were dealing with all of the time. It was like behind closed doors and in private meetings he would say, "Jonathan's a bad guy. Yes, he's clinically diagnosed narcissist. He's dangerous." He himself used the word "predator," and he would do that, but then like in the public he would say something completely different. And so it it's just like another one of these like whiplash experiences where it's like, "Why can't we just remove him altogether? Why do we need to even aim at putting him back out?" You know, and he just he didn't want to hear it. I don't know. I I don't know the driver behind that, you know, at the end of the day. Um, but he didn't want to hear it. And one thing, it's like we've talked to Danny about this before, "Why you've spent no time with the victims?" We pressed that on him multiple times through the years. And he was like, "Well, they had my number. They had permission to call me whenever they want." And I'm like, "Do you, you're so flippant with the authority that you have. These are girls who have been beaten and broken. They don't have the nerve to call the great Danny Silk. That's scary to them. You need to be reaching out." And he didn't. And he didn't care. And a lot of them have stories of feeling like they were used for their stories and then abandoned. Um,

>> And a lot of that is appointed because not everybody on the board was like that, but um, a lot of that was pointed directly at Danny because they knew that he was their hope because of the amount of influence and authority he had. He was their hope. Um, and he did nothing for them.

>> My hope is that Danny maybe sees this differently now. I don't know. Absolutely.

>> Um, uh, you know, obviously we come down pretty hard on Danny in this video.

>> Um, because, you know, objectively speaking, his actions were damaging to a lot of people, and the book was damaging. Um, my hope is though that there could be some reconciliation and some repentance, uh, for this book. "What was your reaction when you got a copy of Unpunishable in the mail?"

>> Yeah, so, um, Danny had one of his staff members send me a advanced copy of Unpunishable. I requested it [clears throat] once I knew it was happening. Um, and you know, it's just Jonathan's little story is at the back end of it, just like basically like shoehorned in the end of the book. And um, it was very upsetting to me. I knew from the very beginning because I had been so involved in the whole entire thing that there was no fact check, no fact-checking. There was no, um, permission asked to share any of the stories that were in there. Um, from the girls' perspective, it was all Jonathan's perspective, Jonathan's narrative of the stories and things that had happened. So it was very minimized. It was watered down, and it was it was kind of just like dismissive of the whole entire of what actually had happened to the staff.

>> It was very angering. I let, um, the staff member know who had sent it to me from Danny Silk. I said, "I don't, I don't like this. You can tell him that I don't agree. I don't think that he should publish this. Um, I think it's, um, basically just a, you know, putting lipstick on a pig. Um, you know, it's not, this isn't the right story. This isn't real."

>> And, um, I didn't get any response from that.

>> Yeah, I know that you were not the only one to have counseledled Danny, uh, in that way. So,

>> Um,

>> Yeah, it felt like another betrayal on top of a betrayal, and it's like, "What is actually happening? Like, where is the advocacy for those of us who have been through something so horrific?"

>> Some of the women start, uh, coming forward telling you their stories, and then Danny Silk gets involved.

>> And um, Unpunishable comes out in 2019. Um, what was your reaction to that book, uh, being published? Yeah. Um, I have since learned it's okay to be angry. Angry says there's a violation of boundaries. And so I was angry when I read the section. Um, I was confused at the first section where we now know it was Ben Armstrong. But I was angry at the Jonathan Welton piece that was saying, "I've counseledled he and his wife. They're, you know, on the other side of this." And I don't, I don't have the book anymore, so I can't reference it. But I remember feeling like this is discounting the pain of all these women. They are not through this yet. He is not better yet. And the way publishing works, you can't have a book hit the market about a year after this major disaster because I'm sure he had to turn in the manuscript ahead of time. So what Jonathan maybe had 6 months to work with him, and as a diagnosed clinically, you know, diagnosed narcissist, there wasn't enough time.

Um, but really beyond that, like putting what Jonathan did aside, this was so harmful to victims because this happens over and over. The person that is popular or has power or is in the click gets forgiven and elevated where the victims are left struggling to have a job, can't find a job, emotional, you know, disruption, nervous system dysregulation, and they're the ones that are suffering while the other person is, you know, exalted and put back into place, which then causes more pain to more people. Because in this situation, what he did not say, that Danny didn't say in the book, is that there was there was essay, and that's a that's a really big deal. And he had already told us in the letter that Jonathan would never do ministry again. And so this is where the gaslighting of the people starts, right? Like, "Well, we're we're going to make sure he never does ministry again," but Jonathan doesn't have any oversight really, so who can enforce that? But on the other hand, he's healed and redeemed and still has value to the body of Christ. I don't argue against that. My argument that what made me mad in the book is that when people do this, there needs to be a significant amount of time to find healing for themselves. Um, and they may never be restored, especially an essay will never be restored to the same position of authority within the church. They can go be a leader at a corporation, but if a doctor, you know, harms one of his patients or essays his patient, he can't be a doctor anymore. He loses his license. And for some reason in the Christian church, that's not the case because we have forgiveness. And I'm not arguing against forgiveness. It's complicated. It is complicated, but in Danny's book, it was just so simplified. And I know for a fact the women had not been able to tell their story, and the women had not been apologized to.

>> So I think those are two significant reasons why that shouldn't have been in the book.

>> So this starts a very long, drawn-out oversight process. Um, because we soon learned that despite what the clinician says, Danny Silk thinks it's a marriage problem. He thinks it's a problem between John and his wife Karen. And so he starts into basically therapy with them. And so March 2019, um, we pull a meeting together with all of the oversight board where this is the first time that Danny's going to present to the board what he calls a fully repentant John. And so, uh, this is actually a story that shows up in, um, Danny's book.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Can I can I read that section here as we're, uh, as we're introducing this? Uh, Danny says in his book, "The next relationships with paint on them were Jonathan's leaders and ministry colleagues. Most of these people had agreed to be on the newly formed advisory board that was providing accountability and oversight in his restoration process. John scheduled calls with most of these leaders to ask for forgiveness, update them on the work he was doing to fix the problem, and ask what he needed to be doing to clean up his mess with them. He had gotten through most of these calls, which all went well, when we had a video conference call for Jonathan and Karen to update the board on how the marriage reconciliation was going. Everyone expressed joy and gratitude to hear about the healing they were experiencing individually and together. Then the conversation shifted, and one of the leaders, I believe that's you, Eric, with whom John had not yet had a one-on-one clean up the mess conversation, asked him a pointed question about whether he'd uncovered the reasons for his bad behavior toward his staff members. I watched Jonathan start to freeze up and get defensive as he struggled to answer. His fear reaction continued through the rest of the conversation which did not end well, and for several weeks after that I heard only radio silence from Jonathan. When we finally got a chance to debrief, he explained that the conversation had exposed the fear dynamic he had always had in his relationship with that particular friend." Um, and then he goes on to tell about Jonathan's amazing restoration about how he worked through his fear issues with you. Um, missing there is what exactly was that bad behavior and, uh, why exactly was that such an issue? So, uh, can you tell us about that conversation from your perspective?

>> Yeah, all these patterns are important. So we got on a call with John and Karen and Danny. Danny presents as a fully repentant John. So, John talks for I don't know how many minutes, crying in front of us about how sorry he is and things are so much better with his wife and like how him and Karen are so much better. And I'm I'm sitting there and I realize at no point does he address the reason that he was pulled out of ministry. And so he he gets done, and again, the tears move people. So yeah, people are like, "Wow, this is great." And I'm sitting there going, "But he groomed and manipulated all these women, and this is this has never come up. He never once addressed it." And so I said, "Hey, John, I'm happy to hear that you and Karen are moving on. Um, but the truth is there are countless, there are countless number of men in this country that have issues with their wives. But they don't then use their power, their position, and the word of God to manipulate women into sexual encounter. I haven't heard you address that. So why did you use your power and your position and the word of God to manipulate women into sexual encounter?" And Danny's right. He did. John did freeze.

>> So for Danny, this is a problem between Jonathan and Karen. And their marriage is needing restoration. And um, and you're on the advisory board saying that's not the issue. The issue is the grooming of women. The dude is a wolf. Yeah, the grooming of women that's been going on for, it seems like a decade, that that's an issue. That's a different, that's, there's a huge difference between having a problem with your spouse and literally using the, he created theology in the school. He was teaching things in a theological manner to dismantle women. We're talking about a guy who literally used theology. Use this position to slowly break women down.

And so it, 'cause one of the pushbacks you'll see online with this stuff, one of the pushbacks that we got when we were trying to get this out in public, it's like, "Well, you know, how were the women involved? Like, why didn't they say no?" Like, it's their kind of, it's like, it's their issue, and what they don't understand is the, is the process is that Jon has a slow, methodical process that he doesn't just find a woman that's like, you know, also has maybe some of her own issues and she's just willing to take on sexual advances. It's quite the opposite. What he's, what he was looking for and is looking for is someone that he could groom, someone that will just listen to his next advance. And so, like in a nutshell, what he would do is say, "Find a woman that he thought was attractive." John also considers himself a prophet. Um, he wrote a book called School of the Seers. And so he finds a woman, sees a woman at a conference that he thinks is attractive. Maybe gives her a pseudo prophetic word. Tells her there's a calling on her life. You know, "There's so much potential. You should come to our school. You should come work with me." Starts positioning himself as a spiritual father, and so as a spiritual father, depending on her marital st stat status or not, because John doesn't care whether they're married or not, it's the crewing process is the same. Sometimes I think it's a bit easier for him with married women, 'cause then he can ask questions like, "How's your marriage doing?" [gasps] You know, and if, and if they'll, they'll let him ask those questions, maybe later on he'll push a little bit further, "How's your guys' sex life doing?" And if they begin to push back on that and feel uncomfort fortable, this is where the theology comes in. "Oh, I, because this is what he did to me when I started pushing back on him. Oh, I thought you understood freedom. I, I thought you understood the new covenant. Um, I, I thought you understood affection." You know, we, and he he'd bring up verses. These are these are things he'd even, um, uh, put, uh, put this out into his school. You know, one of the things he put out into the school was a kissing culture. He wanted to bring kissing culture back. He has, uh, you know, he had lectures, he had messages about affection and how giving affection is so appropriate as part of the kingdom.

>> 1 Thessalonians 5:22. This is the verse that we can all probably just quote from memory together. It says, "Abstain from every appearance of evil." We've all heard it, right? It is really kind of the basis if you go back to the whole legalism one. It's really tied in there as well. Here's what happens. You get an amazing evangelist in your church who takes a whole Sunday morning to tell you all these amazing stories about how they're going down to the city dump or they're going down to the worst street in the city in the middle of the night, and they're giving out, you know, roses to prostitutes and telling them how much God loves them, and they have, uh, prostitutes, you know, weeping on their shoulders, and they're hugging them, and drug addicts, and drug babies, and, you know, alcoholics, and the whole deal. And we're like, "That's so great." You know, "Hug on them, love them, let them show, you know, God's love to these people. That's fantastic." And we have no problem with that. And we get to the end of the message, and the evangelist says, "You know, the church needs to understand the love of God. So, I'm going to stand outside at the door, and I want to just hug on and love on every one of you as you leave church today." Y'all feel that? Like, "Oh, I don't know about that. We're fine if they go do it in the world. Maybe they'll get someone saved, bring them in here, and then they can be as non-expressive as us." [laughter] Oh, snap. But seriously, we got a problem going on here. And you know, it says five times in the New Testament to greet one another with a holy kiss. And we don't live in the first century in the Mediterranean region. So it's not exactly the same thing for us, you know, but there are still regions, whether it's South American, the Hispanic areas, or even in some of Europe or the Mediterranean still, where people do greet in that way. As an American, it, you know, it'd be the equivalent for us of, uh, really like an affectionate embrace. Here's what we're going to do. "Everybody stand up. I want you to scatter and find five people you do not know and hug them." And I'm not saying, you know, the guy pat on the back as hard as you can so it seems less awkward hug, or the crush them so they can't breathe and you feel less awkward. But you know, "two second minimum, five fine people, five people you don't know."

And so if you had any issue with his advances, he would weaponize the gospel against you. "You, you do not understand freedom. The problem's not me. The problem's you. You have the problem." You know, these women trusted him because he said he's trustworthy. He, in all of his books, he's had these other leaders endorse him. "Not only am I trustworthy, this leader says I'm trustworthy. This leader, you know, Harold Eberly's endorsed my book. Leif Hetland has endorsed my book." All these different people have endorsed his books. And so he uses these other voices as character witnesses. And he has the doctorate. He's the one who understands. He's, and again, he's written the books on the subjects. And so, and, and, and one of the things that he promised so many of these women was was kind of this position is, "I see you. I see the greatness on your life. There's an apostolic calling on your life. I, I, I believe in that. I'm going to pull that out of you. I'm going to give you platform. I'm going to give you identity. I'm going to value you." But if you push back on the grooming, you know, he'll he'll weaponize the theology against you.

And so this is what would happen, right? So, Danny Silk has presented a fully repentant John. And yet these these issues are not being addressed. And this is the issue. This is this is the major issue. And so, yeah, this puts Jon on his heel. And Danny tells the story in his book that Jon is afraid, which I, I'm of the opinion John actually wasn't afraid. Or maybe he was, but it's he wasn't afraid of like the relational dynamic. He's afraid because his tactic didn't work. He thought he can get on a call and cry alligator tears about him and his wife and that we'd all let him off the hook without ever owning any of the stuff that he did. And so when I asked him just a straightforward question, I was like, "Well, do you understand? Can you tell us why you use your power and authority and the word of God to manipulate women into sexual encounter?" He had no answer. What he was afraid of is that he of not getting off the hook because he has a long history of getting off the hook and getting reinstated. And so it melted things down, and it took the, it, this started to really, um, divide the board because Danny was pushing towards this idea that John is better because him and Karen is better. And that's something he will say till this day.

>> That John and his wife are better. So it it's a sign of progress. Yeah. Not one of the women that he victimized will tell you that he's repented because he has not cleaned up his issue with them. I think it was early, maybe January 3rd of 2020, Danny Silk and Joy and I confront Jonathan on a Zoom call about all of the divisive and covert behavior and triangulation and just everything that occurred with a staff member losing their job, men's group being poisoned, uh, just anything he seemed to be involved in was not showing signs of repentance at all.

Um, his marriage was not doing great either. Um, so this was January 3rd. We confront him. We go through everything. He has a hard time seeing it, and he doesn't, um, really take ownership for it. Uh, which was when we had, you know, 10 different bullet points and from other people's involvement who had said they had seen the same thing and everything. So, it didn't, didn't, uh, hit real hard. Two months later, I did get an apology letter from him, um, at the prompting of people around him, including his wife Karen. So, he did send that, um, but it wasn't going well. And in March of 2020, the board, the advisory board, released another letter saying basically Jonathan is not doing well. He's displaying the same manipulative, co covert, u divisive behavior, and, uh, just kind of letting everyone know because there were a lot of people wondering how is the process going, and so we did share that letter, and that was in March.

Uh, and in April, um, we had just had enough at that point, and we told Danny, "We cannot do this any longer. We cannot hang in there. He's not showing a lot of progress here. And now it has been a year and a half, and we are at the very same place that we were in the beginning." So, um, on behalf of like the church council and people, we got a lot of guidance from this. Um, I don't think Danny was thrilled about it, but he certainly supported the decision. The rest of our advisory board absolutely agreed that we needed to kick them out of the church. Um, and we did. I sent him a letter. It's it's semi-public. It's been shared on certain sites that we had to make leaders aware of. Um, and, uh, and one of the lines that we put in here, and this was in April, the board had just said John wasn't doing well in March. Now Danny's book is out in the stores being sold. And this is what we had to share with them in the letter. We said, "John, it is for the past and ongoing lying, manipulation, triangulation, and covert divisive behavior that on behalf of the leadership team and the church council, we must say you cannot return to the church community." And we shared the scriptures in Titus 3:10, "One who sws division after warning him once and then twice have nothing to do with it." Romans 16:17 tells us to "watch out for those who cause divisions and avoid them." We said, "We hung in there with you for a long time, and we have been in this and we"

have not seen a lot of progress, so we need to be done. So, in all of my years of being an elder, uh, of being an associate pastor and even being a senior pastor, I've only ever kicked two people out of the church. Both were Jonathan Welton. So, >> it was unfortunate and it still pained me to do it because if you've ever had to do that even for the the worst hardest case, it's a it's a painful thing to have to do, but you have to do it to protect the sheep. We we cannot call ourselves shepherds if we're not willing to protect the sheep. >>

Once the psychologists got invol involved, it's like things slowed down in our progress with John because we're not making progress. >> I want to take a minute and make a quick note about the psychologist here. So, there's actually two psychologists that were working with this team was working with Welton. The first diagnosed Welton um and then another psychologist came in later who shared very similar concerns um and diagnosis with the with the team that was working together with John. the second psychologist uh became part of this accountability team but then resigned one month before Danny Silk restored John Welton back to ministry. He resigned saying that Welton had not changed and he had not seen progress and therefore was going to resign from this team. And then of course one month later, Danny Silk would restore Jonathan Welton back to uh ministry, not with a warning, but with a blessing, calling him a man who truly lives under a better covenant.

Back to Eric Gregson. >> So we could we can never get John to admit anything on his own. Our process with John is we would have to bring evidence to him. he would deny it. But if the evidence was overwhelming that eventually he would say, "Okay, well that did happen." He would then accept it and then minimize it, which is what he does in all his stories. If the evidence is overwhelming enough, he will accept it, make a public statement about it, and minimize it, but he'll never admit to anything. It like he'll concede after he's been caught and after you pressure him long enough. So we had this long drawn out process all the way into 2021 where we are seeing no progress because he cannot admit to anything. He he he in his own words he can't remember who he's hurt and how he's hurt them. And so the question is how do you repent of that? How do you you know Danny's Danny's whole you know philosophy is about cleaning up your mess. It's like but how do you clean up a mess when you say you can't remember who the mess is with? Clearly, John remembers enough that if the Roy report interviews him, he says the testimony is not true. Clearly, John remembers enough that he'll send a woman a threatening email telling her to delete all her text messages cuz she's going down. So, he remembers those parts, but anything else he can't it just magically he can't remember. And so, it put us in a stalemate as a board that we can't make progress with. because he won't admit to anything. It became the board's job to um interview anyone that would talk to us and then present the evidence and then go through the process of arguing with John because he says it's not real unless the evidence is overwhelming enough. And it also put us in a stalemate because as soon as we got to the the part of the process where some of the female staff were able to confront John, Danny's position was that um any of the women that were going to confront Jon, they had to confront him by themselves, which for the majority of the board, this was highly problematic. Danny Silk has a worldview that everyone's powerful and so if you're going to be a powerful f person, you have to take up your power. What we're doing is putting them in a position um where they now have to face someone that we know and has been um you know, has been verified by two clinicians that Jonathan Welton is an expert in psychological manipulation. and now we're going to take this girl and put her in a scenario by herself where she has to address this guy. It was it was just horrifying to hear that that was the position he wanted to put these women in. So again, it put us in a stalemate because and this is something that John will claim to this day. It's like, well, you know, I talked to those who would talk to me or the women wouldn't talk to me. And it's and it's not that the women wouldn't talk to him. It's that Danny Silk would not approve of a scenario the where the women could talk with him with someone else present. >>

Danny was reaching out and saying, you know, I'll mediate these these confrontations if anybody wants to have them. And for me, I really just I wanted to ask him some questions. I wanted to hear him say with his own mouth, "This is what I was doing. This is what I wanted from you." Um, no, I didn't hear from the Lord. Yes, I did hear from the Lord. Um, I I wanted to ask him questions. I wanted him to answer for himself. And I wanted to not give him anything because he I had spent so many years having him twist everything that I said. And so I get in this I tell whoever, probably Danny, I'm I'm willing. Let's have a conversation. So, Danny, Renee, and I get on a Zoom call and um I do remember Danny asking, "What do you want out of this?" And I probably had a pretty vague answer. Um at least in his mind. And then he he jumps in and he says, "Well, this is what I think we should do. I think it would be really helpful if you just yelled and cried and just laid all of your hurt out on the table so he can see it and this is going to help him understand what he did to you and he can actually repent for the things that have hurt hurt you and harmed you. And I pushed back on him and I was like, "Well, I don't want to do that." And he said, "Well, well, why not?" And I was like, "Because he's not a safe person for me to do that with. Like he that's not a safe thing for me to do with Jonathan, you know, just share my emotions with him like that." And um it it kind of continued with a little bit of back and forth. He's, if anybody listening has had any interactions with him, you'll know what I mean. He shows no emotion. He's extremely stubborn and hard-headed. Wouldn't listen. Wouldn't even really enter into the conversation to try to understand why I might be feeling that way. Um, and I remember at some point me telling him, "If we're going to do this, I really want Renee to be there." So, I'm getting this impression. I know Unpunishable has come out. Danny has been spending, according to them, uh, inordinate amounts of time with Jonathan and Karen. Um, and there was a very clear distinction in my mind that I don't matter. If anybody doesn't matter in this scenario, it's me. And why would you be the mediator between me and your friend when you've got a book that you're trying to make true? [laughter] You know, it's just like so crazy to me. Like, who's that dumb? And so I said, if we're doing this, I would like to have Renee be with me. And he was, in my opinion, very condescending about that and and basically said to me, um, you know, if you've got your big si the the whole point of this is for you to get your power back and if you've got your big sister sitting there with you, uh, you know, prepared to defend you and at your back, how's that going to give you your power back? And I just remember thinking, how's crying and screaming at him going to give me my power back? And also, I never even said that that's what I want. >>

Danny Silk writes this in his book. [gasps] While I don't know all the steps ahead for them on his journey or all the choices they will make, I am confident that if they continue along this path of connection, we will see them back in ministry. you were on the advisory board and thought that this book was going to say exactly the opposite of of this message. [snorts] >> Uh you're not aware of the conflict of interest that is present here that while he while Danny is overseeing the restoration of this guy, he is it he's writing this book with the conclusion uh kind it's kind of a foregone conclusion. he's going to be back in ministry. And of course, surprise surprise, 2021, Danny writes a letter endorsing um Jonathan back to back to ministry. Um and then you're part of this this board uh that had been dissolved by this point because according to according to everybody I've spoken to, it's like no, he's he's not repenting. He's not making progress. and the board just ends up being dissolved. Like how are you how did you process this stuff? What was going on in your head as all this stuff is going on? >>

Yeah, it was extremely painful because the reason I got the reason I initially reached out and trying to get Danny involved because I was hoping to for a voice of reason, a voice that would speak up. Um, you know, when you hear the stories about what happened to these gals, you know, and I know you're you're talking with someone when you you understand the deep manipulation, the type of person, what he did and what he was aiming towards, it's heartbreaking. Like as as someone who is is trying to be a minister of the gospel and and believes that like like the apostle said, it's like in him is life. his words to Jesus's words give us life. Like if it's in him, you know, he came to give us life and life abundant that we turn to Jesus because there's there's he is the source of life and it transforms us. To think of a minister drawing people towards that name and yet using that to then like dismantle someone into sexual encounter. I just I I can't even begin to tell you how much it grieves me. Makes me sick. Like I have my own kids to to think that there are like husbands and fathers. There's there's fathers and mothers out there who were probably so excited that their daughters got involved in a school and with a ministry and and had no idea that what was happening to their daughters is that they were being psychologically dismantled in hopes that this guy could encounter them. and whatever sexual fantasy he had. You know, they think they're moving towards identity and the kingdom and something beautiful and they're being torn apart. And so we brought Danny in hoping that he could address this because my voice was not powerful enough and none of the victim's voices were powerful enough. And what I found out at the end, you know, and and even though Danny presents him as repentant and we not only did we find out he's doing this secret men's group, he gets kicked out of his church. He got kicked out of his church after Unpunishable came out because he had um he got caught manipulating leaders and trying to turn them against his senior pastors. And so they kicked him out of the church and and and so we we see this repeat of John's offenses and the fact that John can't own any of his process and to get the end and Danny just does Danny dissolve the board because all of us were saying everyone even a clinical psychologist was t telling Danny this guy is not better. this guy is going to repeat this process. All of the same patterns are still in place. And Danny to go, well, I disagree with you guys, and so I'm just going to release him was utterly heartbreaking because the pattern that had happened before has happened again. And and now John doesn't have to use Leace Hetland or Harold Eberly or any of these people to endorse him. You can see on every single thing that Jonathan does, who does he thank? Danny Silk. >>

And you know, the interesting thing about that is it would appear that Danny had a real conflict of interest by not explaining how important Jonathan's restoration was to his book. Uh it puts him at a in a conflict. In fact, I you know, we talked to the pastor who did end up dysfellowshipping him. Uh it was I think within a month of that dysfellowship. So, Jonathan is now kicked out of the congregation for turning people in the congregation against the pastor having this secret group that you mentioned later that he gets a copy of Unpunished in the mail. And he doesn't even know about it. You knew about it. He said he didn't even know about it and he's shocked to see himself portrayed in the book and of course Jonathan's story is a great story and he's thinking we just dysfellowshipped this person. >> Yep. Yeah. Exactly. this book has come out about a and there's this grandio story about this process and repentance and we know they're going to move on in connection and two months after the book comes out John's kicked out of his church for not only starting a secret men's group but manipulating leadersh >> and in his secret men's group ripping to shreds these women that he's manipulated. So this is a repentant John in this book. I said the irony of it and how dis not only a conflict of interest but like it it's just disgusting because the the approval of John by Danny this blanket approval which if if you guys haven't ever had a process to interview Danny about this what he what he'll tell you is that he actually never approved John. What he'll say is is I said John was better with his marriage with Karen. That's all I ever said. you know, he he denies like any like >> Well, what he did say, John Mark read it earlier, he said about somebody who is a a track record as a predator for over a decade, I think. >> Y >> um and he said, "We, you know, if they do everything right, we will see them back in ministry." When in fact, most people are coming to the conclusion that if you pray upon the flock, you you're done in ministry. you ministry is not a right. We don't we don't oh we got to get him back in m no it is a sacred privilege and if you pray on the very flock that you're supposed to feed you cannot be trusted as a shepherd anymore. >>

Yeah. Why would we put a clinically diagnosed sociopath narcissist sexual predator back in power? Why would we? Like that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It's it's ridiculous. And it's and it's wrapped up and I and I get it because I was so entrenched in the charismatic culture for a long time. It's wrapped up in this idea of testimony. It's like, well, it's a testimony that he's better. And so if the quicker you can get him out on the platform, the quicker you can say, look what God did, >> even though there was no sign of repentance. And I feel so I feel terrible for every person that sees John's videos and listens to him cuz man, he can turn on the waterworks. He can he can cry. He can act so empathetic and and you get this idea. It's like, well, Danny said he's better. That's what people said to me. Danny said he's better. He's never actually owned it. He he'll make loose statements like posting a video saying he's a wolf which but all he did was take take one of the g >> one of the whistleblowers wrote a post wrote an article about him calling him a wolf and all he did was just take her language and say yeah I'm a wolf >> he actually can't acknowledge what he did though he's never owned publicly he has never owned up to what he he texted the gal and what he asked her to delete I know what he told her. >> He hasn't told anybody else. He hasn't told anybody. He's never owned that, >> right? So, he does a few things. One is he says, "I was a wolf." And then before and after in his video uploads, you can see that he is sharing his teachings from when he was a wolf. So, you know, I was a wolf and here's some of my teachings. Also, you mentioned that Danny said that he never uh endorsed um Jonathan coming back to ministry. I'm just going to share this here. This is the uh um Jonathan's sharing this letter from Danny Silk. This is an open letter to the body of Christ to whom it may concern. You can read it for yourself here. Um, but I want to direct everybody's attention to um points four uh and five. Uh point four says the limitations that were implemented in the beginning of this process which is no social media, no ministry, no nothing, right? are no longer in place, including him refraining from social media interactions. This is him lifting off his restriction uh that he implemented as being part of this process. He's dissolved the accountability board. He's saying like people are just now friends. Jonathan is released from any accountability process that he has been in. And then he says, um, Jonathan has no plans to re-enter any positions of ministry at this point. He has agreed to include me in any conversations about any movement in that direction in the future. However, we can see Jonathan has a uh men's group that or a men's retreat that he's doing right around the corner from me uh very shortly here. He's also uh just recently taught at this conference. He has very obviously been trying to make moves back into ministry. Um Danny says, "Oh, well, we weren't we weren't uh releasing him back to ministry." I'm sorry, Danny. I don't buy it. >>

As someone who is a part of the process of one of the people um addressed in the book, I can say that the book is not honest. There's a level of dishonesty in there. I can also say though as someone who knows Danny Silk and has talked to him, it's like I I think there was something he was aiming towards, but but he got in his own way. I think there's a pride issue there that even when a clinician looks at you, someone who has a who has a degree in dealing with pathologies looks at you and says, "This guy's not better." Doesn't matter. It wasn't good enough. And if if that is the stance of the person writing the book, if that's Danny's stance, that even when an expert tells you that your process is not working, that you still move it forward, that's frightening. that that is extremely frightening. And if and if it's that ideology that that has gone out over the charismatic movement, Bethl, people like me who were looking up to those guys at one point, um any of the people who are looking at John and thinking that Danny Silk's authority and Danny Silk's word is a is a stamp of approval of John's restoration. That is frightening. that is is it is frightening and it's demonic. It's ugly. It does not move people towards the kingdom. It moves people towards manipulation and destruction. And in everyone in John's wake, that's what happens to them. They get groomed and destroyed. And so, if that's what the book is endorsing, it's wrong. It's full of lies. >>

Yeah. You can see this here, Jonathan's voice in Danny's writing, let alone the fact that Danny is he admits in the book that he is getting his theology uh the theological framework from Jonathan. Ju just set that aside. Um >> John's message number one, I am the victim. How this message shows up in Danny's book and in the Facebook live that Danny did to the Welton Academy community in the Facebook group. Um, bullet points are this one. Uh, the passages about Randy Clark and the other leaders who quote failed Jonathan in his earlier restoration process. Implication, poor Jonathan. How was he supposed to get better after his affair if those leaders didn't give him what he needed? Um, second bullet point, uh, mentioning several times how for the first time Jonathan and Karen now have the tools they need. In other words, nobody ever gave them the right tools. So, how could he have cleaned up his mess? Um, uh, Jonathan regularly told people about how his leaders back then weren't there for him the way he needed them and how Randy Clark only gave him a yellow light to return to ministry. It's one of the many stories in which he can make himself out to be the victim and distract from the question of whether or not he is owning his mess. Jonathan's message number two, you have an exclusive status in my life. You touch my heart in ways nobody else can. Nobody has ever helped me the way you have. How this message shows up in Dy's book. Quote, he also displayed a willingness to discredit and dishonor everyone confronting him except me. With me, he remained accessible, engaged, and cooperative. While you are under Jonathan's manipulation, he will always make sure that no matter how many accounts you hear from others who have been dishonored and discredited by him, you think to yourself, "But he's different with me. I have a voice in his life." Jonathan's message number three. I've realized my real problem is fill in the blank uh with whatever it is you are confronting him on. >> And I am so grateful you helped me see that. I need your input and advice in my life. He did this, by the way, to Martin Trench when Martin Trench confronted him. >> Uh, over his manipulation. And his words, uh, this is from an email from Steve Hogan to the, uh, to the advisory board. He goes, "No one has ever said that to me before." Which was maddening to Steve Hogan. And the whole board is like, "That's what we've been telling you the same thing." But it's the way that uh, Jonathan can manipulate people. And here is the magic of it for him. Right? It's finally I found the real solution to my problems. Right now it's bulletproof husband, but right before it was bulletproof husband, it was Danny Silk. And right before it was Danny Silk, it was Tony Robbins. And right before it was Tony Robbins, uh, by the way, just for everybody, he was going to this Tony Robbins event, saying that Tony Robbins is the thing that that really got to the to the core of the issues until it realized that, oh, surprise, same old Jonathan. And we need a new magic cure to get to the bottom. But before it was Tony Robbins, it was um Eyes of Honor. You know, he he had this this book that out of his first incidents of clergy sexual abuse with somebody under his leadership that happened over in in u global awakening. You know, he has this epiphany and he and he writes a book out of it and he becomes the expert in in honor and honoring women from that point. And so then he's completely above suspicion. He's now the authority. Anyway, um this is I I'm I'm getting a little bit farfield here, but uh and I'm I'm ranting. I'm sorry, Don. >>

It's kind It's funny because once once you start talking about it, it almost becomes like it's just so infuriating. like if it if people's actual lives and faiths and um you know if people's lives weren't hanging in the balance it would just be funny because it's so ridiculous. It's like a comedy of errors. Listen, if it worked, Bethl would be the safest place in the world. Bethl Church would be the safest place in the world if Danny Silks culture of honor and unpunishable really worked in practice. It does not. It does not work. And we are seeing that in in the Bible when uh they talk about you'll know them by their fruits. You'll know them by their fruits. And we're seeing the fruit of it. Why why is there any more to even have to be discussed? like we see what this what this gets us. May 2021, the psychologist resigns from the oversight board and shares with all of us that the reason he's resigning is that after meeting with John, after talking with the gals, after being a part of the board, he he has resolved or come to the conclusion that John is not better at all. he's not made any progress and that he understands that Danny is still going to move him forward. So, he has to remove himself from the board. Um, it's uh 10 20 days later Danny then dissolves the board and then 5 days after that uh like the letter goes out. So literally it's it's like within a month the psychologist tells us this guy's not any better and this process of moving forward is not working. >>

And so Danny, what's the result? Danny then just dissolves the board and releases him. So when this letter in 2021 is released to the public from Danny Silk, basically lifting off all restrictions from from Jonathan saying that Jonathan is uh living as a man under truly living as a man under the better covenant. What was your reaction as a guy who was his pastor, kicked him out of your church, had to resign from the board because uh this you know advisory board because you're like this is a waste of time. >> What was your reaction? Well, we were very disappointed. Um, and and one of the main reasons, uh, when we kicked him out of the church a second time in in April of 2020, um, we sort of checked out. It became clear that the advisory board was really not being listened to. Danny was running in the direction that he wanted to and obviously now it was clear to us he had a book out there. This needed to come to a good conclusion. Um, there was some discussion on the advisory boards of painting him orange. It was one of the terms that was used to say, "Listen, we we cannot allow this guy to be out there ministering again. This is the chance to say something so that we can protect the body of Christ." Um, and Danny wasn't willing to do it. Everybody else on the advisory board, all the rest of the members had grave concerns about Jonathan ever being any any type of ministry role again or having access to people's vulnerabilities. um you know so that that was a nobody felt he should one of the advisory boards who's a you know pretty prominent minister said I would be willing to take Jonathan out with me when I travel so that he can be there and help uh maybe do the introduction take the offering but he said I that would be for 20 or 25 years and then I may allow him to step into a leadership role I mean that was the level of what we were talking about um so we were very disappointed then when we saw the letter come out, it was basically a free open pass for Jonathan to kind of go back, you know, create uses following. He's never going to stop. You know, someone with that behavioral diagnosis, as Danny shares in his book, they're just going to keep going. I mean, he he's going to keep going. He's going to continue to grow ministry. He's going to write a new book and say, "Hey, I'm better now. Here, you can be better, too, and do what I did." Um, and that's what we we didn't want to see happen. Um, and it grieves me to say that if anyone's ever been part of these processes, it's not a fun thing. Um, and it's a heavy thing to have to deal with and and it still grieved me to have to write send Jonathan that letter uh and everything, but it was the right thing to do and and people have to be protected in the church. So >>

Danny knew the least out of everybody but had the most sway and power. And from the little bit that I was involved, I did get to sit on in on a couple board meetings um stuff like that. And um he doesn't never seem to be very invested in hearing what other people thought. you know, it was always >> him him approving of John. >> You know, he he was caught on numerous occasions and people that are predators in the church, we don't give them a free pass with the sheep and they should be held to a higher there should be more protection and guard rails around someone like that. And that's a very naive statement, but when you're dealing with predators who often find a place of uh where they can work in a church community, we have to be on guard for that. We can't call ourselves shepherds if we don't protect the sheep. And who would allow someone to run over their whole household that has had multiple failings and has expressed not just carelessness, but predatory behavior towards people you love. we we don't treat that like a normal restoration process with like rosecolored glasses. So, uh that was always real frustrating for us during that whole process and and I think the body of Christ should know some of the background of these stories and of the situation with Jonathan and what was happening when the book was being written because that is in many ways a false pretense and people are out buying this book thinking these are great principles. when Jonathan infused this theology into Danny's writings uh you know and Danny has said that so why did we let a predator inform our you know knowledge of what unpunishable should be meaning in the book um in the stories predator >> he says I was a wolf >> yeah [laughter] >> and and Danny says he gets his theology in this book from the wolf >> yeah it's it's unfortunate and and the stories what was happening uh while the book was being written is very counter to what the picture that Danny is painting in the book. Uh and the reality was Jonathan wasn't better. He had to leave our community because he couldn't integrate and be a a normal human in a church community. Um so he he didn't repair his messes and finally we had to just say we're done. We we cannot work with you any longer. we we are protecting our church community from you. And then there's a book out there floating around saying, you know, Danny and Karen are, you know, ripe for being back in ministry again at some point. And it's just very unfortunate, very untrue. Someone might ask, you know, did did you contact Danny, you know, you should Matthew 18, you should contact Danny? And um no, actually Danny's already given his statement in the book Unpunishable, which has gone far and wide. What we're doing is we're responding to it and we're bringing up concerns because the two case studies, as we've shared before, uh are faulty. >>

I'll just say we we did talk a lot about this with Danny and you don't have to put this in the video, but if you you don't want um Danny is not as empathetic as he would people would think. Um, and Danny, unfortunately, is far more concerned about helping the abuser than helping any of the victims who were in this. And we found that out working through this process with him. Um, and that's evidenced, I think, by a book coming out and blindsiding everybody in this process. One of the advisory members, board members did say Jon Jonathan is addicted to agilation. [gasps] So he should not be put in a position where he's sub receives agilation by being up on a stage. And that was one of the goals in the beginning. And um you know he's he's out there again doing it. Ron and I, we have a mutual friend, Joel Richardson, and uh um during the Michael Brown situation, the confrontation, Ron, that you were really at the epicenter of, Jonathan Welton reaches out uh to Joel Richardson and uh Joel has published these texts on X and uh so uh as he's want to do. I was going to say if you're ever in a scandal, don't don't try to manipulate Joe Richardson. [laughter] Yeah. Don't send him a voice text. Don't send him a text message. >> I was going to put you on blast. >> Yeah. So, so this is what he says. Um, hi Joel. Jonathan Welton here. I just wanted to send you a little note saying thank you for speaking up with everything going on with Michael Brown in the body of Christ. I really appreciated hearing your heart on the Wake Up and Win podcast. In the last seven years of what I've been through has really put me in a similar place, just absolutely longing for leaders in the body of Christ to actually have some balls. To which uh Joel responds, Jonathan, you similarly should not be in ministry. Uh, why is that? Uh, Jonathan asks. And Joel responds, "Once you violate your position and sexually abuse anyone under your care, that is grounds for permanent removal from any form of leadership. Don't act dumb, Jonathan. It's rude and disrespectful to me." "Thanks for sharing your reasoning." Uh, Jonathan says, "Do you disagree? What is your justification for returning to leadership?" Yes, I disagree, says uh Jonathan. I believe in repentance that bears fruit which leads to real restoration. Joel responds, "So you don't believe that any sins ever disqualify someone from leadership, including sexually abusing those under your care?" And Jonathan says, "What verses are you using to create that theology for yourself? You need to have chapter and verse ready to defend your position that he should be barred from the pulpit." This is not a humble person. This is not a contrite person. This is somebody who is ready to go to war to defend his return to ministry. Joel responds, "I asked you a question, Jonathan. Your own board recommends permanent removal from leadership. You're not in a position to act cocky. You're the one who has sexually abused uh those under your care." He goes, "Honestly, makes me sick. Same as Michael Brown. Get a secular job, take care of your family, and attend a local church. Yeah, man. I get it. I feel the same way watching Michael Brown right now. That's everything I was doing 7 to 8 years ago, and it's repulsive. It also breaks my heart because I have empathy for exactly where he is. He's completely stuck with a seared conscience. But if Michael Brown would actually do the hard work and own the mess and truly bear the fruit of repentance, I could applaud his return to ministry. Joel responds, "The fact that you do not understand this shows that any so-called repentance was a farce." In response to Joel's assertion that his board recommended his permanent removal from leadership, he says, "I'm not sure where you got misinformed, but I have not had any board that recommends my permanent removal from ministry. I walked closely with Danny Silk for the past seven years and have been publicly reinstated by my local church pastors. Um, not the one that he was under when he was under >> accurate. That's not accurate because he was when when Unpunishable was published about the exact same time, he was kicked out, excommunicated by not only his local pastor, but somebody who was on that board that was overseeing him for causing division and turning a group of men against the leadership of the congregation. >>

So, but but even beyond all that, it's just ridiculous the lengths, you know, just accept it. You prayed upon multiple women, it's over. [music] Most of us as Christians, we turn to the Lord because we know we need help in our lives. We're not perfect. And and so we're looking to him, you know, we're looking to grow, to change, to be become hopefully more than we were yesterday. And and and we believe that for people. We're not experts in manipulation. We're not experts in in narcissism. We're not experts in in in diagnosing sociopaths. That's not our that's for most of us. We're just trying to raise our kids and be good people. And so, it's very difficult to look at a guy like John Welton and see his videos and his soft voice and his what looks like repentance. It's very hard to see through that. It's extremely difficult because we're not trained to do that. You know, I'm trying to figure out how to be the best father I can, right? I'm I'm I'm not trying to, you know, analyze every word that someone's saying. And so it pulls on our heartstrings, but I'm telling you with someone who is involved that the the question to ask oneself when he says, "I'm repentant is what are you repentant of and who did you repent to?" Because those are the questions he cannot answer. What are you repentant of and who are you repenting to? Who did you affect? How did you affect them? If he can start answering those questions, maybe he can start moving towards repentance. But until then, all I see is a pattern of him minimizing what he did. To call his actions missteps is vile. >> Is vile. And and it's worse than lying. He's manipulating every single person that reads that, that reads that and believes it to call it missteps. No. Having over a dozen women at a school that he's slowly psychologically manipulating, use the using the word of God, using his authority to groom into sexual encounter. To call that a misstep and that some of it's an overexaggeration is deception. He's trying to deceive us. He's trying to deceive you. And why does he want to deceive you? Because he just wants to be back in power. Because that's his aim. He cannot move on and go get a regular job. He keeps trying to insert himself back into the body of Christ and insert himself back in a position of power where he is on on top and he has access to people's vulnerability. And so if you choose to engage with him, >> this is what you're signing up for. So after we've been going a while through John's quote unquote oversight process, um he started working with Bulletproof Husband. Um at first he was being counseledled by them, but eventually found himself in a position of leadership where he was coaching or mentoring people through the bulletproof husband. And so as someone who was on the oversight board and many of us on the oversight board, we were actually extremely concerned with this. this wasn't good news to us. Um because as we imagined at the time, well, if you're counseling men in their marriages, eventually you're going to be asking about their sex lives. And why does a covert narcissist with a long-standing history of sexual predation need to be asking anybody about their sex lives? This is not okay. This is this is a pattern that has been established for a long time that is now repeating itself. And so ultimately we heard testimony from uh multiple people that this is exactly what was happening is that he he was um asking men about their sex lives with their wives, asking them to share uh specific details um and and even I would say like grooming and manipulating them because one of the things he was coaching them into is that uh in order to protect their wives, they needed to hide their sexual sins, hide their their secrets from their wives and that somehow this was a biblically mandated, you know, a biblical way of protecting your life is that you hide your sexual sins. And so, again, as someone who was on the oversight board and seeing that his patterns is like his patterns are still repeating themselves now in this new program, but Danny Silk saying it's okay because he's primarily working with men. But, you know, for those of us that saw the pattern, it's like this isn't okay. Why why would any wife why would any woman want their husband sharing the details of their sex life with someone who has a h history of sexual predation? Like this isn't good. This isn't moving them towards wholeness. And so it was extremely concerning for us and the pattern was was obviously continuing to uh repeat itself. He was now making himself an expert in this area of marriage just like he had made himself an expert in uh in honoring women before even though we hadn't seen any real repentance. >>

So Jonathan keeps saying like look to Karen and the people around me to be the barometer or the temperature of of my repentance and my restoration. And the hard part about that is literally there's no one that was around Jonathan in the Welton Academy era. Um that there's no one that is still in communication with him that is still in relationship with him. Not a single person on the inner circle, the any of the staff members um no one from 2000 2012 to 2018 or even before two just before 2018 there is not a single person that he can call friend that was his what he called friend back then. So what we see in this pattern is Jonathan will burn his inner circle like we'll just get destroyed and then he'll move to a different ministry genre city wherever and he will create a new inner circle and then make those people his again his his guardians and his bulldogs. So that's kind of what we see happen over and over again. >>

Yeah. So, you know, you know, for Jonathan, I'm sure he's watching this. Uh, you know, like, um, is there anything you would want to say to him? Um, I kind of said it in my last uh, so when he first started to replplatform himself, he made a couple of apology videos um, which did not strike any of the people that it was directed towards as sincere or meaningful in any way. Um, but he sent them directly to us via email. Um, which even just that is like mindblowing to me. That's somebody who is now willing willfully admitting that he was a wolf preying on the weak and vulnerable. that he would think that it's okay to reach out to those people without their consent is is already crazy to me. But he so he reached out to all of us, myself included, and um sent the videos directly to us, watched the first one, wanted to throw up, was like, "This is so dumb." Sent a second one. And that time I was like, I'm responding to him. And so I I responded. I told him in that email among it was very short. It was pretty tur but I did tell him I forgive him and I I would if you're watching which I'm assuming you are Jonathan um I do forgive you. You keep saying that you are somebody who can be trusted. You keep saying that you've repented that you're a different person. I don't know how or where you're going to get the evidence for that, but so far whenever you make those statements, you're just making those statements as if they're fact. And you I've never once heard a description of the moment that things changed for you where I mean, it would have to be God. It would be a miracle. It would be a a stupendous miracle for you to truly on the the depth of level that you're claiming to have changed. It would be a once in a-lifetime miracle. John, [sighs and gasps] for that to be true, you would have stories describing how it happened, how God did it. I can tell you stories for days and days. I have details. I have dimension to my testimony. You have a flat statement that you expect us to believe when you have never been somebody who is safe to believe. And I know that there are people who are watching your videos and they do believe you because you're still very very good at convincing people of your sincerity. But if you want to convince the people who actually know you, I would suggest something different than what you're doing because it is it is not convincing. And as I said in that email to you when I asked you to please stop contacting me, um I do wish you well and I do want peace for you and your family. I do. And I'm I'm afraid that the way you're going about achieving that is is not going to work. >> That's what I would say to him. >>

There the problem with anything like this is there's just so many stories that can be told. And I know we lean really heavy into the the sexual abuse aspect, the clergy sexual abuse, um because that is that is the worst of the worst. But um that wasn't all it was, you know, it was an entire atmosphere, a whole culture created on purpose to isolate um make destitute. I remember there there's one story I have um I wish I still had the email, but he he sent the staff a whole email about how such and such a ministry he had just found out what this such and such a ministry was paying. It's it's um the people who worked for it and and he was patting himself in the back saying, you know, look how much better we're doing. Look how much better I treat you. And I didn't know the term gaslighting at the time, but it was gaslighting. And I I just I remember looking at the email and realizing how in congress it was with my actual lived reality, which was that I was in poverty. The only reason I was able to continue working for him is because I was doing two

things. I was living with people that would allow me to live with them for free, and I was racking up enormous amounts of credit card debt. Um, so when that that email comes through and you see people confirming to him and affirming, "Yes, you do. You treat us so much better. Oh, you treat us so much better."

If anybody ever sees any of the screenshots of these text messages back and forth, it's just heart-rending because you see these girls who I know to be such empathetic people immediately, you know, going to to um stroke his ego and and make him feel it's everybody's so well trained to to stroke his ego at all times and to um fill his love tank and to um it it's just everything everything was designed to meet the needs that he was that he was praying on us to meet. And um it yeah it there's too much to ever tell. Uh but it it went all the way down into every single interaction and um stuff like using Cards Against Humanity to gauge people's like playing cards against humanity as a staff um to gauge where people's morality mind is and what are they comfortable with and and what are they not comfortable with. And then friends of mine, Scott and Carissa Crowder, they they got fired, you know, pushed out soon after an interaction where they refused to play Cards Against Humanity with him. And it is it's, you know, it just keeps and it keeps going. It keeps going.

So again, my hope is that people will use their intelligence um in weighing and their wisdom, their God-given wisdom in weighing this matter and going, "Is it really worth it what he has to offer me? Is it really worth it when I don't know for sure?" And my Yeah, that's what I That's what I hope. I hope that people will engage their own intelligence and their own God-given wisdom and and if they are to choose to engage with him in any way as a minister that they would be extremely extremely cautious because he is almost certainly not a safe person. Um, and then I did I guess I did want to say too, you know, like with the with the Danny Silk thing where he was trying to say, you know, you get your power back by doing this, this, or this. there's anybody watching who is going through something like I went through several years ago. Um, don't ever let somebody tell you first of all what it is you need in order to move forward. Power was not the thing that I felt like I needed at that time. Um, I have increased what I feel like is my power, my agency in my life. Um, it started with after Welton Academy, every job I had, I knew my worth and I vehemently advocated to get paid according to the worth that I brought to my roles. Um, that's getting your power back. Um, I chose to speak the truth to the world and let them decide what they were going to do with it. That gave me my power back. Um, I decided whether or not and continue to decide whether or not I want any interaction with Jonathan. And as much as he likes to posture it as if, you know, it's us being unrelenting to not speak with him, um, that's my call to make and it's nobody else's. So, I do feel like I have gotten my my power back. But in that moment when Danny Silk was was telling me that that's what I needed, what I really felt like I wanted back was my innocence.

I know the grace and mercy of God and I want everyone to be restored to the Lord. Even the people that have been the oppressors and the >> you know the people who have done bad things like I want so desperately for them to be close to God because when you are this kind of thing doesn't happen. >> And I think that's what Jesus meant by pray for your enemies. like if we would pray for them and they would be restored to God, so many problems would, you know, not even happen or be dissolved. Um but on the other hand, I don't think there is enough understanding of what what the signs are that leads up to assault um or abuse or what the signs of gaslighting are or the tactics of creating a scapegoat and those things because the global church doesn't have an understanding psychologically of a human's nervous system and what actually happens. They're quick to run to forgiveness to restore someone to their previous plus, you know, they use scripture for that. But there's lots of scriptures that say have nothing more to do with them, right? So there are there is the other side. But then my heart because I'm a survivor has a deep longing for people to understand survivors that what may be done for the perpetrator is now a lifelong journey for them. that healing takes time and it comes in layers and sometimes they get triggered over something and they have a really big reaction to something that may be small but they're in absolute hypervigilance. They're not they're c I mean there's so much medical stuff. Cortisol rises when you're on guard all the time. Um they have rumination of what could I have done different? There's shame spirals. There's relational distrust not wanting to be part of a church again. This is now a lifelong journey that they live every single day. And so to say you just need to move on and forgive and they're sorry and they can still serve the Lord because they're gifted is deeply painful to them. These things don't come out of nowhere. No one just decides, I'm going to be inappropriate with a woman today that's not my wife. That it does, it starts slowly with other things. There's so many victims who haven't spoken up. And so when they, you know, highlight that predator, other people who maybe would have come forward if there was real accountability, they're not being heard and seen. And they often leave the church entirely.

>> Ministry is not that important. Ministry is not so important. so as to, you know, this is not your journey of self-actualization. That's not why you go into ministry. You go into ministry to serve. And if your ministry actually ends up traumatizing um people, maybe you've misunderstood what ministry is really about because it's all about serving people. It's about serving people.

>> Where ministry is serving, I think what's gets lost is like you said before, the sheep are not getting served. In fact, the shepherd that should go after the one isn't even a shepherd. It's a wolf that's dressed in sheep's clothing. And we want to put him in charge of other sheep again because oh, he's sorry he dressed up. No one comes to this position. There's a deep rooted issue. If you think about it, like some of the things they've done, those have never crossed my mind. And I'm not saying I'm better. I I'm wondering, are they really sick? Do they have a problem that this is so easily done over and over? And we've heard, you know, on the news or from psychologists that Christianity is a great place for wolves to go and hide because we have a system set up to protect them. And so that's I think the bigger thing that we need to look at as a body of Christ is what are our systems and how do we keep people like that from fooling all of us. But as people are covering up or speaking against the victims because they're maybe saying something in a way that is angry or they don't like the the tone of voice rather than the message is we're doing word curses against the victims. when we're supporting the predator, when we're talking about how the victims, you know, should have come forward earlier or whatever it is, whatever the the criticism is of the victims who are so disregulated, they don't know what to do and they probably don't do it right. But those that is a problem in the body of Christ to be spreading that kind of support for the predators on really on the enemy's camp is supporting something that's happening and making it worse. And I know that sounds like a really strong word, but I feel like it's a caution that we need to be slow to speak to, you know, thank them for saying they're sorry and good job for doing the work. I'm not saying they don't deserve to be loved or supported, but the global church, the body of Christ that then chimes in on every social media you post with a thousand so proud of you. Like behind that are conversations that are like, "Well, that victim, how did she dress? Well, why'd she let it go on so long? Was she really telling the truth?" Those are word curses against the very sheep who are out on their own suffering.

Like one of the things that was heartbreaking for me, you know, so Danny released his letter and a couple days later I I did a Facebook video. I posted it for the Welton students basically just saying like, I know Danny says this, but I'm telling you the majority of the board members and the psychologist says John's not better. And it was just so heartbreaking to know like in this world, in the Christian world, in the charismatic world, it's a battle of voices. It's a battle of authority. And it didn't matter how passionate I was. And it didn't matter that I wanted to take John down. My voice didn't count. It wasn't loud enough. Danny's voice has more weight. So when I say I appreciate you guys doing this, I really do cuz your guys you guys' voice has more weight than than mine does. And there was tons of girls that were really hurt and nobody would speak up for them. It sucked. So, thank you.

>> Yeah. Thank you, Eric. Thank you for caring.

>> Mhm. Well, you you've spoken up for them and uh I appreciate you you doing that. That's what Jesus would do. If if you have a story to tell regarding Jonathan Welton, I I would encourage you to to reach out to Renee at Know the Sound. The the link will be in the description of this video as well. There's going to be a whole lot of uh information in this description. So, um please feel free to to read through um all of all of the material um if you want to inform yourself of what's going on. Rene, I I want to say thank you for um carrying the torch for this, for uh um being relentless in in warning the body of Christ. I think that the church owes you a debt of gratitude >> for what you have done to advocate for the women that have been uh prayed upon by by Welton. um uh and going against some of the people who have been considered heroes within the church. Um that you would you would buck up against that risk your reputation, risk the the the pain, the the stress, the um the sleepless nights, all the stuff that that you endure >> uh when you are a whistleblower. And um uh the church owes you the church owes you uh thank you. And so, um, I want to say thanks and I'm sure that those who are are watching this as well, uh, share that sentiment that, um, you are owed a debt of gratitude. Thank you.

>> Yeah. Thank you. That really means a lot. Thank you so much.

>> Mhm. [snorts] Would you would you end this in prayer for for the church?

>> Oh, man. Yeah. Lord have mercy on us. Lord, we we just thank you so much for the opportunity to be able to to share these stories in the way that we have. We ask that you minister to the souls of those who have been victimized, but also to Jonathan's as well, that he does still have a soul and that it matters. Father, I ask that you would ask us to keep our hearts pure and clear as we continue to move forward. It's a challenging job and we couldn't do any of it without you. So, please have mercy on us. And we thank you for this time in history we're in where the church is finally ready to hear everything that you've been allowing to percolate up. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen.

>> Amen.