Pastor sues blogger and those who gave bad online reviews for $500,000 dollars

Picture of the lawsuit from her blog [2]

She said in another interview,

"If Chuck O'Neil wins, I think all the bloggers and people who have sites on the Internet better be shaking in their boots."[1]

Quite honestly, I agree.   90% of Americans cannot produce half a million dollars.


BEAVERTON, Ore. - A church pastor is suing a mother and daughter for $500,000 because they gave the church bad reviews online.

The family being sued left the church a few years ago and Julie Anne Smith says she and her family were shunned and couldn't understand why. So she went online and wrote Google and DEX reviews of the church and then started a blog.

"I thought, I'm just going to post a review," Smith said. "We do it with restaurants and hotels and whatnot, and I thought, why not do it with this church?"

Never did she think Beaverton Grace Bible Church and Pastor Charles O'Neal would slap her with the lawsuit.

"I'm a stay-at-home mom. I teach my kids at home, and this is just not the amount of money that normal moms have."

When the family left the church, Smith says friends were told to end all contact with her.

"If I went to Costco or any place in town, if I ran into somebody, they would turn their heads and walk the other way," she said. "All we did was asked questions. We just raised concerns. There's no sin in that."

Dissatisfied, she went online to write reviews. Other church members counteracted them with church praise. So Smith started a blog called "Beaverton Grace Bible Church Survivors."

But the pastor claims in the lawsuit he filed that her words, "creepy," "cult," "control tactics," and "spiritual abuse," are defamation.

"What somebody does in the church is one thing, but when you get out into society we have the right to free speech, and it may not be what people want to hear, but we absolutely have that right," Smith said.

The lawsuit didn’t just target Smith. Her daughter and three other commenters are also being sued.

"He can say what he wants in the church and say, don't talk about this or don't talk about that, or don't talk to this person, but when you're out in the civil world, you don't do that anymore," Smith said. "And he's not my pastor anymore. He does not have that right to keep people from talking."

The Smiths filed a special free speech motion to dismiss the lawsuit. It goes before a judge later this month.

KATU News called the church, went there, went to the pastor's home and spoke to his wife. KATU News also called the pastor's attorney. All of them declined to give their side of the story. [3]

Pentecostal abuse of kindoki children is on the rise in the UK

Nigerian Pentecostal Church

When 15-year-old Kristy Bamu left his parents in Paris on 16 December 2010, he was looking forward to spending the Christmas holidays with his siblings, visiting their sister and her boyfriend in London.

On Christmas Day he was found by paramedics in the bathroom of an east London high-rise flat. His body had been mutilated, teeth were missing and he was covered in deep cuts and bruising. In the last four days of his life he had suffered acts of unspeakable savagery, doled out by a man he called "uncle" and one of his own sisters.

Why? Because Eric Bikubi, a powerfully built football coach, and Magalie Bamu were convinced the boy was a witch, possessed by spirits who wanted to bring evil into their home. On Thursday they were convicted of murder. They had earlier admitted actual bodily harm against Kristy's sister Kelly and a younger sister, who cannot be named.

The judge, Mr Justice Paget, exempted the jury from jury service for the rest of their lives because of the "strain" of the trial, adding it was a case "every one of us will remember". The story of Kristy's last days is difficult to hear, and harder to comprehend. He was starved and deprived of water and sleep, punched and kicked repeatedly, floor tiles were smashed over his head, his teeth were hit out with a hammer and a pair of pliers were used to twist his ear. Throughout the ordeal, his siblings – two of whom were themselves accused of being witches by the couple and abused – were forced to watch or take part in the torture.

But despite the extraordinary horror of this case, African groups have warned that belief in witchcraft is increasingly common in some communities and that other children in the UK are "suffering in silence" after being branded as witches.

"We were concerned about this before this trial of Kristy Bamu," said Debbie Ariyo, executive director of Africans Unite Against Child Abuse(Afruca), who added that a boom in pentecostal churches was leading to more children being accused of witchcraft. "This is not a problem with all pastors or all churches, but the branding of children as witches is not abating. It is a growing problem. There are so many children suffering in silence."

In response to the case the Victoria Climbie Foundation announced on Thursday that in April it would be launching a cross-border initiative with Kelly Bamu and some of the teenager's friends who would work in schools and in communities to highlight the dangers of ritualised child abuse and witch branding. "A lot of awareness raising has been done, but this is also a problem in other EU countries such as Belgium," said director Mor Dioum.

The 83 incidents uncovered in the past decade only scratch the surface of a hidden crime, according to Detective Superintendent Terry Sharpe, head of the child abuse investigation command at Scotland Yard.

An average of eight children a year in Greater London are victims of abuse based on witchcraft-style exorcisms, but this only reflects cases resulting in police investigations.

Sharpe detailed the horrific abuse, including being beaten or forced to drink unknown liquids, starved or deprived of sleep, blindfolded and having their hair shaved off.

Kristy Bamu was subjected to many methods of torture. It began with a simple accident when Kristy, waking in an unfamiliar bed, wet himself. Bikubi, finding the underwear, accused the boy of being possessed bykindoki – the word for witchcraft in the Congolese Lingala language. This is a recognisable trigger in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where both Bikubi and Bamu were born, according to Dr Richard Hoskins, an expert in African religions.

"The trigger that needs to occur for people to think someone is possessed by kindoki can be anything out of the ordinary. Bed-wetting is a classic example of this," he told the Old Bailey trial.

For the next four days, Kristy and two of his sisters – Kelly, 21, and an 11-year-old – were accused repeatedly of being witches. They were forced to fast and stay up all night chanting prayers. In horrific evidence, which reduced members of the jury to tears, the court heard that Bikubi soon fixated on Kristy. Over several days, he beat him around the body with a metal bar used for weights, shoving the end of it into his mouth and dislodging a tooth. The football coach headbutted and hit the teenager, smashing bottles and then heavy floor tiles – bought to redecorate the flat – over his head. When paramedics arrived at the flat on Christmas Day and found the child drowned by the side of a bath, they found his blood all over the flat and an "armoury" of weapons that had been used to torture him.

Witchcraft had preoccupied Bikubi from an early age. Speaking to a forensic psychiatrist, Dr Tim Rogers, in Pentonville prison, he explained as a child in the DRC he saw rats and other "abnormal visions" and was isolated as a result. Bikubi – who moved to London when he was seven – believed he was "the chosen one", with a special ability to sense other people's spirits.

Thomas Bikebi, executive director of the Congolese Family Centre, said that for some believers once the presence of evil spirits had been "confirmed" – often, but not always by a pastor – the "punishment" was seen to be imposed on the spirit and not on the child. "When you force the child to fast, people believe you are starving the spirit, not the child. When you beat, you are beating the spirit," he said.

The widespread belief in kindoki could even lead those who believed in the evil power of spirits to support the actions of Bikubi and Bamu, he said. "There are people within the community who will say that this pair did the right thing, they killed a witch," Bikebi said.

Common problems experienced by children – such as autism, epilepsy, dyslexia or even simple naughtiness – could trigger accusations, said Ariyo, with children living away from home or in domestic servitude most likely to be targeted.

"It is heartbreaking. Some of these children have a disability but pastors are saying they are possessed," she said. "This can prevent parents going to see professionals and getting the help they need."

There has been a rapid growth in African churches in the UK. According to UK Church Statistics, 670 pentecostal churches opened between 2005 and 2010, taking the total to 3,900 – that figure is expected to rise to 4,600 by 2015. As a result, Ariyo fears that "witch-branding" is on the increase. Afruca dealt with a dozen cases of ritualised abuse last year, and said the national figure was likely to be far higher.

A social worker with more than 30 years' experience with African communities in London said that many cases were "going under the radar" and blamed "rogue" pastors for the spread of branding and ritualised abuse. "It is spreading like bushfire because it is a source of income," she said. "If you can charge £500 for an oil that is going to 'cure' a child of evil spirits, you are going to make money. Pastors can be very powerful people, and we have to educate the bad ones that there are other ways of making money than playing on people's ignorance."

Police believe Bikubi may have visited Nigerian preachers in north London but his local churches denied knowing him. However, access to the internet and satellite channels meant the influence of pastors based in countries such as Nigeria, Angola and the DRC was increasingly pervasive, Bikebi said.

"You have pastors online who tell people that they just need to send money and touch the table in front of them and the evil spirit will be banished and all their problems will be fixed."

One video on YouTube, featuring the well-known Nigerian preacher David Oyedepo, reveals the power of some church leaders. A teenage girl kneels before the pastor, and after saying she is a "witch for Jesus" he calls her a "foul devil", slapping her violently across the face while the congregation cheers. In a later video, he can be seen boasting: "I slapped a witch here last year."

Many African churches work with agencies to educate preachers about UK laws concerning child protection, according to the Churches' Child Protection Advisory Service. The organisation has trained 4,000 preachers from African churches since 2007, but argues that local boards for safeguarding children must do more to know what churches are operating in their areas.

A lack of any requirement to note religion in child abuse cases was likely to lead to under-reporting, said its chief executive, Simon Bass.

"Like female genital mutilation, there is likely to be under-reporting in this area, so we have to work with statutory agencies and across the church spectrum to ensure more children do not suffer this type of abuse," he said.

Project Violet, the Metropolitan police's faith-related child abuse unit, has a team of three dedicated officers working with communities, schools, religious leaders, and the medical profession to raise awareness, said Sharpe. "We have ongoing community engagement … and are in the process of increasing awareness of Project Violet within the Met police so that frontline officers who attend incidents are aware of these particular issues," he said.

Critics argue the unit has been seriously neglected in recent years, after making an initial impact when it was established in 2005 as a response to the abuse of child B – an eight-year-old Angolan girl who was beaten, cut and had chilli rubbed in her eyes for being a "witch".

"Project Violet is a shadow of its former self," said Ariyo. "The police are not engaging enough with faith groups, and there is a gap that needs to be filled. We shouldn't shed tears after another child has been killed. We need to act now."

Afruca is calling on the government to make branding a child as a witch illegal, and is calling for greater monitoring of churches and preachers. "If we don't push home the idea that calling a child a witch will have grave consequences, then we will continue to have these kind of cases," said Ariyo. "We don't seem to be learning from these cases. People cry crocodile tears and then nothing happens."

On Christmas Day 2010, Kristy's killer spoke to the boy's father, Pierre, accusing the 15-year-old of being a witch and threatening to kill him. Kristy told his father: "Dad, come and get me, or otherwise Eric will kill me". The court heard Pierre Bamu, dismissed the boy's fears because he could not imagine Bikubi causing any harm to the children, who had stayed with Bikubi before. A few hours later, Kristy was dead. [1]

1991: Gilyard accused by about 40 women

The downfall of a pastor

Allegations of sexual misdeeds detailed


Rebecca Sherman

Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Published: JULY 14, 1991


Well before Pastor Darrell Gilyard appeared Wednesday in the pulpit of Victory Baptist Church, more than half the church's 800 members had rushed from their homes and jobs for fear of missing the hastily called meeting. And while they knew that their charismatic preacher was being pressured to resign, many prayed for his last-minute redemption.

The crowd was starkly quiet as the 29-year-old minister confessed that he had sinned against God, his family and those who sat before him. He shoved aside a speech that had been prepared by Dr. Paige Patterson, his mentor and former teacher at Criswell College. "This book tells me what to do with my sin,' Mr. Gilyard said, clutching a worn Bible.

"It has been with me everywhere. It's been in the various foster homes, it's been under the bridge with me.

This is far more than a moment of tragedy and failure. It is a moment of triumph. I have walked away from yet another bridge, a bridge of triumph."

What he didn't say was that for the fourth time in four years, he had been forced to walk away from a congregation. A growing number of women in the Richardson church said their pastor had sexually abused them. One said he had had sex with her in the pastor's study. Another said she received lewd phone calls and, most recently, a woman said he raped her.

Mr. Gilyard, unavailable for comment since his resignation, left behind a Baptist model, of sorts, for integrated membership and a reputation as one of the most widely sought black evangelists by predominantly white Baptist congregations. Both his home and mobile phone numbers have been changed.

The morning after the resignation, Dr. Patterson described Mr. Gilyard as one of the "most brilliant men in the pulpit.' - Mr. Gilyard credited his appearances on the Old Time Gospel Hour, a weekly television program produced by evangelist Jerry Falwell. It was Mr. Falwell who promoted The Darrell Gilyard Story, a video biography of a young black orphan who rose to prominence after he had spent his teen-age years living under a bridge in Florida.

Although Victory Baptist is not officially affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, Mr. Gilyard and the church embraced the principles and guidelines of the group and looked to the organization and its largest church, First Baptist, for support and guidance.

Likewise, Dr. Patterson, president of Criswell College, located in the First Baptist complex, was Mr. Gilyard's former teacher and mentor.

Though many of the women who say they were involved with Mr. Gilyard said they feel guilt over their participation, they are angry at church officials who, they said, did little to protect them. One woman who said she had had a long-term affair with Mr. Gilyard said her phone calls requesting a meeting with Dr. Patterson were not returned. "His secretary said unless I had proof, he wouldn't see me.' Others recall meetings with church officials at both Victory Baptist and First Baptist churches who drilled them with questions about their emotional stability and their relationships with other men.

First Baptist officials said they knew of the allegations of sexual misconduct, which began as long as four years ago when Mr. Gilyard was removed as assistant pastor of Concord Missionary Baptist Church in Oak Cliff. But they said they did not believe those allegations, and continued to recommend him. "We were dealing with a man of special gifts and talents,' Dr. Patterson said. "I was unwilling to call anyone guilty until I had demonstratable evidence that these allegations were true.' Dr. Patterson said that according to Scriptures, action cannot be taken against a minister accused of adultery unless there are two or more witnesses. He also asked for any other proof, such as photographs, videotapes or laboratory tests.

In the interim, the dynamic preacher became even more visible.

In addition to frequent appearances on Old Time Gospel Hour, he maintained a heavy speaking schedule across the country, drawing huge crowds wherever he spoke. Most recently, he shared a platform with Iran-contra figure Oliver North at the Southern Baptist Convention in Atlanta. "Their greed eclipsed their vision of reality,' said the Rev. E.K. Bailey, pastor of Concord Missionary Baptist Church, where Mr. Gilyard had been removed in 1987 amid allegations of sexual improprieties. Others, such as Dr. Patterson, paint Mr. Gilyard as a victim. "It's amazing,' Dr. Patterson said, "how jealousy, frustration and racism can be motives for making accusations.'

Intimate secrets

The Rev. Darrell Gilyard built Victory on conservative values, particularly when it came to women. He would not allow them to usher, serve on the finance committee, teach men or take classes with them.

But outside the church, according to the women who claim to have been victimized by him, Mr. Gilyard spent most of his time with women. Those who talked with The Dallas Morning News about their experiences asked to remain anonymous.

"I heard him preach at Concord for the first time, and I was amazed,' said one woman. "I was touched by his story of being orphaned. I thought he was special, anointed.' Soon after, she said, friends told her that the pastor, married since 1985, had made sexual advances toward them. She said he began asking her to lunch and she accepted. "He'd flatter me, say I was pretty. In the back of my mind, I knew something wasn't right.'

The woman said the minister followed up with late-night phone calls asking her to meet him in her garage, where her husband wouldn't see them. She said she refused. "I was afraid to tell anybody,' she said. "I knew what he said about friends of mine, how he spread rumors about them and told me (their) secrets.'

The calls persisted for three or four months, the woman said, until finally she told him to stop. "He would go and preach every Sunday against adultery and premarital sex and fornication,' she said, "and then afterwards, he'd call and beg me to meet him at a hotel.'

Another woma n was a student at Criswell College in 1988 when Mr. Gilyard preached at the school. He later asked for volunteers to work at Shiloh Baptist Church in Garland, his third preaching position. Mr. Gilyard began calling her, the woman said, asking her out to lunch. She accepted. "He was very, very suggestive to me, asking me if I liked him, liked how he looked. He wanted me to tell him intimate secrets. I asked if his wife knew about this, and he got mad.' She said the pastor who preached so humbly in thepulpit was arrogant and conceited outside church. "One time I remember something good happened at the church and I said, "Glory be to God!' and he said: "God? Glory be to me. I did it, not God.' '

The woman said she began hearing similar stories from friends at the college who attended Shiloh, where Mr. Gilyard was assistant pastor.

In 1989, she says she made an appointment with Paige Patterson, one of the most prominent figures in the Southern Baptist Convention. "Darrell was there with his wife and an attorney,' the woman said. "He confronted me and said I wore suggestive clothing. I don't even own suggestive clothing.

"Paige Patterson asked me to refrain from speaking to anybody about this. He said unless I came back with two witnesses or proof that something had happened, not to come back.'

Another woman who was drawn to Mr. Gilyard's preaching left the Concord church after Mr. Gilyard was fired. "We couldn't believe that he had done anything.' She said she and her husband corresponded with Mr. Gilyard during the next year while he was assistant pastor of Hilltop Baptist Church in Norman, Okla., in the fall of 1987. She said she was thrilled when he came back to Dallas.

One evening, she said, he called her late at night and told her he had been having sexual fantasies about her. "I thought he had some problem that he just needed to talk about, so I said I'd pray for him.' She said the pastor asked her to meet him later in a hotel or at the church. "I agreed to meet him at the church,' she said. "There was nobody there, it was at night. We were talking by the pulpit, and we started kissing. Then he grabbed my hand and pulled me down onto the - floor, right there in the church. I was in a state of shock. This was a man I trusted. I didn't know what to do. Then he was on top of me.' She said she was able to free herself and leave. But the calls continued, she said. "I told him what we did was wrong. I even called Paige Patterson to tell him what had happened.' She said Dr. Patterson would not take her calls. "He told his secretary to tell me that unless I had some kind of proof, not to call back.'

The woman said she prayed about it for a month and wrote Dr. Patterson a detailed, 10-page letter. "He called me, but he wouldn't agree to meet with me.'

Dr. Patterson said recently that he did not recall the woman or the letter.

Another woman joined Victory Baptist shortly after she moved to Dallas last year. Mr. Gilyard offered her a job at the church. "He called about 10 o'clock one night and said he wanted to talk about my work,' she recalled. "We talked for a while like that, then the conversation shifted and he started getting real personal.

He wanted to know what attracted me to him. I should have hung up, but I felt flattered.' She said the phone call became more sexually explicit until finally she hung up. "I felt dirty and sick afterward,' she said.

She said she told Darrell DeBoard, the administrator at Victory Baptist, two or three days later. The woman said she also quit her job at the church and moved out of town that weekend.

Mr. DeBoard declined to discuss the incident, saying he could not violate a confidence.

Another married woman who met Mr. Gilyard at Concord said that Mr. Gilyard parlayed flattery into a sexual relationship. "He planted things in my mind -- bad thoughts about my husband,' she said. "He'd say things like, "You know he's not paying enough attention to you.' ' Eventually, she said, she believed him, and they began seeing each other regularly.

The woman said she ended the affair after several women at Concord confessed publicly that they, too, had been seeing the pastor. "I thought when it was all out in public like that that he would have been stopped. No matter what people say about him, it's always his word against theirs.'

No proof

Martha Dixius, a social worker who taught Sunday school at Victory Baptist, said a woman in the congregation approached her in November for help. The woman, said Ms. Dixius, had "a trust level of a 7-year-old. She is very naive.' In a counseling session, Ms. Dixius said, the woman told her that Mr. Gilyard had noted her visitor's card and phoned her the next day with an offer to show her through the church. During the tour, he asked her questions a bout her personal life.

The next evening about 6 p.m., the woman told Ms. Dixius, Mr. Gilyard drove to her apartment and called her from his car phone. "She let him in her apartment because he told her he wanted to talk about some of the problems they had discussed the night before,' Ms. Dixius said. "She told me that by 6:30, she was raped.' The woman told her she was too confused and frightened to call police. The woman told Ms. Dixius that Mr. Gilyard continued to go to her apartment for six months and have sex with her. "He would - call her from the car phone and say, "I'm coming up, let me in,' and she would be too frightened to say no.' After counseling the woman for four months, Ms. Dixius referred her to another counselor. The two counselors met with the woman and Darrell DeBoard, administrator of Victory Baptist. "The word "rape' was used a lot,' Mr. DeBoard recalled, "but I understood that to be emotional rape. She was graphic with details, so it was hard not to believe' that something had happened.

Mr. DeBoard said he asked the group not to discuss the meeting until he had a chance to pray about it. He said he did not encourage the woman to talk to police because he didn't believe that anything illegal had occurred. He said he confronted Mr. Gilyard with the woman's allegation; the pastor denied it.

Mr. DeBoard said the woman did not have proof that sexual encounters had occurred. "I told her I can do very little with it with no proof,' Mr. DeBoard said. "I came here as a minister, not to be a detective and investigate.'

Pattern of denial

Darrell Gilyard's preaching career began at Concord Missionary Baptist Church in Oak Cliff in 1985, when pastor E.K. Bailey asked him to preach one Sunday. Mr. Gilyard's oratory talent brought him numerous speaking invitations from other predominantly black churches.

But another side of Mr. Gilyard began to emerge, a side that Mr. Bailey described as greedy and racist.

"He would talk about starting a mixed-race church,' Mr. Bailey recalled, "but his actions were different. He was offended by black music and anything African-American. "He was given a car, a place to live rent-free, a good salary, but he always wanted more.'

Two years after his arrival, Mr. Gilyard was fired in front of 1,500 members at Concord for having had sexual relationships with women members.

Mr. Bailey, who said he had heard sexual allegations from "around 25' of his own members, said he assumed that would be the end of Darrell Gilyard's bright evangelistic career. "I saw Darrell Gilyard as becoming the greatest black preacher in America,' Mr. Bailey said. But news of Mr. Gilyard's firing spread instantly through Baptist circles. "African-American churches across the country canceled his speaking engagements like popcorn,' said Mr. Bailey.

Mr. Bailey said officials from First Baptist attended the open service during which Mr. Gilyard was fired but later decided there was not enough evidence to further investigate Mr. Gilyard. "Paige Patterson wrote me an unkind letter over the whole ordeal,' Mr. Bailey said. "He basically told me that he would have come out to my church and solved the problem for me if I had told him first.'

Mr. Bailey says First Baptist continued to promote Mr. Gilyard throughout the predominantly white Southern Baptist churches. "You saw his star rising and rising,' said Mr. Bailey, "and you knew what kind of a person he was.'

Mr. Gilyard had little trouble gaining employment as assistant pastor for Hilltop Baptist Church in Norman, Okla. "I had heard the rumor s about him,' said the Rev. Dan Maxwell, the church's former pastor. "But Paige Patterson said he had been out there and talked to the women and there had been nothing to - substantiate the allegations.

"Darrell was really no help at all. He'd pop in and give a sermon, pop out.' Mr. Gilyard stayed less than a year, and within a week after his return to the Dallas area, allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced at the Hilltop church. Two women told church officials that Mr. Gilyard had made sexual advance s toward them, Mr. Maxwell said, and a third woman confessed to an affair with Mr. Gilyard.

Mr. Maxwell says he took his information to Dr. Patterson. Dr. Patterson spoke to the woman and said he did not believe her story. "That individual's story change d many times,' Dr. Patterson said. "That bothered me.'

In 1989, when Mr. Gilyard was an assistant at Shiloh Baptist in Garland, the allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced again. Dr. Patterson met with two women who represented friends who, they said, were involved with Mr. Gilyard. Mr. Maxwell was asked to attend, as were Mr. Gilyard and his wife and other First Baptist officials. Don Simpkins, a pastoral counselor, also attended. Mr. Bailey said he was not invited.

Mr. Simpkins said the group did not focus on details of the allegations, but delved into the women's pasts. "We wanted to know if these women making the allegations had a history of psychological problems, if they had been on medication or seeing counselors,' Mr. Simpkins said. "We wanted to know if they were divorced.' "We decided that these women weren't telling the truth. That Darrell Gilyard was basically a guy who didn't know how to act around women.'

"I have always felt bad because of it,' said Mr. Maxwell. "A number of pastors have called me and asked what happened at our church. I always tell the truth, but nothing is ever done about it. I don't know how long I can keep telling the story and not be listened to.'

Mr. Simpkins said Dr. Patterson asked him to counsel Mr. Gilyard once a week. "I was supposed to "polish the rough edges,' ' said Mr. Simpkins. Mr. Simpkins said that after a few visits with Mr. Gilyard, he suspected some "personality disorders' and wanted to test Mr. Gilyard . "He refused,' Mr. Simpkins recalled, "so I called Paige to let him know it wasn't going well, but he never returned any of my calls.' Mr. Simpkins said he counseled Mr. Gilyard eight times before he ended their relationship.

"The first I had heard that Mr. Gilyard had stopped counseling was several days ago,' Dr. Patterson said Thursday.

Mr. Simpkins said he spoke to The News after recent attempts to force Mr. Gilyard's resignation failed. "I realize now that I was wrong not to believe these women,' Mr. Simpkins said. "I believe it's time now to do the right thing.' Mr. Simpkins said he believes allegations against Mr. Gilyard that surfaced last year were covered up by Victory and First Baptist officials.

The allegations, which have come from at least four women members, were brought out in a meeting last month when an attempt to force Mr. Gilyard to resign failed.

Mr. Gilyard admitted, Dr. Patterson said, to several sexual relationships with women.

Dr. Patterson said he has withdrawn all support from Mr. Gilyard - and has asked that the pastor and his wife attend a two-week rehabilitation session. "Mr. Gilyard is no longer qualified to pastor a church,' said Dr. Patterson. He also asked Mr. Gilyard not preach or pastor a church for two years -- and then only if he can prove he has been rehabilitated. "In retrospect, Darrell should have been in counseling all along,' Dr. Patterson said.

Leaders at Victory, meanwhile, said that Mr. Gilyard may have rallied enough supporters to call for a vote for reinstatement as early as Sunday. [1]

I don't believe in Heaven anymore, Moody's just dead.

A pastor torturing their family pet, prompts five year old not to believe in heaven anymore. This is a sad story and my second cat killing story of the week.

BASTROP, Texas -- A Central Texas pastor is being accused of throwing a neighbor's cat off of a bridge.

Rick Bartlett, pastor of the Bastrop Christian Church, is facing animal cruelty charges. Bastrop Police Chief Michael Black said Bartlett admitted that he caught the cat, named Moody, in a trap on Sunday, Jan. 15. Bartlett told them that he was having a problem with feral cats in his garden.

Moody also told police that he had the cat in a cage in the back of his pick-up truck for three days and forgot about him until Tuesday, Jan. 17., when Bartlett brought the cat to police. An animal control officer noticed a name tag including the phone number of Moody’s owners, Sarah and Eddy Bell, on the cat's collar. The officer offered to take Moody back to his owners but police said Bartlett told them he’d take the cat back himself since they were his neighbors.

Later on the same day, a park visitor discovered Moody’s near lifeless body on the bank of the Colorado River, some 40-50 feet below a bridge.

Greg Maynard, a veterinarian with the Crossroads Animal Hospital, said Moody had severe internal injuries but no external injuries consitent with being hit with a car. Maynard said Moody was "just laid out like a sack of potatoes. No obvious signs of trauma externally. No blood or nothing broke."

The same Animal Control Officer who came to the injured cat’s aid last Tuesday was the same officer who assisted Bartlett earlier that day. She recognized the cat which is how police made the connection to the pastor.

Moody was Sarah and Eddy Bell's cat for 11 years. They are having a difficult time understanding what happened to the beloved member of their family. Trying to explain his death to their five-year old daughter has proved challenging.

“She also asked me where Moody is now and I said, 'Baby he's in Heaven,'" said Sarah. "She knows the man who did this is a pastor at the Bastrop Christian Church and she said, 'I don't believe in Heaven anymore, Moody's just dead.'”

So far, no witnesses have come forward saying they saw Bartlett throwing Moody from the bridge, but in the eyes of the law, the animal cruelty charges are the same since he admitted to police that the animal was in his care.

Attempts to reach Bartlett for comment on this story Monday were unsuccessful. [1]

Pastors overwhelmingly believe that God did not use evolution to create humans

Poll: Pastors oppose evolution, split on earth’s age