Former Newsboys frontman Michael Tait confessed Tuesday to abusing drugs and alcohol and touching men “in an unwanted sensual way.”
The statement comes days after multiple men came forward with allegations that Tait sexually assaulted them while touring with the chart-topping Christian band. Tait said he would dispute some of the details reported by The Roys Report on June 4, but the accusations—which include accounts of cocaine, nudity, and sexual assault—“are largely true.”
“I am ashamed of my life choices and actions, and make no excuse for them,” Tait wrote in a statement posted on Instagram. “I will simply call it what God calls it—sin.”
Tait, 59, has been a mainstay of contemporary Christian music (CCM) since the 1980s, when he began DC Talk with his Liberty University classmates Kevin Max and TobyMac. The rap-rock trio took the No. 1 spot on the Billboard CCM charts with their third album, Free at Last, and held onto it for 34 weeks. The group’s next album, Jesus Freak, is considered a landmark of popular Christian music and evangelical youth culture in the 1990s.
DC Talk went on hiatus in the early 2000s, and Tait joined Newsboys as the lead singer in 2009. With him in front, the group’s 2010 album Born Again landed at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 list, and the 2011 follow-up, God’s Not Dead, hit No. 1 on the Billboard Christian Album chart, going on to sell 500,000 copies.
The Newsboys also appeared in the 2014 film by the same name, and then God’s Not Dead 2 and God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness, becoming closely associated with the franchise of conservative culture-war dramas.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that for many evangelical teens who came of age in the nineties, the Newsboys were a core part of their evangelical Christian experience,” historian Leah Payne, the author of God Gave Rock and Roll to You, told The Roys Report. “They re-formed in some ways as an ongoing supergroup. … that sort of gives voice to American conservatism.”
At the same time, Tait now admits, he had a secret life.
“For years I have lied and deceived my family, friends, fans, and even misled my bandmates about aspects of my life,” he wrote. “I was, for the most part, living two distinctly different lives. I was not the same person on stage Sunday night that I was at home on Monday.”
Tait unexpectedly left the Newsboys in January 2025, offering a vague explanation. The group was in the midst of planning its Worldwide Revival Tour.
In early June, three young men came forward with accounts of sexual assault. The Roys Report did not release their names, in keeping with a policy of protecting the identities of abuse victims.
One of the men said he met Tait at a concert in 2004 and was invited to Tait’s home in Nashville. He went and then returned in 2005. The man, who was 22 at the time, told The Roys Report it was “just a bunch of bros drinking and playing darts and just being silly,” but that turned into skinny-dipping, and then a hot tub, and then a back massage in bed. The man claimed that Tait touched his butt and put his fingers “in his anal region,” according to The Roys Report, before he spoke up and stopped the encounter.
A second man, also 22, was part of a band touring with the Newsboys in 2010. He considered Tait his idol, he told The Roys Report, and was eager to accept overtures of friendship from the older star.
“We went to a movie. He picked me up, and then we would usually just play darts at this bar,” he recalled.
One night at Tait’s home, he said, he drank too much, threw up, and fell asleep on the couch. He claims he woke up to find Tait kissing him on the mouth and touching his genitals.
The man said that he kept the incident secret at the time, for fear it would negatively impact his opportunities in CCM.
“I very much did not want to be excommunicated,” he said.
A third 22-year-old worked as a member of the crew in 2014. He told The Roys Report that the tour involved a lot of drinking.
“There were probably a couple days we missed, but there was pretty much always, like, a bottle of wine or some vodka. We always had cranberry vodka,” he said.
As the man recalled, he’d been drinking too much one night when Tait approached him and offered him cocaine. He went to sleep instead, only to wake up with Tait on top of him, the man claimed, rubbing his penis through his jeans.
“I just felt bad for him in that moment,” the man said. “Looking back … that was a sexual assault.”
The newest member of the Newsboys admitted on social media that there were rumors about Tait. Singer Adam Agee said the band was never able to confirm any allegations against him, however.
“Each time something came up we tried to find the source,” said Agee, who joined the Newsboys in 2023, “and no one would tell us anything.”
In an official statement released on June 5, the four remaining band members said their hearts were shattered, denied any knowledge of wrongdoing, and said they do not condone any form of sexual assault.
A lawyer for the Newsboys said the organization was aware of an “unsubstantiated aspersions cast via internet” but warned The Roys Report against publishing anything that implied the ownership or management of the band had any knowledge of “the things you allege.”
Though Tait is no longer with the band, the allegations prompted K-Love, the largest Christian radio network in the US with more than 400 stations, to stop playing the Newsboys and DC Talk on June 9, at least temporarily.
The following day, Tait published his confession. He said that when he resigned from the band in January, he went to a treatment center in Utah and is now six weeks sober.
“To the extent my sinful behavior has caused anyone to lose respect or faith or trust in me, I understand,” Tait wrote. “But it crushes me to think that someone would lose or choose not to pursue faith or trust in Jesus because I have been a horrible representative for him.”
Tait said he’s been praying the words of Psalm 51, which says, “I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. … Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
