“I Made Mistakes”

Richard Dortch, second in command atPTCwhen news of the scandal broke, says he still experiences physical and emotional fallout. Like Bakker, Dortch lost his credentials as an Assemblies of God minister last May after failing to appear before church officials to answer charges about his role in the debacle.

“I made mistakes,” Dortch now says. “My approach is not like others who try to justify the excesses. I just say we were wrong. I should have refused the kind of salary I took.”

Dortch said that over the last nine months he has “taken advantage of every opportunity … to ask the public for forgiveness.” He said he has written hundreds of letters of apology to Assemblies of God officials, evangelical leaders, and others.

Though a possible target of a grand jury investigation, Dortch makes no apologies for helping to arrange payments to Jessica Hahn, the New York church secretary with whom Bakker had sexual relations in 1980. Dortch spoke extensively with CHRISTIANITY TODAY about his role in the cover-up and about many of the people and issues associated with the PTL scandal.

On his role in the cover-up:

Dortch said he first spoke with Hahn in 1984. She had called PTL, alleging Bakker had raped her. Dortch dismissed the charge as “preposterous.” “If she would have told me the truth about what I believe really happened—that she was enticed to come down to Florida when Jim and Tammy were separated—I might have believed her. But I could not imagine Jim Bakker raping anyone.”

When Hahn continued to contact PTL, Dortch mentioned the situation to Bakker, who denied raping Hahn, but told Dortch, “There is a problem.” Dortch said he was disappointed at Bakker’s conduct, but was satisfied Bakker had confessed his sin and had undergone successful spiritual rehabilitation.

“I made a deliberate decision not to report a friend to the denomination over an isolated incident that took place four years ago.”

On payments to Hahn:

Dortch said he would have ignored Hahn had it not been for a telephone threat from Gene Profeta, the pastor of the New York church Hahn attended. “He physically threatened me, told me I would be torn limb from limb, if I did not pay the money,” said Dortch.

Following this threat, Dortch contacted Paul Roper, who had corresponded with PTL as Hahn’s representative. According to Dortch, Roper told him he had been contracted by Profeta.

On the Assemblies of God:

“Both the denominational leadership and I made the mistake of talking to other people, but not to each other,” said Dortch. “In my opinion, the facts of the case did not warrant the action against me. My appearance before the denomination was scheduled for six days after my dismissal from PTL, and I really was in no emotional condition to defend myself properly. I should have checked into a hospital for care. I’m not sure the Assemblies leadership, with the pressures of that time, was prepared to accept my perspective of the case anyway. But I don’t blame anybody. I take full responsibility for my actions.”

Dortch has not applied for reinstatement in the denomination. He said he and his wife appeared (at their own request) in July before the same board that dismissed him: “I wanted those men to know I respected them, that I was not running from anything, and that I was repentant.”

On Jim Bakker:

Dortch said he believes Bakker’s version of what happened with Hahn in the Florida hotel room is closer to the truth than Hahn’s allegations that she was raped. “The main thing I’ve had to work through with Jim is that I feel I should have been told about the Jessica Hahn matter before going to PTL.”

Dortch said he had never heard allegations that Bakker is homosexual until after the scandal broke. “John Ankerberg is a liar to say I knew about it,” he said. “I called him in the presence of four or five witnesses within a week of when he made his accusations on the air, and he absolutely refused to talk to me.” (A spokesman for Ankerberg confirmed that Dortch called. Ankerberg instructed a staff member to tell Dortch that Ankerberg had decided to defer questions about the controversy to Jerry Falwell, at the time the head of PTL.)

On Jerry Falwell:

“Our perspectives about what went on at PTL are different,” Dortch said. “I want to stress we are still brothers. But from the day Jerry Falwell first talked to me about PTL to the day I left, not one person associated with his organization asked any PTL executive one question about the business of PTL. There were misunderstandings about how we operated—how we paid taxes, for example. They came in from day one and started making declarations—that money was missing, that offices were bugged. None of it was true. That’s when I knew they had their own agenda.”

On lessons learned:

“Sometimes I think the church doesn’t know anything about true success. It’s all tied to how many stations we have on our network, or how big our building is. It’s so easy to lose control, to compromise without recognizing it. At PTL, there was no time taken for prayer or for family, because the show had to go on. We were so caught up in God’s work that we forgot about God. It took the tragedy, the kick in the teeth, to bring us to our senses.”

On televised religion:

“A television camera can change a preacher quicker than anything else. Those who sit on the sidelines can notice the changes in people once they get in front of a camera. It turns good men into potentates. Television must be used only as a tool for evangelism. It’s so easy to get swept away by popularity: Everybody loves you, cars are waiting for you, and you go to the head of the line. That’s the devastation of the camera. It has made us less than what God has wanted us to become.”

John Wesley Fletcher, the traveling evangelist arranged the Florida meeting between Hahn and Bakker, maintains a full schedule of speaking engagements. Fletcher operates out of headquarters in Oklahoma City. He is ordained by the Victory Way Ministries in Union City, Tennessee, and, according to a spokesperson for his evangelistic association, he was not reprimanded for his role in the Bakker affair.

Jessica Hahn became a household name virtually overnight, following revelations of the 1980 incident involving Bakker. She claims to have been raped by both Bakker and Fletcher. Hahn presented the most thorough account of her version of the story in Playboy magazine. Today she is living at the Playboy mansion in Los Angeles, where she is working on another article about her experiences with PTL.

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