Silent Obedience: Mike Bickle and the Independent Investigation

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of a profit and former member of the International House of Prayer. Jed it's good to be back and we talked briefly about what we're going to discuss today right before this podcast and interestingly it ties into a theme that I think it'll come out before this one but it's something Adam and I are talking about. The

silence culture how these groups manipulate the people such that whenever something bad happens you have to stay silent which defies all human logic and sometimes it goes against your personality right? Some people are wired to speak out but people in these groups have been manipulated to be silent and the groups themselves have been a little bit deceptive in the way that they handle these kind of things which we'll get into some and I have some stories of my own to share but basically the you know the framework of these cults they want to suppress all critical thinking and if anything negative happens rather

than take the negative as a learning experience to correct and grow and become better they actually become just a little bit worse. Yeah and when no one's talking about it there isn't isn't gonna be accountability and there's this weird there's this weird process in which if you're talking about something bad that happened in the church suddenly you become the villain quite easily because people see the person who is causing the disruption as not the individual who committed the crime or did the misdoing it's not the issue of the sin or the whatever was committed it's the issue of the person who is bringing it up

that's what's disrupting the process that's the sort of sand in the machine that is what becomes the thing to point to as we need to get rid of this. Absolutely it's really character assassination is the only strategy because a lot of these groups because they really have no firm foundation to stand on the only thing and do is point at the people who are exposing the flaws in the foundation and say, they're the problem, not us, they're the problem.

It happens time and time again. I've seen it with not just the eye hop or the brand of course, but some of the other groups that are talking to me, they instantly, if you bring up any sort of critical flaw with the group's core theology or foundation, it's the person who exposes the flaw, that's the bad guy.

And I had this conversation with Bob, I guess that podcast has already come out, but there's this weird thing where the cult leader is the root problem of course, the central figure, but it takes a lot of people who are banding together to keep the leader in power, that is also a part of the problem, right?

And so you get this weird scenario where the central figure could not stand if not for the people supporting him, but yet the central figure is telling the people how to, basically how to be silent so that they can point fingers and character assassination against the people who speak out.

Is it, do you ever get a weird feeling like, do you, it doesn't ever strike you that you are the villain for a lot of people? It does, I'll open up a little bit, I called my mother, this is years ago, I called her on her birthday to wish her happy birthday, and basically the call ended in about two minutes with her telling me how I was, the same thing is Judas and how Judas's mother also wept for the sins of Judas, and you know, it's different when it's other people, but when it's your own family,

it's a little burned a little bit deeper. But of course anybody who speaks out, they become labeled with all of these biblical names, Anis and Sapphira, you get to end with that or Nathan and Korra, they go through all the names of the villains in the Bible and say, you're that villain.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, what's the David's son with long hair? Why am I forgetting his name? Who comes and tries to ride against David?

Anyway, I got that one a lot. In, he then, he's like leading a rebellion against his own father, and then it fails because his hair gets caught while he's like trying to pursue after David, he might be trying to flee.

I'm showing my lack of biblical knowledge in this instance, and I think you're thinking of Absalom. Absalom, yeah, that's it, that's it, that's it. And it was all, I was called Absalom quite often because I was leading a rebellion against my father, and I also have long hair.

So I've been, I've been wary of trees and not getting caught in my hair and trees. I've been looking out for it. Yeah, it's kind of funny because... the brand of cults long hair for men was sinful.

And in fact, when you walked into the building of the brand of tabernacle, as you walk into the foyer, they had this picture from the 60s of the Beatles that says, this haircut is wrong.

Like anybody's gonna wear a Beatles haircut, but the intention was that men have to have the exact same haircut, basically parted on one side and very short, and people who have left the cult, this has happened for years, but I have family members, their children go into school, and if they're not in the cult, they do their hair like the other kids, and the parents of the cult members will actually Photoshop the hair off and give them a leave it to beaver style haircut.

So me having a conversation with you with long hair, and I'm really glad you chose the picture that you chose for the cover photos of what we're doing, because it's just like in your face, man, this is Samson, Samson had long hair too.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, that's like a really good sort of encapsulation of being the villain and not even really realizing what, having long hair, and you don't even recognize that in some cult, that's something.

In other communities, you're not supposed to cut your hair. There's just so many rules, and you can become the villain in a community by speaking out, and saying these things, but also by just these silly, if you just don't follow the rules, don't fit within the very specific lines, you can find yourself alienated from family members or community members, and it is a very eerie feeling to be like, I know that there's people talking about me as if I'm a big bad guy, and it's...

Well, I'm a coffee drinker, and in some cult, coffee is sinful, and in the brand of cult, watching television was sinful, so I use my doctor hookup when I drink coffee, so I'm angering both groups.

Oh, man, long hair, coffee drinker, and watching TV, I am quite the villain in that. All joking aside, I know the reason behind your question, it is tough. Whenever you first exit a group, and everybody is pointing at you as the bad guy, or a girl, sometimes it's female, and the character assassination that happened is really hard.

One of the things that I've learned in irony and working through the support groups is that people have this fear that makes it even worse whenever it happens, because they were in the cult, and they engaged in the same types of character assassination to other people, and so when they leave, they know it's going to happen to them, and they're walking on eggshells, trying to mend all the relationships, and try to make it such that they don't become the target of the character assassination.

but they know they're going to be. And then it happens, and their whole world just falls apart. And I'm laughing because it's not funny to the person going through it, it's painful. But once you've made it through to the other side and you have a moment to have some self-reflection, you realize that, wait a minute, I was like that too.

And that's the reason why I was afraid. I knew it would happen because I did it to other people. And then on the other side, you're like, you know, I feel so sorry for the people in it.

I really don't care what they say. And the insults are kind of funny because they're all the same cookie cutter. It's like they made the stamp of insults and stamped it on the people's foreheads and said, when somebody leaves, you will call them Nathan and Kura or Judas or whatever.

They're basically following the same pattern for the character assassination and the insults. Yeah, and it doesn't really, for me, it doesn't matter, you know, being called Absalom or whatever, or, you know, I'm a young, I shouldn't be talking, I'm too young.

When I'm criticizing people who started their ministry in their 20s anyway, so it's just, you know, a lot of the criticisms are pretty silly and don't hold a whole lot away. But the heartbreaking thing is when you have family members or you have people who you care about that you lose connection to these people because they buy into this narrative that is being created, that is ridiculous.

And I don't, like, I have obviously had to deal with a lot of it, you have probably had to deal with it a lot more than I have. And, but one person who I think about is Jane Doe who, the sort of first Jane Doe who came forward.

I mean, this has been her life for the last two years and this was when she first came forward and it was still in that, like we talked about last week, the Matthew 18 process where it was kind of being held within just IHOP leadership and Mike had an opportunity to sort of try to quiet her before she went more public with things.

He was threatened. He threatened everything that has happened with her of, hey, people are gonna turn against you and he made it sound like it was something that was going to happen regardless of his, you know, like he was saving her from this that people are gonna come and attack you as if he wasn't orchestrating the attack against her.

So he didn't say it as a threat, but it very much reads as a threat. If you ever, or anybody, the emails that he sent to her are public, they're on the Royce Report and you can look these up.

Bye. It basically warns to Jane Doe if you come after me, you're gonna be the villain. And she was still to an extent within the community, within the IHOP community and so she has family members, she has friends, she has people who are all close to her within that community.

And it really happened. It really happened. And it's still happening today. This is, I thought that it was over, but just recently in the last few weeks, people have started attacking her character again.

And it's just so infuriating, attacking her character and attacking her testimony as if she was just making things up. And so I'm glad to keep trying to set the record straight on this end.

And I know a lot of people are listening and paying attention to you and I and a lot of, you know, there's, I don't, less people are falling for this false narrative and the record is being set straight, but it's just so heartbreaking to see this continual attack against, specifically against Jane Doe.

Yeah. And if there's any consolation in the, you know, the backlash that's happening, it's the fact that we were in a cult, we escaped a cult. And I understand the character assassination while it's happening.

It's extremely painful. I can't imagine what she's going through, but the people who weren't in it, don't see it in the same way. For years, people have said all kinds of things about me.

I don't know if you've ever seen them, but it's unbelievable some of the things that they've said. And my response usually is simply this. I was in a cult. Yes, I acted differently. I behaved differently.

Really, you can say whatever you want. And I was a product of the making of this thing. So it's not like, you know, it's not like there's anything they can say that really cuts me to my core.

I'm a human, I make mistakes, I have made mistakes, but I made more mistakes while I was in the cult than after I left. So you can see yourself as becoming a better person after leaving, of course.

But yeah, I can't imagine what she's going through. And hopefully she is strong and can come through, through this without taking a lot of mental anguish. Yeah, no, she is tough as hell. And so are the other, so is my mother and Tammy, the women who have come forward and others.

I mean, especially seeing them behind the scenes, like they're brave women who have had to endure quite a lot, not only as victims, but as victims of slander and accusation and character assassination. So, the fact that they still are going strong, and I know that there's been some lawsuits that have started to make waves, and the arm of justice moves really slowly.

I know that on all of these, whenever I see some of the comments on our previous videos, one of the biggest questions is, why isn't Mike Bickle and Jail hands? And the answer to that is both discouraging and some senses of, there isn't as much litigation or just, there isn't as much recourse as there should be, especially for clergy sex abuse, in Missouri, and a lot, there needs to be some updating of laws.

There's also statute of limitations, and the problem when you have women who take 30, 40 years to find the strength to come forward and recognize what happened to them, which is, when you're dealing with that level of indoctrination, it takes a long time.

Unfortunately, statute of limitations is up on certain things. But there is definitely, for the people who are asking, hey, is there going to be justice? People are, there are things moving, and hopefully within the next couple of years, we're talking about at least civil recourse for civil suits and different things.

So some of that is starting to happen, but it just moves very slow, and so this can be a very discouraging time, where there is very clear abuse that is being uncovered, and there just isn't a whole lot of immediate justice that is being dulled out.

And part of that has to do with, there just was no justice within the structure. Mike Bickle was removed from IHOP, but that pretty much it, the investigations that were brought against him were thin at best, and we can get into more of the specifics of that too, but the internal mechanisms of justice within the church have just been non-existent in this situation, and that really, really is heartbreaking.

The cult aspects that you mentioned, the mind control, it's not something that is widely educated in the United States. People don't understand why people who are trapped in this type of system don't just leave.

I mean, if you're being under that level of control and manipulation, why don't you just walk out the door? What's not that simple? And people don't really understand that who are on jury pools, so hopefully that's something changes in the near future. But anyway, to get into the unraveling of what happened in the investigations at IHOP, maybe to be good if we just break down sort of the scenario, what it looked like whenever all of this began and start talking about how the investigations began to unfold.

Yeah, so in previous episodes, I've talked about how there was an advocacy group that

formed together, which you're familiar with the advocacy group, right John? Yes, I am. And for, I forget what I've talked about and what I've not talked about, so apologies if this is redundant, but a lot of posts, a lot of people who were involved with IHOP leadership for a very long time came in support of Jane Doe and kind of formed a group of advocates to help Jane Doe get her story out. Then my mom became a part of that sort of group and then eventually Tammy Woods also came forward. But before Tammy came forward, there was this power struggle sort of

popped up between the advocacy group that was pushing for an investigation. From the very beginning, the advocacy group was asking for an independent third-party investigation because the executive leadership at the International House Prayer was basically saying, we don't really know what's going on. We're having Mike take a back seat, he's removed, he's not going to be a part of our organization officially right now, but we're not sure what's happening. They bring in this image consultant named Eric voles to help handle the image of what's happening and he comes and starts trying to inform the public of what's going on.

And their sort of stance is, we don't know, there's no clear information, we don't fully trust the testimony of Jane Doe, we don't really fully trust the advocacy group because we think that they have mixed motivations, some of them are the disgruntled employee sort of tactic of these people are just upset at Mike because of stuff that has nothing to do with sexual abuse or anything like that. And so this power struggle sort of situates where you have the HE group saying, we need an independent, if you say you don't know what's going on, if you say we need more information,

okay, let's get someone in here. who can do this investigation. Not us, not the AG group, not you, not IHOP, doing their own sort of internal investigation, have someone come in who will be this third party investigator.

And then what happens is that IHOP then hires different law firms. They did it twice. The first one that they hired, there was a clear conflict of interest and they ended up having to go with a different one.

But they ended up bringing in a investigator, her name or not an investigator, a lawyer. Her name was Rosalie McNamara and she was with Larthrop,

the law firm, law firm, and she was brought in to do this investigation about Mike. However, she was hired by IHOP, she was not hired by the AG group or she was not hired by, so she is the International House of Prayer's client or the International House of Prayer is her client.

She is accountable to them. All of the information that she finds is accountable to them. She is not able to say a whole lot because they are her client. She, you know, attorney client privilege, she wants to be careful what she releases.

So the advocacy group says, hey, this is not a true and third party and independent investigator. We don't, we didn't have any say in choosing this woman or this law firm. The law firm had, Larthrop had like some pretty famous, had famously defended different Catholic churches who had been accused of having one of their priests,

sexually assault different individuals and Larthrop had defended the Catholic churches in previous situations. And so the lawyers that are involved with the AG group say, hey, this is not the track record. We don't, they, this law firm has come in and defended abusers in previous times.

This is not the group that we want investigating what actually happened. They're not gonna come in with a spirit of transparency and a spirit of understanding what is going on. This clearly is a situation of like limiting liability.

And this is my opinion, of course, but that is absolutely how it seemed to me is that they brought this woman in, not, to investigate, not to get to the bottom of what was going on, but to limit eye-hops liability in future scandals that we're coming for.

And from the outside looking in, it's the most obvious setup for a person who is trying to cover up the sexual crimes. Right. And that's clear sign of the abuse and manipulation, the spiritual abuse and manipulation that is happening because I had this conversation with Adam recently.

Say you're on a volleyball team, your daughter's on a volleyball team in school, and the coach just happens to be a sexual predator and you find out. Everybody's going to raise their hands and say, no, I do not want my daughter involved with this.

And now in this scenario you've described, say the school hires an attorney for the coach. Obviously all the parents are going to just be outraged. Why are you doing this? We get the attorney not the coach, the coach is the problem.

So in a normal scenario, in a normal church where there isn't any form of spiritual abuse, manipulation, everybody's going to stand up and say, okay, this whole thing's a scam. There's a problem here.

Let's all rise up against it. But the people don't do this because they're under that level of manipulation. Yeah, and even, I mean, they are going to prioritize their own, the safety of their organization, the financial stability of their organization, and cover the scandal of their leaders.

It clearly is not, their priority clearly is not to find out what happened. And if you think of it more as like a business, and less like a ministry, because if it's a small ministry in a church, it's like, well, you would think that I hop leadership would want to get to the bottom of things, just like any of the rest of us.

If you're thinking very generously towards those leaders, because who cares if I hop goes bankrupt? It's a ministry. It's not about making money anyway. It's about doing good. And if there is corruption within it, you know, it's like, you know, if I have mold in my house, well, I live in my house, and I don't want to live in a house that has mold and that I'm going to then have diseases because of this.

So I need to rip up the walls and make sure that everything is all good. But if I'm selling the house, and I don't care, and it's just about making sure that I can make a quick buck off the house, and I'm not living there, then I don't want a very thorough investigation of the mold I want, as much investigation that limits my liability so that I don't get sued in the future, so that I can make my money selling the house, and that I won't be in trouble in the future.

And it clearly was a situation that was more like the latter of like let's not investigate the mold Let's not see what the sickness is. Let's make sure that we clean it up as quickly and efficiently as possible And so they hired they hired this Organization to do it. Yeah, never I began to expose the brand I'm called There were things that were happening to me that were quite unusual and anybody else who's On the outside looking in. In fact, I had the conversation with some of the people their mind was blown a things were happening

Like I would I would go to the library to uncover documents research documents and just have my laptop and hard drive stolen things like this And it wasn't you know this can happen to anyone right but it was the frequency that it was happening to me that people were like you know John There's something going on here. You you have to be a little bit more careful and so I was And one one of the funniest things that happened so one of William Brannum's alleged prophecies was that he saw 16 men fall and die during the building of this bridge that spans from Jeffersonville to Louisville right and so I looked it up

We had another family who were investigating they looked it up they actually went to the the Coast Guard logs and they found the logs of every single hour of every single day that this thing is being built. Nobody died like this prophecy said and they they continued with it Well, one of the things that happened I was digging into this at the time that my laptop and hard drives were stolen and I was working with a structural engineer They had the cult had hired this attorney that's on their side not an independent as investigator just like you said

And this attorney said that there was a period of time in which things were being covered up in Jeffersonville and those 16 men fell But they fell inside the pillars that's holding up the bridge that's called a case on and so in that cement are these 16 bodies So I'm working with the structural engineer and he just laughed at me because John do you realize that if even just one body is in there Not a single car can drive across it because the body decomposes and there's this big void right Instead of 16 the whole thing would not have stood all these years right

Well this turned into they they published a video of the guy and the guy said they interviewed the mayor's son and said yeah it seems like I remember my father saying that 16 bodies And that concrete thing and his description didn't match the prophecy The every single aspect of it he wasn't even part of the cult which they don't allow outsiders to be supportive of their prophecy every single aspect of this did not match their strategy, except for the strategy of covering it up.

They wanted to bring out outside counsel that they controlled to just stop the story. The interesting part is it actually worked. I got phone calls from even high ranking members of the cult saying, yes, those bodies are in that pillar, so you be quiet.

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It's so silly on some of the lies that are told to keep the scaffolding up are so ridiculous. And I'm talking about the McNamara Report and this investigation, and I'm speaking very bluntly and matter of factly of, hey, this is what was happening.

They were brought in for to limit liability and not to investigate. And I can totally see, and I 100% know that defenders of IHOP would be like, well, how can you say this? You're just making generalizations.

You don't know, you don't see the process. And it's one of those things where it's like, well, if you look with any sense of any critical perspective on it, it's just obvious. Like the bobby bodies in the concrete structure.

It logically doesn't work. And so you don't even have to be no specific details about what is going on to look at it and be like, this doesn't pass the smell test. Why would you hire a lawyer?

Why would you do these particular things? Why wouldn't you involve the AG group to find a third party that both the IHOP and the AG can listen to? You know, if it truly is a situation like there's mold in your house and you want to get it out so that you, the people who live in the house can be safe.

There's a method. going about that and that quite clearly wasn't what I hop what's doing. But I say that it doesn't pass the smell test from an outsider's perspective. But I don't have just an outsider's perspective.

I also have an insider perspective because I so you mentioned it briefly because my family is involved in it, not just my mom, but my dad too. So something that was absolutely wild that happened is during so Rosalie McNamara begins her sort of into investigation even though the HE group, even though Jane Doe and Jane Doe's lawyer and my mom and others have said this is not satisfactory. This is not the type of investigation that we want to see even though this doesn't this doesn't measure up. I obviously just goes about it anyway. They pay for it. They pay for this

which I imagine was expensive. They hire this firm and they bring her in and she begins the investigation. And what happens is the HE group says we're not giving you all of our information.

We're not playing all our cards. Why would we? You know, when there's this power struggle, you clearly are in the pocket of the IHOP leadership. You don't have it's not clear what you're going to report. Are you if you find information that is horrifically damaging to IHOP as a structure not just that to Mike Bickel. Are you going to give this information out? What's the sort of accountability? What's the sort of structure that this investigation follows? Who is this investigation for? All of these are very important legitimate questions that the advocacy group is just not

getting satisfactory answers to. So they say we're not going to engage in this. But the investigation keeps going. So without the primary accusers, without the testimony of the primary accusers, the investigation goes which is just unfathomable to even comprehend like there's a situation and I say I'm brought in to investigate a certain situation and I'm not even allowed to talk to the primary people who are giving testimonies about it. I can't say with any any certainty that I am speaking accurately about the situation because I haven't spoken to the primary first-hand accounts. So she goes along, she contacts my mother.

And this is documented too, I can send it, I'll send clips to you in case you want to link home or anything like that. But she texts my mother and she says, hey, I would love to have an interview with you. And my mother was like, I do not believe that this is a true third-party investigation and tell there's an agreed upon third-party investigation. I am not willing to come forward and share my testimony with you. And that's it. So that was the testimony that she got from my mother, just a simple text message back and forth. What then happens

is during this investigation as it sort of getting started, concurrently, my father is also having his own scandal be brought up, which I haven't really gotten into a lot of the details about my father, but my father during the same time was sexually harassing several women.

It's a whole different thing that we could get into perhaps at a later date. And I think that I've mean references to it before. But my father was kind of had lost it just quite frankly.

Like he's a man who I still love and care about. And I have spoken a lot about, and it always is painful because he's my father. But he had a lot of fraudulent history in his ministry. And when you are so actively talking, like just lying all the time, there's an effect that that has on your brain. And he's had some brain damage in the past because of accidents he's been in. And then medication that he's taking and alcohol consumption. So that just a lot of different factors were leading to a point where he just basically became over the last two years just completely unhinged.

And started really praying upon people in very sad and sinister ways. And so long story short with that is the scandal sort of comes out that he is doing these things. He's sending unwanted messages to a bunch of different women. And it is pretty clear and cut and dry.

This is going on. And I myself know that it's going on. And this was the first time that I actually publicly spoke up and affirmed that yes, the testimonies against my father are true. And once I spoke up and some other women spoke up, a lot of people believed it. There wasn't the defense like there was with Mike Bickle because my dad isn't a cult leader. You know, he's a- He's a prophet in the group.

There's definitely people who defend him and appreciate him. And there was some defense, but they were pretty quick to also cut ties with him and throw him out. And that's what happened. I spoke with the leader, the sort of interim leader of IHOP at the time.

I explained some of the things that were going on with my father. He said, OK. He is banned from IHOP premises. They actually publicly make a statement about Bob Hartley is no longer welcome at IHOP.

The security has been alerted to not let him in. And they take this sort of moral and stand against my father appropriately in this week that all of this is going down. And then during this same week, I kid you not, John, it was within that exact same week.

It wasn't even like months after or whatever. It was that exact same week. The investigation finds out, OK, my mom has a pretty critical testimony in the whole larger account against Mike Bickle because she is this independent voice that cooperates Jane Doe's testimony specifically about the prophecies that Mike Bickle used prophecy about the death of his own wife to groom Jane Doe.

My mom also has told the same story independently, even before Jane Doe ever told her story. My mom told it to my dad and told it to this man, Michael Sullivan. So she provides this sort of evidence that Jane Doe's testimony is credible.

And of course, my mom is also another victim of Mike Bickle, as well. So she holds this important position within the framework of figuring out what's going on with Mike Bickle. And my parents are separated.

My parents have been separated for six, seven years at the time. And the Rosalie McNamara reaches out to my father, sets up an interview with him the same week that he is banned from IHOP premises.

She sets up a meeting with him where she talks with him. And she basically am my father during that interview. And this is probably one of the most heartbreaking things that has happened in the last two years.

Because I mean, my father just openly betrays my mother in this situation and there's no way to really contextualize it other than that. He just says a lot of nonsense against my mom that it's just frankly not true.

And makes up a bunch of lies, tells Rosalie that if this happened to Terry, she would have stood up for herself. She wouldn't have let this happen. She wouldn't have done this. And you know, just totally says it's all a lie.

And he says she doesn't even want to be a part of this investigation. She was coerced by the AG group to share her testimony. It's not true. She doesn't believe any of this. And basically, Rosalie McNamara takes my father's account as gospel.

And I mean, he is clearly not mentally well during this time. I genuinely like cannot form complete sentences because he has clear addiction issues and just is really becoming afraid at the moment. And had just there was this huge scandal that was coming about him.

And so his brain is on fire because he's being attacked, left and right. He is not even able to... I mean, he's sending me messages talking to me about things that were happening in three years, previous as if they were happening right then.

I mean, or may potentially even early stages of dementia, issues just not doing well. And I had warned I have leadership about all of this. You know, that he's not in his right mind.

He's dangerous and he's just, you know, not well. And they had taken it seriously. And so far as they banned him from the premise. But then just that same week, they use him as a linchpin in their investigation about the scandal surrounding Mike Pickle.

And so in the final McNamara report that is still available today, you can find in it, it talks about, there is a third Jando, which is my mother, who came forward that may or may not have heard something about a prophecy, but she doesn't want to be involved in it.

She doesn't, her husband says that she was coerced into it or her ex-husband does. And the way that the account is given in this official report is just so blatantly untrue. And it also, like, it states that she doesn't want to share her opinion.

And that's... not at all what my mom said to Mathimera. She was like, I would gladly share my testimony as soon as an independent third party investigator comes in. So it's just, to a point that it's hard for me to even recognize how this isn't like criminal because it's just, it's just lies?

Like it's not, it's not a coercion of the truth. It's just, frankly, a total misjustice to the truth. And I don't know about the rest of the investigation as intimately as I know this section, but I'm reading, I'm reading this report and I am flabbergasted with it.

And my mom and I wrote a response to it where she basically said, no, this is true. My ex-husband does not speak for me. He never, like throughout my entire life, he has tried to silence my voice and speak over me.

And that is not the case and it was really heartbreaking because my mom suffered a lot with my father. Like it was not a, it was not a great marriage. And my father was very domineering and to see my mother have to be re-victimized by that, by having yet again this sort of abusive ex-husband of hers account, squash her voice and eliminate her voice.

And I was absolutely furious, of course, when this happened. And it just showed how disingenuous and dishonest the entire investigation was. And in the investigation, I will say, McNamara concludes that there was wrongdoing.

She does say, hey, there seems like there was inappropriate relationships that might bickle foster during the time. During almost the exact same time, Mike Bickle releases like a very vague apology. And it's sort of this, he wanted to, that I think the strategy was admit to a sort of very vague and generic sexual indiscretion, make it seem like an affair or something, leave it sort of up into interpretation or an emotional affair or whatnot, not a history of grooming teenagers, not anything close to the actual depravity of what it was.

And McNamara's report does conclude that there are, but there is something that transpired that was wrong, but it's pretty vague, pretty indeterminate and quite clearly, it tries to validate some of the not-channel claim.

where the whole reverse victim and accuser sort of thing, it just, it paints the AG group as also bad. It's like Mike Bickle was bad, but AG group is also bad and mishandled.

It's just a really heartbreaking account. And literally two, three, four days after the report comes out, Tammy Woods comes forward. And it basically, it basically discredits the whole McNamara report because it was sort of the McNamara report questioned a lot of the things that Jane Doe was saying, questioned whether she had, the McNamara report had spoken to people who were close to Jane Doe. And those individuals had kind of similar to what my father did with my mom had just like discredited, like I would have known if this was happening. I would have known and she's making it up or she's exaggerating or something like that. And so there was this sort

of attempt to lessen the testimony, not totally invalidate it, but lessen the testimony of Jane Doe. And it would have been effective, I think, but then Tammy Woods comes forward and she gives a more explicit account of what happened to Jane Doe and says, I was 14 when Mike Bickle started pursuing me. And it just becomes like, no, he clearly did all of this sort of stuff. Like the, the Jane Doe account was only scratching the surface. And then while all of this is going on, one of the common things that you see as a pattern of behavior across all of the cults,

there's the double standards and the logical fallacies, like you mentioned, your father's relationship to all of this in these groups, in the real world, if there were to be an incident where somebody got stabbed on the street and there just happened to be a prostitute who's standing on the street and saw the whole thing. In the United States and the Court of Law, if she were to testify as the witness and she said, I saw the knife go in and I saw the knife come out. Then clearly the jury's going to say, okay, this guy's guilty. But in the religious arenas, the way it works is everybody

says, yes, but she's a prostitute. We can't listen to her story. And they try to, they try to spiritualize the derogatory statements against them and say, that's the devil rising up against us. So when you've got all of this going on and the legal aspects of it, you've also got the people who are being manipulated spiritually as all of this is unfolding. Yeah, I mean, that is exactly it. Even just this last week, the Eric Foles, this person who is hired to be sort of image consultant for ihop kc who is involved in all of this and saw a lot of the gritty behind

the scene details that i've shared with you he says in a in some interview that he just did he was like largely i think what happened during the ihop thing my takeaways that it was a demand a demonic attack against the prophetic um and times whatever i don't even care what he thinks it was a demonic attack against but that phrase that demonic attack just like you said i mean it's just it's horrible it's so blatantly um evil because not only is it a lie not only does it discredit and undermine the testimony it actually

villainizes the people who are the victims and i think that a huge thing that has allowed some of this to be more effective is that jane doe because she hasn't given her name very specifically which i totally understand and i appreciate i think that she might be coming out with her name soon and the story isn't over but because she's just a nebulous woman she's just this there is some woman and when you have a community that has a lot of misogynistic individuals in it already and a lot of misogynistic tendencies and just frankly a lot

even if it was a man like just the nebulousness of it is provides this opportunity to fictionalize a harlot Babylon a prostitute a person who is coming in who she was the one trying to seduce mike and you know she was the individual who was the aggressor and it's so heartbreaking it's just so heartbreaking i and i saw my father do it during that time too he i get a call from him and he's livid and angry and not making sense and um i'm trying to this is when i was still speaking with him um i'm trying to talk him down i don't know what he's doing

turns out he he knows where jane doe goes to church and he shows up at jane doe's church and is tries to get in a physical fight with the pastor of the church during this time because he's i mean effectively intimidating jane doe i don't think that he

he's not well so i don't know if he rationally was thinking like he just and And he's a very aggressive. He was a wrestler, very physical individual. So he's this like, if there's a wall in front of me, I'm not gonna figure out how to go around it.

I'm just gonna put my head down and hope that I get through it. And so, but I mean, he's essentially becoming a goon from Mike Bickle during this time to intimidate key witnesses that are coming forward.

Unfortunately, she wasn't, I don't believe she was there at the church during that time, but I mean, how unsettling must that be for you? And I feel so bad like I love that my mom has supported her and my family has supported her, but just like to have my father be doing this and the heartily family being involved in intimidation and all this sort of stuff is heartbreaking.

Meanwhile, all this time, while he's doing this, Mike Bickle's son, Luke Bickle, who was also implicated in a scandal during this time because this is a whole another can of worms, but Luke Bickle, who is an adult, I mean, I think he's in his 40s, 50s.

He allegedly was having an affair with a woman who was involved in the IHOP world and Mike, people came to Mike and Stewart Greene, about this affair and Mike covered it up because it was his son, and basically for several years, there was these weird financial things that were happening and basically covered up the affair of his own son.

That's alleged, I don't have specific information about that, but there's articles on this and I believe they, them to be very credible. But Luke Bickle is no longer living with his family and needs a place to stay and so he moves in with my father.

And during this whole time, my dad is going to bat for Mike Bickle while Luke Bickle is living with him and I am not able to access Mike. So in February, I fly in from Los Angeles to Kansas City because I'm trying to have an intervention with my father and get him the help that he needs.

And Luke Bickle helps hide my father from me, helps him like they go on the land, like I don't know where they went, they like hopped in a car and ran from me because my father was worried that I was going to get him committed to a mental facility.

And I was just, I wanted to get him into a addiction like he's struggling with a lot of drug and alcohol abuse and just wanted to see him get clean. And I eventually was able to track him.

down and have a conversation with him, and asked him to, you know, you can't force anybody to do that unless you have, like, court order and they're dangerous and stuff, which he was getting close to that, but that it's just complicated.

So anyway, it's just an absolute wild situation that starts unfolding. This investigation is going on. They start using my father to just credit my mother, meanwhile, Luke Bickle is literally living in the same house as my father and keeping him away from me when I'm trying to get him help for his addictions.

And it's just so, it's really sad because you see all of these individuals who are doing a lot of wickedness, a lot of, frankly, just really terrible things, and they're destroying their own lives.

And my father is not better for the things that he's, like, it's never benefited him. He is the biggest villain in my dad's life. We had a conversation about after I had spoken out publicly about him, and he was like, oh, I can't believe that you would betray me like that, and I was like, dad, that the biggest person who has betrayed you throughout your entire life is named Bob Harley.

Like, you are your own worst enemy, and I can also be a bad enemy too. You can add me to the list, but like, it's just so destructive. And the same with Luke Bickle and Mike Bickle and all of this, it's just, when you build this world, it's the mold issue.

When you build this world, and there's mold in the house, and you don't ever fix it, when you only board it up and you try to pretend, not only do you hurt other people, you hurt yourself, and over the last several years, basically, I've seen this sort of corrosion and this disastrous effect of people who are just like, can't take accountability, can't take responsibility for the things that they have done, and have social systems and structures around them to protect them no matter what.

It's heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking. And the double standard, so the prostitute example I gave, it's so wrong because the ministers will say, well, this person's a prostitute, we can't listen to anything they say.

The devil is out to get us. This is a prostitute. But then if there happened to be another prostitute that was willing to say something opposite, they would, in a heartbeat, use the other, you know what I mean?

Right. They don't care as long as it's in their favor, they don't care, but there's so much more we could talk about. I guess this is probably a good wrapping up point and we will continue the conversation next week.

So if you've enjoyed our show and you... For more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.

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