Gracia’s Story / IHOPKC / Kansas City, MO

It only takes a moment, but has a tremendous impact on our reach. Thank you for daring to listen.

There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Morrisville bus. And by God's grace, it'll be a mountain by the time we're done. You either get on the bus or you get run over by the bus. Those are the options. But the bus ain't going to stop. You either get on the bus, or you get run over by the bus. Those are the options. But the bus ain't going to stop.

And they bring in students, interns, staff members, who have what they call the Anna Calling, where they are an elite group of Christians selected by God personally to pray night and day, bringing in the return of Jesus.

Don't send your kids to a secular university. Send them for an internship. Have them become one of the elite Christian soldiers of God, ushering in the return of Jesus. And when you think about that, that really appeals to two people. That appeals to the people Looking for a family, looking for a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose, really vulnerable people, and it also appeals to narcissists.

And when you bring in those two types of people into one space, take out the toxic leadership even, you have a little bit of a dangerous situation.

And so these elites calling to me and saying you could come be a part of this when I had already a deep longing for family and for community, when I already had a very intense history of being abused and manipulated. I was a very loyal person, and I just wanted to be a part of something that was bigger than myself. I wanted to serve. I wanted to prove that I could be one of those really good, fully devoted Christians. So I heard them talk at a One Thing conference about an internship.

And it wasn't enough to join an internship. I had to join the fire in the night internship, where you're like the super, super elite Christian who stays up all night long praying for six hours a night, six days a week for a six month period. And I was, I was all in. I was like, yeah, I can do that.

That might help you kind of place this as you're listening to Gratia talk. Also, a lot of music came out of IHOP. A lot of mainstream Christian music are people that attended IHOP or were a part of the program for a time. Would you say that is reflective of Is that like a true statement?

But unless you are in the charismatic tradition, you don't realize how much impact and how much reach there is with this organization.

I was never wholehearted. I just was never really a Christian. And that couldn't be further from the truth. I was front row, arms in the air, fully abandoned every single night. I would. Miss lunch lunches were at 6 a. m. With time schedule I would totally miss that some days because I would get so lost in the worship and in the prayer that I would completely miss that There was no part of me that wasn't wholehearted and committed to this and in that wholeheartedness.

I very quickly Caught the attention of leadership. I was getting pulled into side rooms with Stuart Greaves, who was the person running Nightwatch and the internship at the time, and eventually became the executive director of IHOP.

He was pulling me in weekly, checking on me, saying how I was doing in a way that he wasn't doing for other internships, and that appeals to that part of all of us that We want to feel special, we want to feel like we belong, we want to feel like we have a purpose and a calling bigger than ourselves. And honestly, it feels good to hear that there's this super amazing God out there that has a plan for your life and has your back and sees these good things in you and all you have to do is.

Pray in a prayer room and he's going to make your life incredible. That's a very appealing thing to say to an 18 year old, naive, already victim of multiple forms of abuse.

You have a plethora of people with eating disorders that they're hiding because they're fasting so much. And everyone's kind of just suffering in silence because a few of the messages they hit home with really quickly is not to gossip, so you're not supposed to talk about any complaints you have with each other, and Matthew 18. If you have an issue with someone, work it out with them.

And in terms of leadership, if you have an issue with leadership, you can't talk to your other fellow intern about that. You have to go to leadership, and only leadership. Anyone else won't listen to you. They will shut you down and tell you to go to leadership. So if you're being abused by leadership, you're kind of stuck, because the way the leadership was structured was very chaotic, and it was very isolated. There wasn't a clear upline.

You had your internship leader, And you had the head of Nightwatch. And there was really nowhere else to go besides there. Mike was off limits. And he Executive leadership team members were off limits. They literally had security all over the base just to make sure people could not access these leaders. You weren't given their email addresses or any way to contact them.

And so if your internship leader, if the leader of Nightwatch didn't listen to you, you had nowhere to go and no one to talk to and no one around you was gonna listen because no, no, no, no, no. Don't gossip. Don't gossip to me.

The way they, they framed it was submit to your leaders, even if you know they're wrong, because you're under their covering, and God will deal with them. If you disobey them, even if they're wrong, God's going to deal with you. And so your job isn't to think about what they're telling you to do. Your job is just to submit. Your job is to do what they say. And that's where the praise came in was how much are you willing to submit? How little are you willing to think?

Which. By the time I had experienced sexual abuse at IHOP, I was really conditioned to just handle it however they told me to handle it, because I'd already been receiving this message, one, of Matthew 18, go to your leadership, and two, submit, do what your leadership says. So how, how do those things work together? If you have to go to your leadership with your problems, but then if your leadership tells you there's no problem, you have to submit to that, and you go in a cycle.

So your entire, your food intake, your sleep schedule, all of it. So it's like the end of that type of leadership, you were in the most radical version of it at IHOP.

But they didn't actually allow their staff members to be on any form of government service, so they'd give you this tiny stipend of 500 a month. 500 was like, the big stipend. Then right away, government taxes would take, you know, two or take a third of that. And then the rest would be just, you know, housing. So you'd have to go to their food shelf that they had for staff and students. And you'd be getting expired food from them. And that's what you're living on.

I mean, there was so many times where I was having to eat foods I was allergic to, and I was having throwing up and body issues. Because I was eating foods that I physically couldn't, but I didn't have anything else to eat. I lost so much weight. I, I'm five foot seven and I went down to 110 pounds for most of my time there and I was praised for it because you must be fasting a lot. You must be really pursuing God so much.

Meanwhile, they're fueling this eating disorder without even realizing it.

Leave the housing, because you don't have a better job, and then people, I watch so many people get stuck there for decade after decade, where the zeal, the fire, the drive to be there ends after a couple years, and they're just in a loop of wanting to get out, but they have nowhere to go. They aren't taught.

Life skills, a lot of these people came at 18, they skip college, and then they suddenly look, they're 30, they maybe want to get married or have kids or have a career now, and where do they go? What do they do? They've spent their entire youth doing that, and so then it becomes a sunken cost fallacy, where then they just stay longer. It's so sad.

I missed a lot of days in the internship where I had to be home with migraines and they didn't give them as excused absences a lot of times because they said, what are you doing with your life? What are you sinning that these are happening to you? And it places so much guilt and so much responsibility and It isolates you even further from getting mental health care that you might need, and pushes you further in isolation because then there's shame about it.

Because then you don't want to tell your roommate you have a headache, because then your roommate's going to ask you about the sin, and you're already tired, and drained, and sick. And it just is amazing. Now when I go back, and I visit the prayer room just to, just to see where it's at now. And I look at this room of a few hundred people, and I see how every single one of them is alone. They're together, but they're alone. They're isolated. They don't know each other.

There's really no community for a bunch of people that live together, work together, eat together, pray together, go to church together, go grocery shopping together. I mean, they do everything together in this bubble, and yet no one knows each other.

In the future, are they going to reference past things that they've gone through with you in order to keep you down? Oh

They sure brought up a lot, anything that you have done, and they held it against you, pushed you down, and I can't tell you how many times I heard those leaders that I now know were sexually abusing people and covering up the sexual abuse of people walk on that stage in front of thousands of people and say God has revival for us and we're not getting it because of you. You're not praying hard enough. You're sinning too much. You have secret sins in your life.

And I apologize if this is graphic, but there was times where people were coming forward and like confessing on the microphone to masturbating because they were scared that maybe their masturbation, what was causing revival from not hitting Kansas City, what was stopping Jesus from returning.

And it just astounds me that these leaders could stand on that stage and tell people, you're the problem, while secretly abusing people, secretly either sexually abusing people, or covering up the sexual abuse of people, or anything along those lines, knowing they're doing that, and yet blaming us. I had a moment at one point in time in the last year where I went, I was never the problem. It was never us.

If there was some kind of revival that some God was trying to bring on Kansas City, I sure wasn't stopping it. They were.

And you're so trained to take accountability for these things that I just took accountability for all of that and just was like, nope, I was sexually promiscuous, Jesus saved me. But then that was held against me.

Then any clothing I wore, any comments I made, anyone I spent time with, I mean, boys and girls anyways, weren't allowed to Spend time together alone, but it was like there was extra caution on me because they didn't want me to cause somebody to stumble because of my history, not realizing, which I think they did realize because they knew the details. They knew that it was, you know, I'd be 15 years old and have a 35 year old man and I, I'm like, yeah, Yeah.

I'm telling the story is I seduced him and of course, you know that that's not what happened. And so I think the leadership knew better. They knew what I was coming from but because they were holding these things against me And then holding me to different standards of other people that I think you get what I'm saying. Hopefully.

So he began to spend time with me, became my friend, and started grooming me. And his grooming came with a lot of, I have, a hard time with rejection, and these girls have accused me of these things, and it's not true, and you know, be gentle with me, and really putting me in a place where I felt responsibility and guilt for showing him rejection and being an empathetic and loyal person. I wanted to fix him. I wanted to help him. I wanted to show, no, no, no, you're not bad.

I can see the good in you. But also, feeling that, that internal tearing of, I, I was, I wanted to give myself to the prayer movement. I wanted to be fully committed to what I was doing, and that internal conflict really started as I was spending more time with this person that I was unaware was a dangerous person was not a, was not a safe person to be around and leadership was aware of it.

When it came time that he and I started air quote, dating, I say that because we spent almost no time together and I broke up with him very quickly. Leadership gave their approval. And to jump forward just a little bit, at the time when I did report what happened to leadership, the first thing that Stuart Greaves told me was, I knew this was going to happen to you.

So then, you know, I immediately, I'm like, well, no, maybe it's okay. And slowly breaking down my boundaries in that way. And it escalated to where he would be. Coming by my apartment during the internship, picking me up and taking me to Shiloh, a property that IHOP owns that's very sparse that you run into people. And I apologize again for how graphic this is, but he would forcibly stick his fingers inside of me, and I would tell him no and push him off.

And at first in this, I would aggressively fight him. And He would say things like, you know you on it and stop being playful, stop being coy. I, I really do think that he didn't realize how traumatizing it was for me. I think that he really did think that I wanted it because of his own trauma and past and just having zero idea of consent culture. And so while I'm not making excuses for him, I also don't think that he was trying to hurt me.

I think he just really didn't understand consent culture and I realized as these encounters continued that the less I fought him, the more, the faster it'd be over. And it went from these 20, 30 minute me fighting him encounters to just disassociate and let it happen. As my walls slowly got broken down. The first time I got raped by him, he jumped on top of me in a car while I was wearing a dress and I didn't realize that he raped me. There was, I did not feel anything.

I did not realize he had penetrated me. And he just told me that he finished. And in my mind I went, what? We, we were having sex? I, I, I didn't even realize it. And I didn't really feel like until a year ago that I could classify that as rape because You think of rape and you think of someone punching you in the face in an alleyway. You think of someone drugging your drink. I didn't feel anything. I didn't feel traumatized. I just was scared that I would get pregnant.

I was scared of the sin that I'd committed. The way he always framed it was, we messed up again. And so every time something like this would happen, I would go to my core leader and I would say, I messed up. I'd take the same kind of accountability that I took at 15 for these 35 year old men. And I would say, I messed up. And I wouldn't talk about how much I resisted. And so they already have a history now of thinking that I've been physically active consensually with this man.

I got an email from Donna Edwards, who was like the night watch mother. She's Misty Edwards mom. And she told me, you know, to break up with him. And so I did. I submitted to leadership. I so wholeheartedly submitted to leadership my entire time there. And so I broke up with him.

He didn't take it well and he continued to bother me and I went to leadership and I would tell them he's bothering me He's making me uncomfortable and they just kind of rolled their eyes and they were like big deal Say no, you should have been saying no this whole time and to be fair. I did have horrible boundaries It should have happened the first time and I should have said I'm not seeing you again, and I don't know why My horrible boundaries were the way they were.

I don't know why saying, No, I'm not going to see you again was so difficult for me in that state. So, part of leadership's defense that this was all my fault was because I would get sexually assaulted by him, but then I would see him again. And I did not have the strength of boundaries to say no to that at that point in time. Even though they weren't framing it as sexual assault, they were framing it as me being promiscuous, to be fair. That's my framing now, as I've processed it more.

But basically all of this escalated to, after the internship, I move into a different house behind the prayer room, and He started coming by unannounced. I would turn him away a lot of times and then one day he came by with groceries. I felt so guilty that he brought me something that when he asked to come in, I said yes. He came in, he began forcing himself on me.

I said no, but I'll be honest, it was a weak no. I wasn't pushing him, I wasn't fighting him, I was saying no, no, no. But I was also being very passive because I had already learned that the less I fought, the less time it would take. And so when I realized that this wasn't a battle that I was going to win or something that I had the strength to keep fighting, I asked him to put on a condom and he went to his car and he grabbed a condom and came back and I didn't lock the door. I didn't get up.

I didn't lock the door. I didn't leave. I laid in bed and I froze. I had a fight or flight or freeze response and I froze. And I laid there and he came back and he raped me. And then I got up and I made dinner and it felt like the most normal day. And I think that's something that a lot of people don't necessarily realize or is a reason why a lot of people diminish and downplay their own abuse is because it feels normal. And it doesn't feel traumatic in the moment.

So that one piece, the, the he came over with groceries, that is the piece that weeks later I told leadership about. That is the phone call I made to Donna Edwards and I said, I think I've been raped. And the first words out of her mouth were, you better not be lying because you are gonna ruin this poor man's life.

It's really heavy and brave to say it out loud because I think that a lot of us who's experienced sexual abuse I think can relate to the things that you're saying and it's really hard to put words to that and I think you just did a really good job of explaining how these things happen and how they continue to happen and that's what's so nefarious about sexual abuse and grooming is the most Horrific parts of the abuse usually don't just happen right at the beginning.

It takes time to get you to the point where they feel safe enough to do, to escalate. Every way that you were treated along the way by leadership with this just shows either, if we didn't know what we know now about IHOP, in the moment it shows either a complete lack of understanding of domestic violence. And abuse or a complete rubber stamp on domestic violence and abuse. It's one or the other. There's not really another space for it when he was already fired for harassing women.

And then he put him in a room where everyone's hungry and up all night with a bunch of young girls. Like,

I have Just micro abuse after micro abuse that builds and builds and breaks down my walls and my boundaries and my will. And so by the time I told leadership what happened, they came at my jugular. Why didn't you run? Why didn't you lock the door? Clearly you wanted it if you asked for a condom. They lied to me. They pulled up. a laptop or tablet or something and read off a Missouri law that said if you ask for a condom, you are giving consent.

And I didn't even think to look it up or realize that that wasn't true until this last year when I went. They lied about that too. And so after I had reported what happened to me, they picked me up and had a meeting with me and They pulled me into a meeting with Stuart, which is where he said, you know, I knew this was going to happen to you. And I asked him, well, why didn't you tell me? And he said, he wouldn't have listened, but I would have. I would have. I was a good little eyehopper.

I submitted to everything they said. And I was floored because on one hand, they're telling me this isn't rape. They're telling me this was my fault. But then they're saying, we knew this would happen to you. And so ensues. Months of meetings from April until August, I was pulled into I don't even know, two, three meetings a week. I don't have memory of most of it, honestly. Most of it has been blocked out because they would pull me into a meeting, ambush me with strangers I didn't know.

Almost always it was a room full of men and they would ask me graphic details about what happened. Over and over and over again. Are you sure that's what happened? Are you sure it wasn't this? That was your fault. That was your responsibility. You're gonna blame this poor man for that? Last time you said you were wearing a blue shirt and now it's a green shirt? Are you sure you're not making this up? Every single detail scrutinized while inserting their own possible narratives.

over and over again until I'm so confused and turned upside down that I don't even know what happened anymore. And I'm like, I don't know, maybe I wasn't raped. And they're telling me, don't talk to anyone about this. Don't tell anyone. Don't tell your family. Don't tell your friends. And so I'm pulled into isolation. I'm being re traumatized. These meetings talking about what happened to me were so much more traumatizing than the actual assault itself.

Because these are the people that I thought were my family. I thought loved me. I thought cared for me. And they're showing no empathy. They're showing no concern for me. They're not believing me. And they're questioning everything that happened to me. They pulled me into certain meetings.

With my abuser ambushing me where I'd walk in a room and he'd be there and they'd have me sit in a chair and listen to his version of events where I seduced him, where it was my fault, where he was trying his hardest. They're showing him empathy of like, no, this promiscuous woman did this to you. And I'm crying and I'm, I remember grabbing the sides of my chair just in anger and in this fight or flight mode and they go, what is wrong with you? Just listen to his story.

I mean, they accused me of being demon possessed at times because of the fact that I was having emotional reaction to hearing my abuser's story. And at one point in time, after telling me for months, do not tell your family, do not tell anyone. They asked me, have you told your family? And I said, well, no, you've told me not to. And they said, well, we're going to. And Stuart grabbed my phone out of my hand. This is the time where they had, you know, no lock codes on your phone.

It was just like a flip phone or something. And he dialed my mom and he handed the phone to Donna and she told her version of events and said, we're handling this. If she tells you it was rape, it wasn't. This is what happened, and I'm crying because I'm embarrassed and I'm humiliated and I, I wanted to be the one to tell my mom. And now you've isolated me from my family because now they won't believe me because it's not a stranger calling them.

These are super leaders of an organization they have looked up to and respected. Their whole You know, adult Christian lives too. And so they're gonna believe them. And my mom asked, you know, can I come down? I want to be with her. I want to see her. I want to support her. And they said do not come. You cannot come and they told my mom, do not call the police. Do not involve them. We're handling this. And eventually, you know, the police conversation came up again with me.

And they had always told me what would happen if I went to the police. You're tired of talking about this with us? What do you think is going to happen with the police? You're going to run through this over and over and over again with them. And they're not going to be as nice as us. And they're not going to believe you because We decided you were not raped. You asked for a condom. You didn't run. You didn't lock the door. You wanted this. You were not raped.

Rape and regret are not the same thing. Asking me to take accountability for the whole thing. And finally, you know, I get so emotionally exhausted and worn down and confused by the whole thing that I say, okay, whatever you want me to say, just make the meeting stop. I just don't want to talk about it again. I just want to be done. And they say, okay. I'm going to take back what you said. Admit it wasn't rape and apologize to the guy.

And so I had to go and I had to apologize to him and they gave me another warning. I don't remember if that was before or after the apology. My timeline on this honestly is very fuzzy, but they told me don't go to the press. Don't talk to people. Do you want to be the next Bethany Deaton? And for context, Bethany Deaton was a woman who, there are suspicious circumstances around her death in previous years. She either committed suicide or there was foul play. We don't really know.

There's a documentary about it on Netflix, I think, right? Or is it Hulu? If there's a documentary about it, I know that there's been a Rolling Stones article. I know that it's what kind of put IHOP on the map for people that weren't in those evangelical circles. But either way, it was a very ominous threat that I wasn't really sure if it meant that, because I know that her story cost them a lot of funding.

I wasn't really sure if it was like, I'm going to lose them funding because they did talk a lot about how I was going to defund the prayer movement. I was going to ruin everything they built by bringing them negative press and that at the end of the day, even if I go to the press, even if I go to the police, they're still going to decide that I wasn't raped and that I'll have publicly humiliated myself. And do you really want to do that?

Do you really want to bring down the prayer movement and humiliate yourself? And so I said, no, no, I don't want to go to the

It was like, I felt so uncomfortable being at a house where he knew where I lived that I moved, and I was unpacking my things in the move, and it, like, All sunk in that I didn't choose any of that and it sunk in at the same time as I didn't choose the things that happened to me at 15, at 16, at 17, and that maybe, just maybe, I wasn't this promiscuous bad girl who was asking for it.

Maybe I was vulnerable and people were preying on my vulnerability and preying on the knowledge that I was going to take accountability for their sins. That was the conversation that I, I had that inner dialogue with myself and ended up, you know, crying and the end of that conversation is when I called Donna and told her, you know, what happened to me. It's

So like technically sure they they made the option available but they made me so scared of that idea that by the time they actually Offered it, I say in quotations. No, that wasn't an option. And so I refused to let them say, we told you to go to the police because when you know the real story, no, they didn't. Did everything in their power to isolate me and make sure I couldn't go to the police all while this man was talking. He was telling everyone that I lied and accused him of rape.

I'm having Such severe isolation from the Nightwatch community because going from the prayer room to the bathroom, people would be walking back from the bathroom and the men would walk on the other side of the hallway because they were concerned I would accuse them of rape. My male friends I had said they couldn't hang out with me anymore because they were scared I'd accuse them of rape. And I couldn't defend myself. I couldn't say anything back.

And I'm being told, you will have jewels in your crown in the throne of God one day over your silence.

And so like, I just want to recognize that that, your body was violated without your permission, and that is violence. And that violence has to be acknowledged in all stories because abusers know what they're doing. Him not knowing consent culture does not give him the right to violate you. Ever. Ever. So I just want to say that because I just feel for you and I feel what you shared was so vulnerable and, and the power behind it is staggering, but they go, they don't get a right to your story.

They don't get a right to make excuses. They don't get a right to tell you anything that's, that's not their right and they don't have it and I don't want them to have those words.

The meeting stopped right before I started the university that fall. But they kept me very close after that to make sure I would talk. They put me right next to Tracy Bickel. They put me in the Edwards family. I mean, I was going to Christmases, and holidays, and birthdays, and I was having sleepovers at their house, and rioting with them, and don't get me wrong, there was so many good memories in that, too.

They really did show me love, and kindness, and compassion, but that actually made it worse, because it's so much easier to dismiss the abuse and wrongdoings of someone that's showing you love, and kindness, and compassion than it is for a stranger, or someone that you don't know and have that relationship with. It's so conflicting.

I mean, I have A very vivid memory of Donna, this sweet old lady that I considered a mother figure, like rubbing my back and using pet names with me and, you know, calling me baby and honey and everything in the same sentence that she's saying, we just decided you weren't raped.

And your, your mind just bends because you're being shown love and affection, but they're saying this didn't happen, and it's your only real family and community in this isolation, and your mind just kind of short circuits on itself when you're being told that, and you're forced to choose. Do I want to be all alone? Do I want to leave this super calling I have on my life when there's no time left because Jesus is returning any second now? So, maybe risking going to hell?

Or I can have a high place in heaven if I just stay quiet about something that didn't even really feel traumatic. Because the meetings felt traumatic, the abuse really didn't. It took a lot of years for that to actually feel violating, because I was so used to sexual abuse, it felt normal. What didn't feel normal was talking about it. And so I, yeah, I recanted it. I apologized to him, and I stayed silent for quite a while.

Proving that they did not put him on leave because he found out months later that the guy was on leave and he Personally was the one who did it after they lied and said they put him on leave eventually, he did leave on his own free will and He stayed in the area and worked in the area for several years afterwards before moving out of state. How

Made them, supposedly told them to believe me, to put the guy on leave, all of the, I felt like Mike was my advocate. And then years later, when I first got in contact with the Kansas City Star and there was discussion about telling my story, Mike reached out through someone and wanted to pass on to me that I could do whatever I wanted, but he was worried about me.

And he didn't want me to go forward because he was concerned I would become like Monica Lewinsky and that that would be all I would be known for and that I would be short circuiting God's call on my life. And he said, you have so much more to live for. God has so much more for you. I don't want you to just be known as the girl that cried rape. And I thought he was protecting me. It wasn't until everything came forward that I was like, Oh, he's good.

They become God. They're, it doesn't matter if they say something horrific to you, it doesn't matter. And usually they're not the ones saying the horrific stuff. They've groomed a community to say the horrific stuff. So it's really confusing for someone that is in an organization like this to go through any level of abuse and then to Reckon with who we believe we have a relationship with that's leading that organization.

And especially with IHOP, he was seen as like the, I mean, honestly, was he not seen as like the prophet? Like he was the one with direct communication. He's like the direct line to God, right?

I for quite a while there after this I was in close proximity to him and I always felt seen by him I, I never had any weird interactions with him. Like you hear people talking about the like, choking and that kind of thing. He never did anything like that with me. He was just kind. And I always felt like he cared about me personally. And it wasn't until afterwards that I realized that that was all part of the game. It was all part of the manipulation.

I have no doubt he was feeding them these lines because the same exact lines fed to me about. If you go to the police, you are going to ruin the prayer movement. Going to end up like Bethany Deaton. All of these lines in the year, since things have come forward, I have had over a hundred women come to me with their stories of sexual abuse at IHOP and the number of them that were fed that exact line over the years by different leaders. That's not a coincidence. That is.

Being told what to say that is being told how to handle these things these other women went through the same lengthy processes and meetings that I went through if you took the names out of some of these stories and just put the details side by side you wouldn't know which one's mine and which one's theirs and they'd be two, three, four years apart. Different section of IHOP, different leader and everything. This was a systemic issue and I can't help but think that all of it comes back to Mike.

Well, this wasn't happening multiple times. Well, look at all the good they're doing. And then when everything came out last fall, suddenly everyone was like, oh, maybe Gratia wasn't the only one. But for years, I was the only one telling a story about sexual abuse at IHOP. And while people had stories of abuse there that was spiritual and stories of manipulation, Even to those people that had abuse there, they were still saying, Well, you were the only sexual abuse case.

And now we know that there's hundreds of us out there. And God only knows how many Yeah,

To get yourself abused that now you need to take responsibility and repent for was a lot of the themes of this program and so after I complete the program, she brought me on a staff and this is the moment when I started to see the cracks in the wallet. I hop was at a leadership meeting before my first night. being, you know, on this leadership team for Living Waters.

I asked the question, Hey, when we do the altar calls and we give prophetic words to the people that come up, what if Jesus doesn't say anything to me? What if I don't have a word? And she laughed at me and she said, I don't actually want you to prophesy over people. We have buzzwords and key phrases you give them. Say things like. It wasn't your fault, and it wasn't supposed to happen like that, and you deserve better.

Because it doesn't matter what they've been through, it's gonna apply to them. They're gonna think it comes from God. They're gonna start crying, and when they start crying, they're gonna start healing. So you are facilitating healing, but you're not actually prophesying. You're just giving them a very general vague phrase that can apply to anyone in any situation.

And in that moment, every ounce of healing I felt like I got through that program just washed away because I realized it was all fake. And I go, how can you sit here and laugh at me at the idea that I thought this was real? I'm sorry. I thought these were authentic words from God. And I go, I can't fake a prophetic word to some, I can't do that. And that first little crack in the wall appeared and that grew.

Because then I started to see the other cracks and the inconsistencies it and so I was working in the media department at that point and started Complaining about problems in the media department and you know bringing complaints to leadership and at what point in time they said Go to everyone in the department ask them their complaints if this is really a department wide issue It can be anonymous just put it in a document.

We want to hear what they have to say So I build trust with people I Try to get them to open up. They're all scared of what's going to happen because they had negative experiences going to leadership already. I eventually create this document. I hand it in and they were furious. And so then they took this anonymous document and they went to every single member of the department and they said, did you say this? Did you say this?

And when every single person said no, because it was supposed to be anonymous, they came back to me and they said, you made all this up. You are toxic. You are stirring the pot. You are trying to destroy this department. And in that moment, they looked for any excuse they could to fire me.

She did say where she was wrong, and I feel like she and I have a. You know, good relationship now at that point because of the cycle that I discussed earlier where you're kind of stuck with the housing and the system I was living with the Edwards family or I think shortly after I moved in with the Edwards family and lived there for the next few years. So I kind of had to, even though I wasn't on staff, I had to stay in good terms with the community. I had to kind of lay low.

And eventually, I moved with my daughter to Minnesota, and right before I moved, I got a meeting with Nancy Hester and Alan Hood, and Alan Hood had no idea what happened to me. Nancy Hester actually thought I was someone else, because she had heard a story of someone who had had an identical story as me. Thought.

I was that girl and it wasn't until halfway through the meeting where I said the name of my abuser that she Gasped and was like there's two of them because she thought I was this other person and at that point They started realizing that maybe there was a system of abuse happening But in that meeting with Alan what year is this do you mind this was in 2018? Sorry,

And I think he did his best to cause that, but they were refusing to do it. Stewart refused to meet with me. Nancy asked him, meet with Gratia, make things right, talk to her, just even listen to her. She's hurting. And he said, no. He wasn't going to do it. He wasn't going to talk about what happened. I didn't even need an apology from him. I just wanted to talk about it. And even if he wanted to avoid liability, all he had to have said was, I'm sorry that's how you experienced it. He didn't.

Have to say anything crazy, but he just genuinely it seems didn't care.

And we're making these threads, and for the first time, all of these people hurt and wounded by IHOP in various capacities are realizing they aren't the only one, because we weren't allowed to talk about it. And now we're starting threads saying, was anyone else hurt by Stuart? Was anyone else hurt by Tracy? And in these threads, people are sharing the same stories, spanning over decades. And we're all suddenly realizing we weren't alone.

And so that group has been going on for six and a half years now. And. In that time, we became a family and by the time things came forward this last fall, basically what happened with that was a wild coincidence. I partnered with Tara Jean Stevens from the Heaven Bent podcast and we were going to tell my story for the first time on the bigger platform. And the day that was due to drop, right before, Jane Doe came forward with accusations against Mike.

And my first thought when I found out that was going to happen was I go, No, my podcast is going to drop. I only did it because I didn't think anyone was going to listen. And suddenly that, that dual wave coming in. I don't think anything that has happened with IHOP in the subse sequential year would have happened without both of us because if just Jane Doe came forward, they would have thrown Mike out and continue as an organization.

If just I came forward, they would have had scrutiny against Stuart and maybe kicked him out, but Mike would have stayed and everyone else would have stayed because of the fact that she came forward with the leader of IHOP having a system of abuse and I came forward. With the other leadership at IHOP being problematic and having a system of abuse, they couldn't ignore it. They couldn't just write off one or the other.

People were suddenly forced to listen to the fact that this entire system is fucked. Pardon my French. And the, the combined forces of that suddenly snowballed. And to all these other people coming forward, either privately or publicly, and people slowly waking up to the fact that not only is there a system of abuse at IHOP, but it's very likely IHOP was created to be a system of abuse.

So right away when this happens, I'm I very spontaneously fly down to Kansas City, first time I've been down there in years, I walk right into FCF, their church building, and they're having a service where they're announcing the allegations against Mike, but like, not really announcing them, they're just like, kinda, you know, brushing over it, and at the end they say, If anyone wants to talk to our leadership, or has grievances, or anything like that, feel free to come forward.

And so I came forward. And I hadn't talked to Stuart in seven, eight years. And I walk right up to him, and I say, I forgive you. I have an audio recording of the whole thing, but I say I forgive you. You don't need to be sorry. You don't, I don't want anything from you, but I forgive you. I've been carrying this for too long, and I don't want to carry it anymore. And I wish you the best.

But. Do better, because I know of so many other women that have similar experiences as me, and the one thing we all have in common is that you handled it and you covered it up. And he immediately just jumped in with almost like a lawyer fed line where he goes, I told you to go to the police, we put him on administrative leave, this didn't happen. And he immediately brought in Lenny LaGuardia, another leader there, and they have security.

That has guns on them, intimidation factor, and they have Lenny right in our faces. And they realized that we were recording, and so they're demanding we delete our recordings. They see that we have a video recording, and so we stop that, not realizing we have audio recordings in our pocket. So now they get unfiltered. They start giving us vague threats.

I mean, their intimidation factor is, you're gonna give us our name, we're gonna give You're gonna give us your name, we're gonna give your name to people, bad things are gonna happen. You're in trouble. You are not allowed to record us, even though it is a single party consent state. And I left both afraid, but also so empowered, because my healing journey was not contingent. I wasn't forgiving him because some two thousand year old book told me to.

I was forgiving him because I didn't deserve to carry that anymore. And I walked out terrified, but a thousand pounds lighter.

Part of what happened when Jane Doe came forward and your story dropped at the same time is you got buried and your story got buried as much as it got listened to Mike became the target and What you experienced and went through kind of got sidelined and I I watched I didn't I didn't know you I didn't know any of the IHOP people I've grown a small relationship with people that are connected to different areas that have whistleblown over the last year but I watched and was like I

did not see you or your story highlighted in the way that I felt it deserved. And so that's part of why we wanted to have you here today is because that is something that happened to you and that you experienced and we want your voice and your story to have a space that gets its own attention and gets honored for what it is and for who you are. Right. What was that like to go through?

To be like this huge, every time a story comes back out on Bodies Behind the Bus, even, there's this giant adrenaline rush, right? You're like, oh my gosh, this thing's about to go public. And then you're like, oh my gosh, thousands of people are going to listen to this thing because this person also just went public. And then all of this stuff is happening and people are coming forward and people are mad and it's, oh, this, Giant thing just happened.

There's all this adrenaline and then it's like, but what now? Like, how are you processing that?

I wasn't seen as credible because I wasn't a pastor, I wasn't a woman with a platform, and honestly, because I wasn't abused by Mike, because it didn't matter as much to people. It wasn't a clickbait story in the same way. And so while I watched, I hope this doesn't sound arrogant to say, but I watched my story crumble in International Occult, and I watched Everyone else get the credit for it. And it wasn't ever about credit. It wasn't ever about that.

It was about the fact that I had, you know, a hundred plus women behind me saying, we're scared to come forward because we're watching you get doxxed, we're watching you get attacked, we're watching the Rumors in the air of threats of a defamation suit against you. They're watching me have to lawyer up. They're watching me have Eric Bowles, IHOP Casey's PR person make horrific posts trying to discredit me.

They're watching affidavits get signed and sent out and private meetings being hosted where IHOP is saying that I am I'm leading a militant group trying to destroy IHOP. All of these lies are going out about me. But yeah, my story is being pushed down. And the stories of those abused by Mike are being elevated. And on one hand, I want to elevate those too because those are some incredible women. I, I know them all personally. They're wonderful. They believe me. They support me.

They are just as angry about what's happened as I am. But, I was so upset that these same people that didn't believe me for years didn't come back and apologize for not believing me. They didn't come back and say, Oh, maybe you weren't bitter. They just suddenly believed me because it was trendy to believe me. But the voice they were amplifying were the Jane Does.

Meanwhile, I want to be really delicate in saying this, because I have all the respect in the world for these women, but the Jane Does kind of got sheltered from the whole thing. They kind of got to be off to the side, be taken care of, have meals sent to them, have fundraisers made for them. They were also anonymous. They're anonymous. I don't

I mean, I'm I'm doing 12 16 hour days of advocacy work. I'm on the ground. I'm going to Kansas City one to two times a month having five day stretches of back to back meetings with victims, hearing their stories, trying to connect them with people. I'm doing the ground work. And then I'm watching these people get cushioned and elevated and good for them. I love that for them.

They didn't do anything wrong in that, but I was treated so different and the advocacy group would not give me public support because I was not a woman of prominence because I wasn't a credible woman. They could personally verify my story. And so it was this really difficult process to go through. To feel like my friends and I were doing all of the work to get this done and somebody else was getting all of the credit. And again, it was not about the credit.

It was about knowing there was a hundred other women behind me and the message they're getting is their stories don't matter unless they were abused by someone of prominence. Getting these messages from people saying, what happened to me really doesn't matter because if I come forward, I'm going to be pushed in the same boat as you are and I don't want that and I can't blame them.

They called themselves the Advocacy Group, but they only publicly stood with the high prominence Jane Doe figures that were victims of Mike and one of them specifically sent me messages telling me how they were never going to publicly support me because they were scared that other women were going to want their support too and they just didn't have the capacity to try to verify all their stories.

The best thing he could do for me was pave the way for me to be believed in the future, which It was kind of an offensive thing to say when the grassroots movement was doing kind of all of the work. It's kind of like if you're chipping at a dam with all your friends, and you have these little chisels and you're making work for years, and then someone comes in with a grenade and just lights it up, and you're like, I did all this work. And then someone comes in and says, Ta da, I did this.

And so that's kind of what several members of the advocacy group did. There are members that I have a lot of respect for. And there was one member specifically, Samuel Hood, who stood with me through all of this. And I think his support and his elevation of my voice and the voice of other survivors continually brought the attention.

To people that we can't forget about them that their stories do matter as much and I believe genuinely He is the reason why we have a third party investigation today That is not just about Mike that it is a base wide investigation because this Grassroots movement.

I was a part of would not relent on saying all victims matter We have to fight to investigate the entire base and this member of the advocacy group Samuel Stood with us and he basically is as I see it from my outside perspective Convinced them that they couldn't just investigate Mike that other people did matter to

It's not because I need my story to be told. It's because I'm telling my story on behalf of the hundred women. that are not ready to tell their stories because their stories are my stories. My story is not unique. My story is not special. It's not particularly horrific compared to a lot of the ones out there. There's no comparison in trauma.

If there is any goal I want achieved in any of this, it's that I want women and men Whether from IHOPKC or other circles to hear this and know that their story matters, even if it's not clickbait y, even if it's not something that is gonna captivate public interest. Their stories matter. What happened to them

And The things that you've had to claw your way out of in order to achieve that is mind blowing to me because you had every odd stacked against you for getting here today but there's that like still she persists quote that's like what it feels like talking to you. I also just want to say that something I have noticed is that Within this dynamic of IHOP being exposed, you know, it was a line in the sand issue. Some people went full image management, and then some people went advocacy group way.

But either way, the people that benefited the most in that system are the ones even in the Even that are on the air quotes, right side of history right now are the ones benefiting the most for being on the right side of history right now.

And If you're listening to this and you are a part of the leaders that decided to stand with survivors or just stand with the Jane Does, I want to challenge that if you made your way up in that institution, if you made your way all the way up to the top, or close to the top, in the ways that I'm experiencing, am I, am I, am I correctly diagnosing that? These are high level leaders. that are coming out. Yeah, like Mike's right hand people for decades.

I'm saying, I want to hold your hand while I say this. I'm imagining, imagine me holding your hand. You lack the discernment and wisdom to be the leader of whatever this is. And people like Gratia and the voices of other really brave survivors, whether it be sexual abuse or spiritual abuse that have put in the time and the work to know the survivors that have come out of your organization, to know the systemic issues.

deeply because they have listened to the stories and they have lived the stories. They should be the ones that you are propping up right now. You have no business being propped up. You should not for one second, even be slightly wanting a thank you, a hug, recognition, like you don't get to be that right now. This is not your next career move. This is not your next book deal. Sit down, utilize, pull the strings you can behind the scenes to support these survivors.

Utilize what privilege and power you do have to highlight the people that are doing the work and go to therapy. I'm saying that, not Gratia. I'm saying that.

To discern, but that happened to you and you were in it and you were at the top and you were perpetuating it. So you've got to sit down and you've got to deprogram and it's not a overnight deprogram. It's a, you need to commit your life to deprogramming and if you can't get another job, go wait some tables.

I'm not gonna list the names because they don't want the credit, but there's so many grassroots advocates We wouldn't be here without them because they are not even working full time jobs right now They're just working behind the scenes making sure stuff gets done and they get none of the credit they get none of the glory and then you have these people with the platforms who Come forward and they say Look at me. I believed a woman. Give me a round of applause.

It's no, you perpetrated the harm there. First, you need an apology. And to their credit, there have been some of them. They have given apologies. They have tried to listen. They are really doing the best they can. But my goodness, there certainly are some of them that are seem like they just want their next book deal.

Maybe that's the answer. And we're not willing to have that conversation because we still want that power and we still want that notoriety. And instead of investing in understanding the complete truth. And bringing true, fall on my face, how can we make this right with the people that have been hurt by this system? It does seem to be, yeah, but the system's going to continue. Yeah, we're believing a woman, but the system's going to continue. And I'm saying this, I, why? Like, why? You know, why?

It's proven that it, that what it produces, while it does have people in it and people are image bearers, the system itself is producing abuse. And that, that is something that we have to acknowledge, and we have to reckon with.

There's an industry here. If you built the ship that Gratia is talking about, you do not have the answers for how to build a good ship. You only know how to build a bad ship. You have to listen to other people who are building good ships. And I will tell you, because we are almost 100 episodes in of Bodies Behind the Bus, that is a rare thing to find. There are not many people out there building good ships. So, Listen to the survivors and don't build. Just listen. You don't have to build.

You're not trustworthy. You don't have wisdom. You don't have discernment and you don't know how to build something good. Stop trying to build stuff and just listen. Just listen!

Leading a grassroots movement and walking people through both deconstruction and reconstruction and Processing IHOP and become the point person for sexual abuse survivors to get connected with other networks, and I realized How good is my judgment?

I want to listen to these people, I want to amplify their voices, I want to, if they need me to be the face that tells my story 50 times over so that they feel heard without having to come forward, by all means, in for a penny, in for a pound, but I realized I need accountability to make sure I don't go down the wrong path to make sure I don't make poor judgment decisions.

And so, as I've been the last year at this point person, helping survivors tell their stories, have, being a safe place for them to share them, connecting them with lawyers and journalists and therapists and everything, I realized I needed that in an official capacity to make sure that I'm having accountability. And so, just recently, A couple of my fellow advocates and I, we started what's called the Rise and Reclaim Advocacy Group.

where we're now doing that exact same thing in an official capacity. We are taking survivors of abuse in religious institutions, and we're listening to their stories. It's survivor run, so you're not having to just go to a therapist, and I know there's still like some kind of a stigma behind that with some people, so it's going to another survivor. We're not trained professionals. We're just survivors. We've taken trauma informed courses, but we're not professionals.

And then we say, okay, What does it look like for you to reclaim your story? What does it look like for you to reclaim your voice? And we connect them with therapists. We are working on getting funding so we can pay for that therapy for so we can pay for the legal fees. And so we can connect them with whatever journalists or podcasters they want to be connected with so they can share their story so they can expose their organizations. So we just. Got up and running.

We just got our 501c3 status approved. We're making kind of the final connections and touches and we can do intake now. We can accept donations now, but we won't be fully up and running until the start of January. And we're super excited about being able to just step in helping people in the capacity where we're listening and then connecting them with people that can help better. Because again, I'm still healing. I'm still doing my journey. I'm not a professional in this, but I have.

The network from this last year that I can connect them with people that can help them and having a board of directors of people from varying backgrounds that are professionals that can keep me accountable, that can say, no, you're going in the wrong direction, or no, this isn't how you handle survivors and that I can have that peace of mind that when I make mistakes, because I know I will, I will have those people to guide me back on the right path to do right by these survivors.

Don't compare your trauma to someone else's. What happened to you matters. And I've said before that the worst things Stuart and IHOP leadership ever did to me was they taught me to gaslight myself. They taught me to do their dirty work. And so if you're sitting here and you're diminishing your pain, if you're questioning, I could have ran, I could have locked the door. No, you really couldn't. You did the best you could with what you had. And your pain, your trauma, it matters.

What happened to you wasn't okay. And however, You want to reclaim your voice is okay, whether that's just talking to your friends or family or you need someone to listen to you or therapy or you want to go for the jugular and go legal on them. There are so many people out there that are willing to listen and help and It's okay to talk to people about that. It's okay to come forward. It's okay to keep it private. Whatever is right by your story. But your pain matters and your story matters.

The report also describes how Mike and the executive leadership team minimized allegations of sexual abuse, discouraged victims from going to law enforcement. And forced victims to meet with their offenders. Gratia appeared anonymously in the report and was quoted in a religion news service article in which she provided her thoughts on the report's release. We will post the article to the show notes, and I encourage everyone to read the article and the report.

But while the release of this report is a step in the right direction, caution everyone not to believe it is enough, because it isn't. Gratia and every other survivor. who experienced sexual, spiritual, and emotional abuse deserves more than a report, news articles, or a podcast episode. They deserve to feel safe, finally. The safety that comes from being heard and believed and seeing their abusers and the organizations and individuals that enabled abuse brought to justice.

We don't need more reports. We need more justice. Gratia, the 17 survivors, and every other voice. image bearer, and soul whose story has yet to be shared. Justice is the only answer. For Johnny Harris, I'm Jake Coyle, and thank you for listening to the Bodies Behind the Bus podcast. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the speaker's own and not those of this podcast.

This content is presented for informational and educational purposes that constitute fair use, commentary, or criticism. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comment, suggestion, or correction of errors.