By means of 1986, PTL hired 2,500 other folks world wide and used to be taking in $129 million in annual income, in line with John Wigger‘s The Upward thrust and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire. Their Christian-themed hotel, Heritage USA, used to be the third-most-visited enchantment within the U.S. that yr, at the back of simplest Disneyland and Disney Global, and the PTL Community reached 14 million properties. The Bakkers reportedly owned a couple of flats, two Rolls Royces, a 55-foot houseboat and a personal jet.
On March 19, 1987, Jim resigned from PTL after church secretary Jessica Hahn alleged that the pastor had sexually assaulted her in December 1980. Jim insisted the come upon used to be consensual and he used to be by no means charged with against the law, however he admitted to paying Hahn $265,000 from the church’s budget to stick quiet. An investigation into the ministry’s price range discovered that Jim had additionally been promoting so-called “lifetime memberships” to their Heritage Grand resort—to extra other folks than there have been rooms—for $1,000 a pop. Additionally, PTL could not account for $92 million in income.
Already at paintings launching a brand new TV-driven ministry in Orlando, Fla., Tammy Faye instructed a reporter forward of Jim’s trial on fraud fees, “If our case is attempted on reality, we will be able to win. I am asking God that everybody will merely inform the reality… I am praying for all of the males who’re mendacity.”
“Now not simplest is Jim on trial, other folks,” she stated on her display, “however the church we all know is on trial. The entirety that has to do with Christian tv is on trial when Jim walks into that court.”
In 1989, Jim, who pleaded now not in charge, used to be convicted of 24 counts of cord fraud, mail fraud and conspiracy to devote fraud and sentenced to 45 years in jail. He served 5, his sentence lowered on attraction, and upon his liberate penned the autobiography I Used to be Improper, by which he printed that, when he used to be 11, he used to be molested by way of a male member of his circle of relatives’s church, leaving him very perplexed about his sexuality. In 1998 he married Lori Beth Graham, they’ve 5 youngsters in combination, and he presides over Morningside ministry in Blue Eye, Mo.
