Greg Laurie’s Harvest Christian Fellowship church was hit with a 201-page federal lawsuit last Friday, according to a story by The Roys Report.
The lawsuit consolidates 23 lawsuits filed by victims of former Harvest pastor and missionary Paul Havsgaard, who some have described as perhaps one of the most prolific pedophiles alive in America today, and reveals new allegations of a cover-up of sexual misconduct by Harvest church pastors.
Along with details of the Havsgaard allegations, the lawsuit accuses the church of failing to properly investigate two incidents in which former volunteers were accused (and in one case later sentenced to prison) for sexually abusing minors.
“In the late 1990s, William Walrath (“Walrath”) served as a volunteer in Harvest Riverside’s “Rock the World” children’s ministry. In approximately 2000, he was arrested and subsequently convicted of multiple felony sexual offenses involving minors and sentenced to twelve years in prison.
Harvest Riverside removed Walrath from his volunteer position but did not make any public announcement or conduct an internal investigation to determine if he had abused children at Harvest Riverside.
Harvest Riverside similarly mishandled accusations of child sex abuse against Jose Cruz Martinez, who was a volunteer at Harvest Riverside between 2016 and 2023.”
They then failed to report to parents an incident involving a pornographic image:
At a 2018 Harvest Riverside youth event for children in grades six to twelve, someone transmitted a pornographic image via AirDrop to all the iPhones at the event, including those belonging to underage children, causing a stir in the room. Harvest Riverside did not investigate this serious incident and did not notify parents to avoid public embarrassment and scrutiny.
Crucially, however, the filing addresses the fate of two popular pastors at Harvest Christian Fellowship: Jeff Lasseigne and Brad Ormonde.
The lawsuit states that the former’s affairs/clergy sexual misconduct were just about an open secret at Harvest, who did not confront him or investigate him for years.
Finally, Lasseigne was removed from his position of preaching at the church’s Wednesday night services in 2021, and all promotional material featuring him was removed, including any pictures on the church’s Facebook page. Details of his departure were not shared with the church at large, and he was reportedly given a $4,000,000 severance to sign an NDA. (Non-Disclosure Agreement)
The payment has prompted the claimants to ask whether or not Harvest church members know their tithes and offerings are being used to cover up sexual misconduct.
and
Lasseigne’s wife died in 2019 and remarried a woman from the church in 2021. Now 70, he hosts a weekly bible study, his Instagram feed is full of quotes from Charles Spurgeon and Voddie Baucham, and he teaches classes at The Gathering at 840, an SBC church in Tennessee.
Ormonde was a pastor at Harvest for nearly 20 years and led the Men of Valor group, which involved his counseling men who were caught in sexual sin and cheated on their wives.
He was having an affair with a church secretary for more than five years, and was exposed after the secretary’s husband caught them in bed together. Ormonde’s wife of 42 years divorced him in 2022, and he has since left the ministry.
7 responses to “Lawsuit: Greg Laurie’s Church Covered up Sexual Misconduct by Top Pastors, Paid $4,000,000 For NDA”
One of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in all my born days. It’s not a church. It’s a coven.
There’s a reason God says such sins are death penalty offenses. They absolutely should be. Men like Havsgaard should already be dead, buried, and smashed into the bottom of the blasted grave with a 50 ton excavator.
“SHALL inquire diligently” (Deut. 19) … not “should”, not “might maybe”, not “if they feel like it” … SHALL
It’ll be very difficult to claim they couldn’t diligently inquire, when they could’ve investigated for 1/1000th the time, effort, and money they put into trying to hide the sin. And it’s impossible to claim they had no obligation to investigate, when the word of Almighty God clearly says that they do.
In the case of crime, all they’ve got to do is report it, and monitor law enforcement making sure the investigators are doing their job.
The only concern I have is the amount of the lawsuit. (though you cannot put a price on the damage done to the victims, especially the children – not an eternity in Hell could ever be sufficient punishment) (and though it is a consolidation of many lawsuits) The problem is that it does indeed have the appearance of recompensing evil for evil, and the net result of that is that it can take away from and water down what’s truly most important. And so the “church’s” response, claiming it’s just a shakedown for money, is to be expected. Be careful of the precedent. If it is too “profitable”, then churches will be inundated with accusations, over-stressed making it more difficult to investigate such matters, ambulance-chasing lawyers will be suing every five seconds, and so on, and it will only make matters worse. It is very important when dealing with such matters (or any matters), not to oneself sin in the process. You cannot fix sin with more sin. All that does is compound the sin. When it comes to wickedness, you cannot fight fire with fire, any more than you can counter darkness with more darkness. We must fight that “fire” with water. We must drive out the darkness with the light. Rom. 12:17 says “give thought”, “be careful”, “carefully consider” – (pronoeó). We should do everything possible to ensure that our motivations are clear, pure, and righteous, as a witness to the world, that the first and foremost goal in such a case is to clean out God’s house, as He leads. It must be clear that our priorities are in order, cause is just, and that we ourselves are yielding to, serving, and loving the Lord first and foremost.
You cannot put a price on “well done my good and faithful servant”. There is no amount of money, no wealth, no possessions, in this life that could ever equal hearing those words. They are worth more than the most miserable of lifetimes. The same can be said about those who might’ve been future victims. What price can you put on that? Knowing that predators are driven out of God’s house, and that children are safe? You can’t put a price on that. And never forget this. Keep pressing toward the mark of the high calling of God. That’s our prize. It could be that such a lawsuit would have more impact if it were for $1.00. And I’m not saying it would. I’m just saying to consider this.
Likewise the church’s attitude, if it were a church, should draw from Matt. 5:40 – “And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.”
If the lawsuit were for $1, and the church’s response was “no, if we’ve done wrong, we’ll pay $2,000,000 per lawsuit, $46,000,000”, consider how much impact would that have?
Tremendous impact. What a message that would send. What a witness that would be. A very clear, very loud message that what’s most important is honoring the Lord, obeying Him, and that we care about what’s right and wrong, rather than serving mammon. That it’s not about the money. It’s about major housecleaning. That we care that much about any would-be future victims of such sins.
What an impact that would have …
Let those (multimillionaires) who failed to investigate say, “I will give up two year’s salary, to contribute” …
What an message that would send … giving your cloak also.
Instead, the whole mess looks like both sides are just money-grubbing, mammon-serving, penny-pinching, miserly scrooges, who only care about the here and now, don’t give a hoot about eternal consequences, and don’t really believe what they say they believe. It looks like a circus sideshow. Just a game. Nothing but some sort of game-show contest.
This should be the attitude of the church, in response .. (if it were a church)
Truly disgusting. Preying on women and children. Such men should be slammed into the grave with so much force it registers on every seismograph 200 miles in every direction. With an outhouse in place of a headstone.
If we could use harsh language here, I’d call them what they are … and about the only “sin” involved would be to have insulted dung and scum, because they are of more value than such “men” … truth is, there are no words to describe it
It makes you appreciate the fact that Jesus compared Hell to the city dump. And that’s a fact.
I’d be livid if my giving went to pay for the silence of a criminal.
yeah, but Trump paying for an NDA is a felony. Huh?
Good comment. It certainly shows the backwards priorities. For many, politics is their lord and savior. If only the stewardship of the Lord’s money were as important to them as campaign funds. If only His campaign were as important to them. If only the use of His money were scrutinized as much. It shows what people most care about. It betrays the order of concerns. As said in an earlier post, “our priorities will order themselves according to our concern”, and the attitude toward use of campaign funds vs the use of the Lord’s money, is a perfect example.
@stpaulchuck:
Trump is not a Christian, and he is not a church. Not that I think what Trump did was right, but lets stop using dumb strawmen and false equivalencies.