The TBN scandal story won’t go away, mostly because TBN keeps issuing statements. Here’s the latest:

(AgapePress) - Officials with the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) say they now regret reaching a financial agreement with a former employee seven years ago who threatened to go public with scandalous allegations against the network’s founder.

Forty-one-year-old Lonnie Ford claims that in late 1996 he had a sexual encounter with TBN founder Paul Crouch. Ford was hired by TBN in the early 1990s after meeting Crouch at a ministry-affiliated drug treatment center in Texas. Although Ford had a number of run-ins with the law, TBN repeatedly took him back. However, after Ford was not re-hired after serving a drug-related jail term in 1998, he threatened to sue for wrongful termination and sexual harassment.

TBN attorney Colby May says the network reached a $425,000 settlement with Ford, who agreed not to discuss his claim about the alleged sexual encounter with Crouch at a TBN-owned cabin near Lake Arrowhead, California. May says the allegations are false and that Ford has broken the terms of his settlement by attempting to publish a book detailing the alleged encounter.

Gee, they REGRET paying this guy off? You think? A couple of interesting observations about this whole situation …

First, the lawyer representing TBN is a guy named Colby May. I’m presuming this is the same Colby May who is a senior attornet at the American Center for Law and Justice. You can read his bio here. This is the organization that Pat Robertson founded back in 1990 to wage legal battles against the ACLU and other groups that oppose the pro-family agenda. The public face of the group today is Jay Sekulow, who hosts a daily radio program and appears on a number of mainstream media outlets. ACLJ has done some great work in the past, even though some of their cases seem more quixotic than anything else. Now, it’s not uncommon for all these religious broadcasters to have strange connections to each other. Pat Robertson remains the godfather of religious television broadcasting, but he’s distanced himself from TBN. For an ACLJ attorney to represent Paul Crouch on what seems like a largely personal matter, I think there needs to be more explanation. I can see if May is representing TBN on corporate issues — like FCC compliance — but this seems a little unusual.

Further, the press release linked above concludes with this statement, “May points out that ministry funds were never used in any portion of the settlement.” This is a really difficult statement to make, since we know that there’s a real gray area in these kinds of ministries. TBN pays both Paul and Jan Crouch six-figure salaries, that certainly don’t represent the bulk of their compensation. I’m sure there are all kinds of other benefits, including housing, that we never hear about. I don’t think it would be a stretch to believe that there’s a TBN legal slush fund that exists to clean up messes like this. Which leads to another set of questions: Why didn’t Crouch come clean about this earlier? Are there others who have been paid off?

More to come on this …