Message #28213

[Bianca]

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Haggard, Families With a Mission, and the sex offender
by Pam Spaulding · 8/25/2007 06:59:00 AM ET
Discuss this post here:


What on earth is that headline about? You'll recall that Ted Haggard, the former male escort client and meth purchaser, has started a new life in Arizona. The former head of New Life Church -- and graduate of a miraculous Dobson-approved three-week de-gaying program -- is also asking followers for a handout in a boldly insane letter (his $138K New Life severance will be cut off after the end of the year). In it he says:
Any help we can get with this will be greatly appreciated and, I believe, rewarded in heaven.
Haggard asks that checks be sent to an outfit called "Families With a Mission" in Colorado Springs with a separate note indicating the funds are for the Haggard family...
then Families With a Mission will mail us 90% of the funds for support and use 10% for administrative costs,
There's one problem. Actually several. Dan Savage at Slog passes on this mind-blowing news:
As posted earlier, local attorney and Slog reader Dave Coffman located documents on file with the Colorado Secretary of State that showed Families With a Mission "voluntarily dissolved" on February 23, 2007.

Hm. Weird -- who knew you could get a tax deduction from dissolved charity?

And it gets weirder: There's only one name on file with the Colorado Secretary of State in connection with Families With a Mission: Paul Huberty.

Huberty is the "registered agent" of Families With a Mission and the registered agent's mailing address -- POB 63125, Colorado Springs, CO 80962-3125 -- is the same address Haggard included in his letter to his supporters. Another address on file with the Colorado Secretary of State for Families With a Mission is 855 Pebble Creek Ct., Monument, CO 80132. That's the charity's "principal office mailing address."
Sigh. As with these fundie stories, you know we have not yet reached the moral values bottom of matters. Slog reader Dave Coffman did some investigating in public records and found out that Paul G. Huberty was convicted of "sodomy and indecent acts" with "a 17-year-old female who accompanied appellant and his family to Germany as his legal ward" (PDF here) while he was in the military and stationed there. When he moved to Hawaii, he had to register as a sex offender.

When Huberty left Hawaii, the forwarding address he left is -- you guessed it -- the address for the now-dissolved charity Families With a Mission.

Surf over to Slog -- there's plenty more.
Labels: Fundies, ted haggard