Frank Viola: Sexual Abuse, Predation and Cover Up

Dear Frank Viola:

This is my detailed follow up – both personally and on behalf of our fellowships – to a letter previously sent to me on your behalf.

That letter was in response to our concerns, which I unsuccessfully tried to raise with you personally, about numerous accounts of sexual abuse, predation and cover up by you against multiple victims.

Those accounts typically involve young women less than half your age – including teenage girls – who you groomed and abused as a former high school teacher; as a so-called “apostolic worker” over your former church in Brandon, Florida; and as a self-promoting author, blogger and conference speaker.

As a result of your history of sexual predation and abuse, your former wife finally had enough and divorced you.

Rather than repent, however, you unsuccessfully tried to force her to bear the consequences of your sexual predation against teenagers by demanding, in official court filings, that she pay you alimony because you no longer could find employment as a high school teacher. You then failed to pay required child support, necessitating additional court proceedings against you as a deadbeat dad.

I received no substantive response to my private inquiries about these and other concerns. Instead, I received a letter written on your behalf by Barton Breen and Jon Zens, in conjunction with your fellow self-claimed “apostolic workers” Milt Rodriguez and Felicity Dale. Rather and address the facts, that letter instead threatened me if I ever publicly mentioned your history of predation and abuse.

Following those threats, they and you then launched a series of public attacks trying to preemptively attack my credibility.

Given your ongoing campaign of cover up through intimidation, I have decided to publicly follow up on my original private inquiries. This letter, therefore, is on my own behalf and as an elder within our fellowships, as well as a founder of Nathan’s Voice – a ministry which helps victims of abusive churches and exploitive church leaders.

The context of my initial inquiry and this follow-up primarily focused on the very disturbing facts and public warnings issued against you by your former church in Brandon, Florida.

To this day, Frank Viola, those warnings have not been factually refuted and thus warrant an open response by you. Any such response should be at least as public as your own public claims of being a leader in, and to, the Body of Christ through your many books, blogs, self-promoting web sites and conference engagements.

Threats and Cover Up

In the past, you have successfully used intimidation and threats to purge from the internet all references to the facts and warnings issued against your by your former church – as well as other accounts of abuse by you.

The source of your new threats against me and others, however, is surprising.

Jon Zens, who co-signed that threatening letter sent to me on your behalf, publicly rebuked you in the past – before you started promoting his otherwise unsuccessful ministry and books – for having “illicit contact” over at least a six month period with a teenager.

According to your former church and Jon Zens, that teenager had been your high school student (you were teaching at the public high school in Brandon, Florida, at the time) and was a member of a church in Brandon which you attended and led as a so-called, self-described “apostolic worker.”

Here’s Jon Zens previously public statement, which he and several local leaders of the Brandon church jointly issued after you fled that church when they tried to confront you:

“The truth is that in May of 2000 Frank’s wife received a phone call from a policewoman informing her that Frank was in a motel room with a young lady. This 19-year old girl was a former student of Frank’s in the high school where he taught, and a part of the Brandon assembly.”

“He had been fooling around with her in the last quarter of 1999. He wrote a book called ‘Forbidden Affection’ in early 2000, and had the gall to dedicate this book (which was in fact describing the struggle connected to his own sexual attraction to this girl) both to the young lady he was having illicit contact with and to his wife. Instead of dealing properly with this sinful behavior in 2000, Gene [Edwards] opted that it be covered up. Frank’s wife was to remain silent about what had happened, and the young lady was whisked off to another of Gene’s assembly, with lies constructed to explain her sudden exit. Frank’s wife was silent until March of 2002.”

According to Jon Zens and the multiple Brandon church leaders who issued this statement with him (none of whom have retracted it), these facts – as required under 1 Timothy 5:19-21 – were “verified by the independent testimony of plural witnesses” before being published.

Once you started promoting Jon Zens’ otherwise obscure ministry and books, however, and he became part of a mutual promotion network with you and your other “apostolic worker” buddies, Mr. Zens suddenly changed his tune.

Now he’s backpedalling and trying to protect your shared economic interests by aggressively attacking and threatening anyone who dares mention your history of abuse, exploitation and misconduct as a former high school teacher and a supposed “leader” in the Body of Christ.

Our Initial Dealings With You

Our fellowships became involved in these issues after we responded to an offer for you and your team of “apostolic workers” (which at the time included Jon Zens and Milt Rodriguez) to “help” us. We did not then know, Frank Viola, about your history of sexual predation, exploitation and abuse – as confirmed by your own former church.

On your behalf, Jon Zens contacted me – as part of your “team” – and we had two lengthy, pleasant phone conversations as he sought an invitation for you and your team to relate to us as what you all refer to as “apostolic workers.”

While considering your offer and Jon Zens’ follow-up with us, however, we did some basic due diligence. We wanted to verify the accuracy of your public resume, your claims of success as an organic church (you now use the term “radical church” instead) “planter” and itinerant “worker,” and your Biblical credentials – as well as those of your other “apostolic workers.”

We did this because it is important for local elders to protect the churches they relate to, by insuring the legitimacy of anyone who seeks to visit those churches as an “itinerant” ministry.

As part of our checking, we discovered that neither you nor anyone else on your “team” has a consistent history of actually being part of a functional local fellowship. Nor did you or your “team” have a history of much success at helping to start or maintain healthy local fellowships.

In fact, we found a trail of either failed fellowships, or weak and anemic fellowships that were insular, stagnant and, candidly, very weird as to both their doctrines and practices. Most of the churches that become connected with you, we discovered, end up falling apart within a year or two of your involvement.

We also learned of the devastation some of your doctrines and practices had wrought among the organic church community here in our part of the country.

None of those facts, however, amount to disqualifying sins. Rather, they are simply evidence of bad fruit born of inflated resumes, bad doctrines and – we concluded – you and your “team’s” often narcissistic egos and practices.

Based on our investigations, we declined your invitation.

Of more immediate concern, however, our churches learned some disturbing facts about you personally as part of our due diligence.

Events in Brandon, Florida

In essence, Mr. Viola, you left a church in Brandon, Florida, rather than deal with their concerns about very significant, disqualifying leadership sins you committed while with them. Those disqualifying sins generally centered on your very abusive oversight of that church as their “apostolic worker,” including your sexual predation and exploitation of a teenager in the church.

Because you fled the church rather than openly confess and repent, the Brandon church eventually issued a public rebuke. That rebuke, based on the testimony of multiple witnesses, was intended to serve as a warning to all under the Biblical mandate of 1 Tim. 5:19-21. That passage commands:

Do not accept an accusation against an elder unless it can be confirmed by two or three witnesses. Those guilty of sin must be rebuked before all, as a warning to the rest. Before God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, I solemnly charge you to carry out these commands without prejudice or favoritism of any kind. 1 Tim. 5:19-21 (NET)

We also discovered that the warnings of your former church were silenced when a web site they created to alert others about you and your “apostolic” mentor, Gene Edwards, was removed from the Internet under the duress of numerous legal threats.

We then learned of other instances where you, Mr. Viola, and others on your behalf, engaged in a campaign to cover up and purge any references on the internet to your history of abusing those under your care.

More recently, Mr. Viola, I, my family and the churches I relate to have all been the object of your desperate attempts to silence us also.

More Recent Events

I want to be clear on this:

It is our collective belief that any married man who uses his position of leadership in a church to engage in a long running relationship of sexual exploitation against a teenager half his age, and who then refuses to address his own sin when confronted by his church but instead flees the church and launches a campaign of denial and cover-up, is unfit to serve as a leader in the Body of Christ.

We have concluded, after failing to hear any direct response from you to our concerns and witnessing first hand the threats directed against us for even raising them, that the findings of your former church – along with the numerous witness statements and public warnings it previously published – need to be heeded. Otherwise, more people might be misled, deceived and harmed by you and your mutual promotion network of self-designated “apostles” and “teachers” like Jon Zens, Milt Rodriquez and, more recently, Felicity Dale.

To summarize our dealings with you, earlier this year we asked you, through Jon Zens in his ongoing role as your intermediary, to provide evidence that you had openly confessed and repented in response to the Brandon church’s warnings.

When we received no substantive reply, we publicly referenced (through our ministry that deals with church abuse cases, called Nathan’s Voice) the facts and warnings issued by your former church. See Sexual Predation by Christian Author and “Apostle” Frank Viola.

We did this by linking to numerous witness statements and supporting documents they had published on the Internet. (The original web site created on behalf of the Brandon church had been preserved in an obscure overseas internet archive, despite its original location having been taken down under the duress of legal threats made on your behalf as part of an ongoing campaign of intimidation, denial and cover-up. We tracked down those documents still found there, and then confirmed their authenticity with individuals who had been part of the Brandon church and had first-hand knowledge of what happened in Brandon.)

When publicly confronted once again with your former church’s many witness statements, supporting documents and public warnings, you published a bizarre blog on March 25, 2013. In it, you falsely implied that your former church had mistaken you for another man with a similar name. You then posted that man’s picture and identifying information on your blog (thus imputing to another man your own culpability), and generally treated the seriousness of the Brandon church warnings and your own abusive history as a big joke.

Frank Viola, let’s be clear:

The police who found you in a motel room having a tryst with your former high school student – as a married man with children and a church leader – DID NOT confuse you with someone else.

The school system where you taught DID NOT confuse you with someone else after your severance from employment shortly thereafter.

Your wife DID NOT confuse you with someone else when she divorced you over your history of abuse and martial infidelity.

Your former church in Brandon, which you attended and led, DID NOT confuse you with someone else when they confronted you and you fled.

And, Mr. Viola, neither are we confused.

Up to your attempt to impute your sins to another man through your blog, we had not raised any allegations of our own against you, but merely relied on the warnings properly issued against you by your former church under the mandates of 1 Tim. 5:19-21.

More recently, however, we directly asked you (in private and in writing) about new allegations from additional victims and witnesses who confirm that you have sexually abused multiple teenagers. As before, there was no response directly from you (except to say via email you would get back to us – which you never did).

The letter I received in response, from Jon Zens and Barton Breen on your behalf, states that they were engaged in ongoing “research” about me as part of your efforts to make me and others – rather than the multiple-confirmed warnings about you – the issue.

In fact, the co-author of your letter, Barton Breen, followed through on those threats by launching several web sites dedicated to attacking me, my family and our fellowships. When that didn’t work, he began stalking my wife at the school where she teaches. See Why is Bart Breen Stalking My Wife?

That promised campaign against us has become so bizarre that Barton Breen was put on a threat watch list by local authorities in our county. He immediately fled the area and eventually crossed into Canada, where he lives today.

In the meantime, he took a police report about a man who molested a child on a bus and put it on one of his several smear websites, with my name inserted in place of the real perp’s name. (The official police report and press release contain the perp’s real name, so there is NO ambiguity about how Barton Breen altered the facts.)

While this was going on, you repeatedly praised and publicly commended Mr. Breen in your blog.

As part of that campaign, Jon Zens and Mr. Breen – on your behalf – also have falsely characterized other victim support work I (and our fellowships) have done – calling it personal vendettas against various leaders who have exploited people in their churches.

In none of those cases where our fellowships and I have helped victims of abuse – in cases like Sovereign Grace Ministries, The Life Church, Christ Chapel Assembly of God, IHOP-KC, and the Institute in Basic Youth Conflict with Bill Gothard – did we ever independently initiate any investigation or response, or seek out the abuse that surfaced. Rather, I only became involved (either personally or through Nathan’s Voice) after the victims themselves first approached me – on their own initiative – for help as a church leader and attorney (now retired).

Most telling, however, is that my work through Nathan’s Voice on behalf of church abuse victims – which your smear campaign keeps impugning in order to imply we are now lying about you – has never failed to bring about successful outcomes for the victims. Those outcomes have included multiple criminal convictions, a successful civil case in Federal Court, and negotiated settlements favorable to the victims.

Furthermore, all of my help on behalf of victims has been totally free and never for personal gain.

Mr. Viola, I have never been wrong about any instance of church sexual abuse that I’ve addressed through Nathan’s Voice or elsewhere. As a retired attorney, I carefully do my homework, I verify the facts, and I speak only when the truth is confirmed by multiple witnesses – and the record confirms my untarnished accuracy.

For your and your fellow “apostolic workers” to now try to make those other abusive churches and church leaders the victims, as part of your efforts to now make you the victim, shows your desperation and profound moral bankruptcy.

This time, however, you and your surrogates have picked the wrong guy and the wrong fellowships to try to silence through threats and intimidation.

Frank Viola, you may have succeeded in previously intimidating and purging all prior references to your history of sexual exploitation from the internet. But it stops here.

Others have independently investigated and confirmed your history of sexual predation and exploitation. They, too, have reached similar conclusions which confirm Nathan’s Voice’s account of the facts. One of the more recent is the Spiritual Sounding Board, a highly respected investigative forum which also researches abusive churches and exploitive church leaders (search for “Frank Viola” on that page to find the relevant section).

Our fellowships, and Nathan’s Voice, won’t stand silent as you continue your ongoing campaign of lies, threats and intimidation.

Facts and Unanswered Questions

Having been rebuffed in private, then threatened in public, we now bring our concerns before the entire Body of Christ and ask:

1. Which of the following specific facts established by your former church in Brandon, Florida, do you now specifically claim are false, and what rebuttal have you ever offered – again specifically – to refute those facts?

• That you, Frank Anthony Viola – and not someone with a similar name – was involved in abusive conduct while claiming to be an “apostolic worker” over the Brandon church.
• That you sexually preyed upon and abused a teenage girl in the church over an extended period of time, lasting at least six months.
• She also had been your high school student (you were a public school teacher at the time).
• That it is not clear if you engaged in actual sexual intercourse, but you nonetheless engaged in other forms of sexual misconduct with her.
• The police ultimately found you alone in a motel room with her (by then, she had turned 19).
• At the time, you were nearly forty years old, married with three children, and twice her age.
• Within weeks of being confronted by the Brandon church, you once again started soliciting young women half your age as you sought “relationship” and “romance” through an internet hook-up site and explicitly invited responses from women who were only twenty years old.
• Your infidelity contributed to the breakup of your marriage and your first wife divorcing you.
• Frank Viola, you subsequently relied on accusations that blamed and attacked your ex-wife for the breakup of your marriage, which the Brandon church found to be without merit.
• Rather than deal with your own church’s concerns, Mr. Viola, you immediately left the church and to this day have refused to publicly respond to the specific facts, documents and witness statements they published under 1 Tim. 5:19-21 and their associated public warnings.

2. What specifically do you allege is false in our summary of, and references to, the multiple witness statements, documents and warnings issued by your former church in Brandon, Florida, which we previously published (see Sexual Predation by Christian Author and “Apostle” Frank Viola)?

3. Please confirm that since you fled the Brandon church rather than repent and face accountability, you have privately confirmed to others the substance of the Brandon church warnings – despite your more recent public attempt to impute your sins to another man with a similar name.

4. You have referenced a statement by David Leino – which is very much in line with your overall response to the Brandon church because it provides no refutation of the actual Brandon warnings. That statement likewise attacks the motives and character of those who dare reference those warnings.

You and he claim that he was a member of the Brandon church. Please confirm, however, that he was not part of the Brandon church when it investigated and issued its warnings regarding you and sought to have you address their concerns.

In fact, isn’t it true that he was not present, because he immediately left the church with you when those concerns first surfaced, rather than face them honestly?

5. Your surrogates repeatedly claim that folks in the Brandon church, who bore public witness against you, no longer stand by those statements. That is entirely inconsistent with our own research. Disturbingly, like most of your non-specific denials, you and your surrogates provide no citations or support.

Each of those witnesses, however, included their names on their public statements published by the church to warn others about you. We have found none who now recant those statements. Please, therefore, specifically identify which of them you now claim have revoked their statements, and whom among those many witnesses have not.

6. Your surrogates publicly, and you privately, repeatedly claimed that the Brandon church reconciled with you. Your claim relies on statements by three people who were not part of the Brandon fellowship during the relevant time.

Isn’t it true, Mr. Viola, that the people you cite in fact were not part of the Brandon church when that church was unsuccessfully trying to interact with you over your leadership sins? In fact, like Mr. Leino, they immediately left with you rather than deal with that church’s concerns.

7. Your surrogates, and you in private, repeatedly claim to have sent me communications which refute the facts and warnings asserted against you by your former church. I am aware of NO such communications. Rather, I am only aware of various communications to me which:

(i) Make generalized denials based on claims of personal loyalty and friendships with you; and

(ii) Make very non-specific claims that you somehow have privately “dealt with” the Brandon church’s facts and warnings (but without any explanation or substantiation – and without any explanation as to how that properly overrides your own former church’s public warnings).

As such, we have yet to see any specific denials or any specific assertions regarding any specific facts relevant to the Brandon church’s findings and warnings regarding you.

Please prove me wrong by providing the communications to which you and your surrogates keep referring.

In conclusion, Frank Viola, our fellowships and I await your response.

Until then, we remain committed to an open process and to everyone openly addressing all valid, specific concerns – while in the meantime continuing to affirm the undisputed warnings of your former church under 1 Tim. 5:19-21.

Sincerely,

James C. Wright
Local church elder, founder of Nathan’s Voice and retired attorney