Business partner of Falwells says affair with evangelical power couple spanned seven years
Giancarlo Granda says his sexual relationship with the Falwells began when he was 20. He says he had sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell Jr, head of Liberty University and a staunch supporter of President Trump, looked on.
By ARAM ROSTON/Reuters
WASHINGTON – In a claim likely to intensify the controversy surrounding one of the most influential figures in the American Christian conservative movement, a business partner of Jerry Falwell Jr has come forward to say he had a years-long sexual relationship involving Falwell’s wife and the evangelical leader.
Giancarlo Granda says he was 20 when he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and continuing into 2018, Granda told Reuters that the relationship involved him having sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell looked on.
Granda showed Reuters emails, text messages and other evidence that he says demonstrate the sexual nature of his relationship with the couple, who have been married since 1987. “Becki and I developed an intimate relationship and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room,” Granda said in an interview. Now 29, he described the liaisons as frequent – “multiple times per year” – and said the encounters took place at hotels in Miami and New York, and at the Falwells’ home in Virginia.
His friendship with the Falwells eventually soured, Granda told Reuters, in part because he wanted to dissolve his ties with the couple and fell into a business dispute with them.
STAUNCH SUPPORTER: Jerry Falwell Jr’s decision to endorse Donald Trump for the presidency in 2016 helped swing evangelical Christians toward Trump. REUTERS/Scott Morgan
Granda first emerged as a figure in the Falwells’ circle two years ago, when BuzzFeed News reported that the couple had befriended Granda and gone into business with him, buying a Miami Beach youth hostel in 2013. At the time of the BuzzFeed article, a representative of the Falwell family said Granda was “offered a share” in Alton Hostel LLC because Granda lived in Miami and would act as a manager of the youth hostel. Corporate records show that Granda currently has a stake in that venture.
Becki Falwell did not respond to emails or phone and text messages from Reuters. After Reuters presented its initial reporting early last week to the Falwells, a lawyer for Jerry Falwell, Michael Bowe, said the evangelical leader “categorically denies everything you indicated you intend to publish about him.”
On Sunday night, however, as Reuters was preparing to publish this article, Jerry Falwell issued a statement to the Washington Examiner in which he said that his wife had had an affair with Granda and that Granda had been trying to extort money from the couple over the matter. Granda denies any such intent, saying he was seeking to negotiate a buyout from a business arrangement he says he had with the couple.
In a recording from a 2018 phone call that Giancarlo Granda provided to Reuters, Granda said he and the Falwells discussed Becki Falwell’s jealousy about Granda dating other women.
Falwell’s statement Sunday to the Examiner said nothing about Granda’s account alleging that the evangelical leader had his own role in the affair, and Falwell didn’t address questions from Reuters about it. In the statement quoted by the Examiner, Falwell said that “Becki had an inappropriate personal relationship with this person, something in which I was not involved.”
"That woman that you gave me...." Gen 3:12
News of the entanglement could pose a fresh threat to the influence of Jerry Falwell, a towering figure in the U.S. evangelical political movement. His 2016 endorsement of Donald Trump helped the twice-divorced New Yorker win the Republican nomination for president.
Falwell, 58, took an indefinite leave of absence earlier this month from Liberty University, the Christian school he has run since 2007. The leave, announced in a terse statement from the school’s board of trustees, came days after Falwell posted, then deleted, an Instagram photo of himself with his pants unzipped, standing with his arm around a young woman whose pants were also partly undone. Falwell later told a local radio station that the picture was meant as a good-natured joke.
FALWELL POST: The photo on Instagram that was posted, then quickly deleted. Falwell later explained that the post was meant as a joke and the woman was his wife’s pregnant assistant.
Now this reveals one of two things: he's either drunk, or his judgment is absolutely dreadful.
Becki Falwell, 53, is a political figure in her own right. She served on the advisory board of the group Women for Trump, which advocates for the president’s reelection campaign. She also spoke as part of a panel with her husband and Donald Trump Jr at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, the signature annual gathering of conservatives. Jerry Falwell and others refer to her as “the first lady of Liberty University.”
The university, based in Lynchburg, Virginia, was founded in 1971 by Falwell’s televangelist father, the Rev. Jerry Falwell. The younger Falwell took over in 2007. Today, the university boasts an online and on-campus enrollment that exceeds 100,000 students and holds those who attend to an exacting honor code. “Sexual relations outside of a biblically ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman are not permissible at Liberty University,” the code reads.
The material Granda showed Reuters includes screenshots from what Granda said was a FaceTime conversation he had with the Falwells in 2019. During that call, Granda said, Becki was naked as the two discussed their relationship while Jerry peeked from behind a door. Reuters was able to verify Granda’s description of the screenshots.
Granda also shared an audio recording that he says captures a conversation he had with the Falwells in 2018. In it, Becki complained about Granda describing his relationships with other people: “He’s like telling me every time he hooks up with people. Like I don’t have feelings or something.” Jerry then chimed in: “You’re going to make her jealous.” “I’m not trying to do that,” Granda replied.
Earlier texts show a friendly and romantic dynamic between Granda and Becki Falwell. One 2012 text message, which Granda said came from Becki, read in part: “Right now I am just missing you like crazy .... Have you had this effect on all of your lady friends?”
Last year, Becki Falwell talked about the Trumps, family values and abortion during a guest appearance on the Trump campaign show Real News Insights.
Other more recent text messages, such as an exchange from this June that Granda provided to Reuters, show Granda growing angry and frustrated as his relationship with the Falwells frayed.
“Since you’re okay with ruining my life, I am going to take the kamikaze route,” Granda wrote to Jerry Falwell. “It really is a shame because I wanted to reach a peaceful resolution and just move on with our lives but if conflict is what you want, then so be it.”
In the same message string, Falwell replied: “You should by now understand that I will not be extorted. I have always treated you fairly and been restrained in response to your threats because I did not wish to ruin your life. Going forward, stop contacting me and my family.”
It seems he had the opportunity to buy his way out of this issue and refused to spend the money. It appears he had lots of money, but would rather hold onto it than his appearance of integrity.
Granda said that while he entered into the sexual relationship with the Falwells willingly, today he feels the couple preyed upon him. “Whether it was immaturity, naïveté, instability, or a combination thereof, it was this ‘mindset’ that the Falwells likely detected in deciding that I was the ideal target for their sexual escapades,” Granda said.
I doubt that it was that contrived. I suspect it was simply a matter of a middle-aged woman having the hots for a pool boy.
In a statement released Friday, before news of the relationship with Granda became public, Liberty University said its “decision whether or not to retain Falwell as president has not yet been made.” Its board of trustees, the statement read, “requested prayer and patience as they seek the Lord’s will and also seek additional information for assessment.”
Seriously, there is no prayer necessary for this decision!
A Finnish priest who worked as a pastor in Sweden was charged with sexual exploitation of a child
by Bhavi Mandalia, PledgeTimes
Finn the pastor, a pastor who worked in northern Sweden, has been charged with child sexual abuse. This is apparently the first time that a Finnish priest who has led a congregation is responding to an accusation of child sexual abuse.
The pastor is the leader of the local ward. In Sweden, the name is församlingsherde.
The accused graduated with a master’s degree in theology and was ordained a priest in Finland. Although he has worked in Sweden as a pastor, his register continued to be held in the Finnish diocese. According to the registers of both the Church of Finland and the Church of Sweden, the position of pastor in northern Sweden has been permanent for years, but the Church of Sweden has started looking for a new pastor a few months ago.
The indictment raised last February came up when Helsingin Sanomat (the largest subscription newspaper in the Nordic countries) investigated the final criminal convictions of Finnish priests and church lecturers.
All more detailed information about the prosecution itself is secret, but based on the place of trial, the child’s sexual abuse is suspected to have taken place in Helsinki. The trial is scheduled to begin on Wednesday in the Helsinki District Court.
Based on the crime scene, the prosecution does not appear to be related to working as a pastor in northern Sweden. However, related to the ordination to the priesthood is that the priest is also a priest in his spare time: a priest cannot privatize his own life for life in office and out of office.
Helsingin Sanomat did not receive an answer from the accused’s lawyer as to whether the priest had denied or admitted his guilt in the suspected crime. The pastor did not respond to, among other things, a call request sent through a lawyer.
The child sexual exploitation means an act committed against a person under the age of 16.
Child sexual abuse is a matter of acts other than sexual intercourse, as acts involving sexual intercourse are in principle assessed as aggravated acts. Exploitation offenses do not require physical contact, but can also be committed through technical means such as the Internet.
Church Act according to which the court should already inform the court chapter of the priest’s charge. This applies to all ordained priests. Thereafter, the Judicial Chapter of the Diocesan Diocese has the right to send an agent to follow the proceedings.
The court’s obligation to notify and the possibility of a court chapter’s representative were noticed in the Helsinki District Court only after an article published in Helsingin Sanomat on 23 August. In the inscription archbishop Tapio Luoma hoped that the duty of the judiciary to report priest’s crimes would work better and the clauses would remain in church law.
The Helsinki District Court is now investigating whether a representative of the Judicial Chapter will be summoned to assess the conduct suitable for the priest.
Judicial chapters may issue a written warning or suspend a priest from the priesthood for 1 to 6 months if the priest “acts contrary to the duties of the priesthood and the priestly promise, or neglects them, or behaves in a manner inappropriate to the priest”.
Church law has also addressed a situation in which a priest has been convicted of a crime for a punishment that “shows him to be manifestly unfit to be a priest”. In this case, the Judicial Chapter may order the priest to lose his priestly office, that is, his ordination to the priesthood, as if annulled.
The pastor’s duties in Sweden and Finland are similar to those in Finland. Based on the pages of the Church of Sweden, the pastor leads the work of the local church and parish. He is the supervisor of other employees in the ward. In the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, the pastor is responsible for holding services and other ecclesiastical ordinances, as well as penitentiary schools.
According to the Swedish parish’s website, the prosecuted pastor has worked normally in the spring as well as in the summer and has been appointed as the person in charge of at least one service in the autumn.
Priests
The conduct also involves an indictment from another priest, which is still pending before the Helsinki Court of Appeal. In it, the prosecutor demanded punishment for the pastor of the Helsinki congregation for two sexual harassment and breach of duty in a penitentiary.
The Helsinki District Court dismissed the charges in June last year, but the trial will continue in the Court of Appeal next March. According to the district court, it remained unproven that the Rippilaps were experienced as a violation of the sexual sovereignty of the cheek kiss and bite given by the pastor.
A trial is also pending in the Helsinki Court of Appeal, in which a businessman and a third priest were sentenced in the district court to two years and four months in prison for aggravated fraud, two aggravated tax evasions, two aggravated accounting offenses and a serious firearms offense.
Although the priest appealed to the Court of Appeal, he will be banned from doing business until November 2022. The man who received his ordination as a priest in 1988 worked during his career as a priest in a Finnish congregation and completed a pastoral degree in 1993, which deepens the priest’s core competencies.
Elsewhere in Finland, charges are pending in which one priest is also suspected of aggravated fraud and another of an illegal threat.
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