Former Denver escort Mike Jones, who blew the whistle on former New Life Church pastor Ted Haggard, came on the show today in the wake of the latest revelations from a young former church member, Grant Haas, who says that Haggard masturbated in front of him -- without his consent -- and sent him over 1000 sexually charged text messages. Haas says he stayed silent about it all for over two years because the New Life Church paid him hush money.
Jones told me he not only spoke with Haas about his experiences with Haggard about a month ago, but that there were two other men who also came to him with similar stories but who are fearful of going public. One of them, Jones says, was sexually harassed/abused by another New Life Church "elder" and Ted Haggard knew all about it. The other one had non-consensual sex with Ted Haggard himself, Jones said:
MJ: I personally have had two other men come to me with their stories , personally. It's very difficult for them to come forward. It's something I can't publicly out them on. They need to do it themselves. But --There's more in the short clip below from the interview.
MS: Were these two other men who were connected to the church, or members of the church?
MJ: Yes, in fact I know one of them, their parents still go to church, New Life Church, which makes that more difficult for 'em.
MS: Was it consensual? Was it any way similar to [Grant Haas's] story, where he says he went to Haggard for help and it turned out that Haggard was, well, abusing him. If someone is exposing themselves to you, masturbation to you, that's not exactly consensual.
MJ: That's right. The interesting thing about all of 'em is that all of 'em went to the church or Ted Haggard regarding their homosexuality, not sure how to handle it, or what to do with it. That's what all three of these have in common.
MS: Were the others consensual or non-consensual?
MJ: Non-consensual. One of them, let me just speak about one of them. One of them was not with Ted Haggard but was with a church elder. But they knew about it.
MS:So there were others in the church?
MJ: Right.
MS: And are those people who are still connected to the church?
MJ:Now, I don't know, because I don't know what the elder's name was. But their stories are very compelling and very believable. I don't see any reason for them to make it up when they came to me. In fact it was very difficult for them to even come to me. Both of them had indicated several times that they had backed away from approaching me. But they finally wanted to talk to me.
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