By 1986, PTL utilized 2,500 individuals all throughout the planet and was taking in $129 million in yearly income, as per John Wigger’s The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire.
Their Christian-themed resort, Heritage USA, was the third-most-visited fascination in the U.S. that year, behind just Disneyland and Disney World, and the PTL Network arrived at 14 million homes. The Bakkers claimed various homes, two Rolls Royces and a personal luxury plane.
On March 19, 1987, Jim left PTL after chapel secretary Jessica Hahn affirmed that the minister had physically attacked her in December 1980. Jim demanded the experience was consensual and he was never accused of a wrongdoing, yet he confessed to paying Hahn $265,000 from the congregation’s assets to remain silent.
An examination concerning the service’s funds found that Jim had likewise been selling alleged “lifetime participations” to their Heritage Grand inn—to a larger number of individuals than there were rooms—for $1,000 a pop.
Additionally, PTL couldn’t represent $92 million in income. Currently busy working dispatching another TV-driven service in Orlando, Fla., Tammy Faye told a columnist in front of Jim’s preliminary on misrepresentation charges, “If our case is taken a stab at truth, we will win. I’m asking God that everybody will just come clean… I’m petitioning God for every one of the ones who are lying.” “Not exclusively is Jim being investigated, individuals,” she said on her show, “yet the congregation we know is being investigated. All that has to do with Christian TV is being investigated when Jim strolls into that court.”
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