“grief among Turkey’s Christian community is strongly felt, along with great shock and fear,” following the killing.
Korean Evangelist Jinwook with his wife and child.
A Christian evangelist was murdered in southeast Turkey. Korean ministry worker Jinwook Kim was stabbed to death in the city of Diyarbakir on November 19.
According to International Christian Concern, Turkey’s Public Security Branch Directorate of Murder Bureau has arrested a 16-year-old on suspicion of murder.
The 41-year-old evangelist had arrived in Turkey earlier this year and was pastoring a small congregation of Christians. According to reports, he was stabbed three times — twice in the heart and once in the back, later succumbing to his injuries in a local hospital. Kim had a wife and a child.
Despite authorities insisting that the attack was a mugging, believers local to the area have urged the police to investigate the crime as an assassination.
Though Turkey has jailed and mistreated innumerable pastors over recent years, Kim is the first Christian leader to be murdered since 2007, when three believers were killed at the Zirve Publishing House in Malatya.“This is the first martyrdom since Malatya. The Turkish government has started a massive deportation of Protestant leaders who served in Turkey for many years,” one local church leader told ICC. “But deportation isn’t enough for evangelists. This kind of attack would scare [them]. I think this is the last level of a plan, being like China.”
Malatya
Another Turkish evangelist, who was on the receiving end of a death threat just a day after the murder, insisted that the attack was religiously motivated..
“This wasn’t just a robbery; they came to kill him,” he said. “We always get threats. A brother prophesied a few days ago that they (the government) are going to kick out these foreigners, and probably kill a few Turkish brothers. They are going to cause chaos. They know that I am trying to spread the Gospel, so they may target me too. This may be a sign.”
Claire Evans, ICC’s Regional Manager for the Middle East, said that the “grief among Turkey’s Christian community is strongly felt, along with great shock and fear,” following the killing.
Christians in Turkey celebrating Christmas
“Martyrdom is not normal in Turkey, and this incident sadly shows just how much the country has changed,” she added.
“Just this year, we have seen a significant increase in incidents proving how the environment has grown more hostile toward Christianity. ”
“If the attackers had managed to come into the room where the family was hiding, we would be looking at a much worse situation,” Pastor Kumar said. “I do not doubt that they would have killed the family.”
NEW DELHI, October 29, 2019 (Morning Star News) – A Hindu extremist mob in northeastern India tried to kill a pastor and his family in an attack on their home Sunday night (Oct. 27), the church leader said.
At 1 a.m. on Monday (Oct. 28), Hindu extremists brandishing swords, bricks and rods broke through windows and the roof of the home of pastor Palathingal Joseph Johnson in the Rajasan area of Vaishali District, Bihar state, he said.
“10 to 15 Hindu extremists shouting slogans of ‘Jai Shri Ram! [Hail, lord Ram]’ trespassed into my house,” Pastor Johnson told Morning Star News. “They were using vulgar language declaring that they will kill me and my children and will outrage my wife’s modesty.”
The assailants also carried wooden sticks and appeared to be drunk, he said. They were members of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS, parent organization of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he added.
Pastor Johnson, his wife Shalomi, and their four children ages 7 to 13 hid themselves in one of the rooms in their two-room house. The attack was well-planned, the 44-year-old pastor said.
“We heard their conversation from behind the closed door – they were talking like professional terrorists,” he said. “They did not call each other by name. They had divided themselves into three teams, and one of the attackers assigned tasks to the teams by saying – ‘A section – break the windows,’ ‘B section – break the cars,’ ‘C section – climb the roof.’”
Unable to break open the front door, they began to break windows, he said.
“Soon we heard the noise of the glass breaking,” he said. “One team climbed the roof of our house, but they could not break open the roof to enter the house. So, they twisted the aluminum corrugated sheet and entered.”
The room where he and his family were hiding did not have a latch on the inside, so the pastor hid his children under the bed while he and his wife braced themselves against the door, holding it shut with all their strength.
Pastor Johnson first tried calling the police emergency number but could not get through, he said. He then called a Christian in their neighborhood and asked her to gather people to help.
“While my wife and I caught hold of the door from inside, the attackers were pushing the door from outside trying to open it,” Pastor Johnson told Morning Star News. “That moment I could see death face-to-face. A delay of two more minutes would have cost us our lives.”
The Christian he had called reached the house with 50 other villagers just in time, he said. “The Hindu extremists fled from our home when they saw a mob larger than their numbers,” he said. Though traumatized, his three daughters, ages 13, 12 and 9, and his 7-year-old son were very brave and did not cry out, he said.
“Along with us, they constantly kept on chanting, ‘There is victory in the blood of Christ,’” he said.
Pastor Johnson came out of hiding to find his home and cars damaged. The attackers had used bricks and thick wooden sticks to break the house windows and the windshields and doors of his two parked cars. They also ruined a toilet, he said.
An activist and the presbyter of Indian Pentecostal Church in Nalanda Patna, pastor Gautam Kumar, said the assailants took advantage of area residents celebrating the Hindu festival of Diwali, as the sound of their firecrackers late at night hid the sound of the break-in.
Diwali Celebration
“If the attackers had managed to come into the room where the family was hiding, we would be looking at a much worse situation,” Pastor Kumar said. “I do not doubt that they would have killed the family.”
Pastor Johnson, who has been living in the area for more than 10 years, leads the Set Free Church, where between 50 and 100 people attend worship every week. His home has a hall where the worship service is held on Sundays and two adjoining rooms where the family lives.
He also oversees an orphanage in the nearby Hajipur area, Pastor Kumar said.
Two policemen have been deployed outside the pastor’s home, and five members of his church volunteered to stay with him and his family for their protection, he said.
A First Information Report (FIR) was registered after initial investigation, case No. 427/19, dated Oct. 28, under Indian Penal Code sections for rioting, rioting armed with a deadly weapon, unlawful assembly, criminal trespass, house-trespass, promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and outraging religious feelings.
The case was to be investigated by Assistant Sub-Inspector Jaykumar Singh.
A policeman at the Bidupur police station who declined to give his name told Morning Star News that the FIR has been registered but no arrests have been made.
Hindu PoliceOfficers
Distressed by the rising number of attacks on Christians in Bihar and in the country as a whole, Pastor Kumar told Morning Star News that he is heart-broken.
“A handful of people in our country are spreading false propaganda against the Christian community and are polarizing the masses with false information that Christianity is a foreign religion, and that Christians are anti-nationalists,” he said. “It is heart-breaking that the masses are believing this lie, and thus Christians are being targeted throughout the country.”
Pastor Johnson said that he previously had received several mild threats and warnings from Hindu extremists and could sense that trouble in some form was forthcoming, he never imagined it would be this severe. The last time he had been threatened was six months ago, he said.
“I knew persecution will come and I was mentally prepared to face it, but I had never thought it would be scary like this,” he said. “I saw my death before my eyes, and the thought of my wife and children dying with me was even scarier.”
The Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow has called the leaders of the Ukrainian Church charlatans and schismatics, and President Vladimir Putin has warned of possible bloodshed.
Clergymen and officials attend a service marking Orthodox Christmas and celebrating the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine at the Saint Sophia’s Cathedral in Kiev, Ukraine January 7, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
The eastern Orthodox church has over 250 million members around the world, with its spiritual leader based in Istanbul.
But for followers in Ukraine, there’s a new found independence.
Churches there have officially cut ties with the Russian branch of the church – accusing it of what they call ‘pro-Moscow propaganda’.
But the decision has angered Russian leaders, with Moscow warning of serious consequences for what it calls political maneuvering.
Ukraine’s Orthodox Christian Church celebrated its first Christmas on Monday outside Russian control and President Petro Poroshenko said the document enshrining its newly gained independence had broken “the last fetters tying us to Moscow”.
Hundreds of Ukrainians queued in the snow after the lavish two-hour liturgy at Kiev’s St Sophia Cathedral to view the document, known as a “Tomos”, which was only handed to the head of the new Church Metropolitan Epifaniy on Sunday.
Many Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, not Dec. 25, as they follow a different calendar.
Accompanied by Poroshenko, Epifaniy processed into the cathedral on Monday carrying the decree, a scrolled white parchment. White-robed clergy then unfurled it and placed it in front of the iconostasis, a richly decorated screen that separates the sanctuary from the nave in Orthodox churches.
“For the first time, we celebrate Christmas with an independent autocephalous church,” said Poroshenko after the service. “It is the basis of our spiritual freedom, we broke the last fetters tying us to Moscow,” said the president, who faces a tough re-election battle this year.
Russia bitterly opposes the move to grant the Ukrainian Church autocephalous, or self-governing, status, comparing it to the Great Schism of 1054 that divided western and eastern Christianity.
The Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow has called the leaders of the Ukrainian Church charlatans and schismatics, and President Vladimir Putin has warned of possible bloodshed.
Despite the snowy weather, hundreds of people watched Monday’s service on a big screen outside because there was not enough space in the packed cathedral to accommodate them.
“This is the most happy day in the life of every Ukrainian. And I understand that every soul desires to be here,” Oksana Pasenok, a university professor, told Reuters.
People formed a long queue after the service to see the decree, which will remain on public display.
“Today the words of those holy fathers who died for Ukraine, for our freedom, for our liberty, come true,” said Oleksandr Sydoruk, engineer, standing in the queue to see the document.
Could it be that this man Lee Jae-Rock has had an encounter with T.B. Joshua who spends a significant amount of time in South Korea?
Pastor Lee Jae-Rock of the 133,000-member Manmin Central Church in Seoul, South Korea, has reportedly been banned from leaving the country after five women accused him of rape.
Manmin has denied the accusations, according The Korea Herald, arguing that former members are starting “false rumors” against Lee out of jealousy.
The 74-year-old pastor is facing legal complaints from five women who say that he sexually assaulted them from the late 1990s to 2015, local broadcaster JTBC reported.
The women, who weren’t named, say that they were in their 20s at the time of the alleged rapes. The victims say that Lee forced himself on them several times, telling them that he was carrying out an “order from God.”
In its denial, Manmin (which means “all creation”) stressed that Lee has long been “stressing the importance of sexual ethics.”
The megachurch, which held its first service in 1982, claims on its website to have 133,000 members with some 10,000 “branch and associative churches” around the world.
“Manmin has experienced such an astounding and rapid growth only in 30 years because, amidst God’s abundant blessings, there are always the messages of life proclaimed by Rev. Dr. Jaerock Lee, marvelous manifestations of the fiery works of the Holy Spirit, and the unceasing prayer of its members,” the website states.
Lee, founder of Manmin, has also been ordained as pastor at Annual Assembly of Jesus’ Sungkyul Church of Korea. He has led pastors conferences and Gospel crusades around the world, including events in New York, Los Angeles, Japan, Israel, Argentina, Germany, Tanzania, and India.
There are numerous allegations that “Lee Jae Rock sounds like a great spiritual healing evangelist and does preach biblical sermons at his large public crusades, but underneath the surface is in reality a heretical teacher. Unfortunately, information about the heresy and highly questionable character of Lee Jae-Rock is rare in English (though a number of books and websites in Korean do expose him.)
He was excommunicated as a cult leader from his own denomination (Church of Holiness) in May 1990 and from the Korean Christian Association (Han Ki Chong) on 30th of April 1999 because of his unbiblical teachings.
Lee Jae-Rock (also known as Jaerock Lee) claims to have received revelation just like the Apostle John. He claims his body has sinless blood (due to a blood transfusion in 1992). He meets with the prophets, apostles and patriarchs. His spirit is at the left side of God’s throne. He will be the judge on the last day and all the angels submit to him. And he has made many more such claims.
In Korea a documentary video was aired exposing Lee Jae-Rock’s bizarre claims and gambling activities. A number of his followers stormed the TV facility to prevent the broadcast. At least 600 South Korean riot police were called out to end the occupation. The Manmin church had earlier reportedly obtained a court order preventing MBC from screening a story about Lee Jae-Rock’s sex life”.
This article tells of Lee Jae-Rock’s visit to Israel with promises of performing “signs and wonders” and ridding the country of the swine flu. Could it be that this man Lee Jae-Rock has had an encounter with T.B. Joshua who spends a significant amount of time in South Korea? Perhaps T.B. Joshua has “fortified” him with a demon.
The victim described how he was made to feel like he was passed between the pair like a “toy borrowed from a friend”.
A former Church of England priest who sexually abused boys has been put behind bars for a second time.
Colin Pritchard changed his name to Ifor Whittaker after he was handed a five-year sentence at Northampton Crown Court in 2008 after admitting abusing two children in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, between 1979 to 1983.
The 73-year-old was jailed for 16 years at Hove Crown Court in February 2018 after being found guilty of abusing a third boy between 1987 and 1991 while he was the vicar of Sedlescombe in East Sussex, police said.
He was convicted of seven offences including inciting the child, aged between 10 and 14, to commit gross indecency and buggery.
A jury also found him guilty of conspiring with fellow vicar, close friend and convicted pedophile Roy Cotton to commit acts of indecency.
The pair had already been arrested by Sussex Police in 1997 on suspicion of sexually abusing children and were released on bail.
Cotton retired in 1999 and the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case. He died in 2006.
These details emerged in a critical independent report by Roger Meekings in 2012 which revealed how Cotton had been convicted of indecent behaviour with a child in 1954 while training for the priesthood.
He was thrown out of theological college but then readmitted and ordained in 1966 – the same year he attended with Pritchard.
It was also in 2012 that the force began investigating this latest case, after the victim said he was sexually assaulted by Cotton when he was the vicar in the nearby Sussex village of Brede.
The victim settled a civil claim with the Diocese of Chichester over Cotton that year.
Officers only learned he was also abused by Whittaker when they revisited the investigation in 2014, the force said.
The victim told how he believed Whittaker watched while Cotton carried out his assaults because he would appear in the room immediately after.
He said he was then taken to Whittaker’s vicarage by Cotton to do gardening but was actually plied with drinks of coke laced with alcohol.
Whittaker would sexually assault him and say no-one would believe him if he spoke out.
The victim described how he was made to feel like he was passed between the pair like a “toy borrowed from a friend”.
Whittaker was arrested in 2015 and questioned again in January 2016.
A video statement given by the victim in 2014 had to be taken again in November 2016 when the recording was found to be faulty. He disclosed more details of the abuse during the second statement.
Whittaker, of Sutton, is already a registered sex offender for life.
Judge Paul Tain ordered him to serve 15 years in custody and one year on extended licence. He cannot apply for parole for 10 years.
“To date, clerical abuse victims here have been let down, not just by the church, but also by the authorities.”
According to Press Association, a Catholic bishop in Northern Ireland has resigned following claims he celebrated Mass alongside a priest he knew was a pedophile.
Dr John McAreavey was Bishop of Dromore. Diocesan secretary Fr Gerald Powell said he had resigned with “immediate effect”.
Fr Malachy Finnegan has been accused of sexual abuse by 12 people.
The bishop said: “Following media reports which have disturbed and upset many people in the diocese and further afield, I have decided to resign with immediate effect.
“I shall make further comment in due course.”
The former teacher at St Colman’s College in Newry from 1967 to 1976 is also allegedly linked to a catalog of physical and emotional abuse against pupils. He died in 2002.
Amnesty International has called for a public inquiry into clerical sex abuse.
Amnesty’s Northern Ireland director Patrick Corrigan said: “To date, clerical abuse victims here have been let down, not just by the church, but also by the authorities.”
Solicitor Claire McKeegan, of KRW Law, who represents a number of Fr Finnegan’s alleged victims, said she had received calls from numerous further witnesses since a settlement by one of her clients was made public recently.
She added: “The message is clear: victims demand a public inquiry into clerical abuse in Northern Ireland without any further delay.
“The victims and survivors deserve to speak about the horrific abuse that took place and be heard in a public forum tasked with sufficient powers to get to the truth.
“This case has brought to the surface yet another pedophile priest who was never investigated or exposed by the church or the police.”
“He’s obviously gone in and out of just kind of discouragement, wondering what’s going to happen, what’s the end game here,”
American pastor Andrew Brunson has been locked up in a Turkish prison for 500 days. The anniversary of Brunson’s captivity passed quietly Monday, but the American Center for Law and Justice is still aggressively working on his case.
On Oct. 7, 2017 Andrew Brunson and his wife, Norine, were summoned to a local police station in Izmir, Turkey. At the time, this didn’t seem like anything to be worried about. The couple, originally from North Carolina, had lived for 23 years in Turkey’s third largest city, where Andrew was the pastor of the Izmir Resurrection Church, a small protestant congregation of about 25. The Brunsons had raised three children in Turkey and had applied for permanent residency. They went willingly to the police station, thinking they were finally going to get it. Instead, Andrew and Norine were taken into custody, accused of missionary activities “against national security,” and told they would be deported. Norine was released on Oct. 9 and so far has been allowed to stay in Turkey, but more than six months later, Andrew remains locked up. On Dec. 11, he was moved to a counter-terrorism center and charged with “membership in an armed terrorist organization.” A judge ordered that he be detained rather than deported.
“He still remains merely a suspect of alleged crimes; no indictment has yet to be handed down,” CeCe Heil, executive counsel for the non-profit organization, told CBN News.
The ACLJ is fighting on Brunson’s behalf and reports the pastor wrote a heartfelt note to his wife through an embassy official this month.
“I am very discouraged. Please have prayer for me,” Brunson wrote. “I love you – can’t handle the thought of growing old in this place, without you.”
“I think being trapped in a Turkish prison with really no end in sight has been hard on Pastor Brunson,” Heil said. “Of course he has his faith to sustain him and the prayers of faithful believers all over the world… but as you can imagine, this 500 days in prison, he’s lost quite a bit of weight.”
“He’s obviously gone in and out of just kind of discouragement, wondering what’s going to happen, what’s the end game here,” she added.
Heil said the accusations against Brunson range from membership in an armed terrorist organization to espionage and overthrowing the government. “So very ridiculous claims against an innocent pastor,” she said.
Heil explained to CBN News that under Turkish law, Brunson can remain in prison for seven years without ever being charged.
Testifying at the US Helsinki Commission hearing late last year, she said, “Pastor Brunson maintains his innocence and denies all the accusations.”
Inside of a prison in Turkey
It seems that Brunson is a political hostage of Turkey. Last year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seemed to indicate that the pastor will only be released when Washington gives Turkey a Muslim cleric living in the US who is Erdogan’s rival.
“..they (the US) get up and say… ‘Give us so and so cleric,'” Erdogan said at a police academy graduation ceremony in Ankara in September, referring to Brunson.
Erdogan then brought up Pennsylvania-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, saying, “You have a cleric there. You give him to us and we’ll give you this one.”
Turkey has been seeking the extradition of Gulen, who was once Erdogan’s ally, and whose supporters have been blamed for trying to overthrow Erdogan’s government in 2016. Gulen has denied any role in the coup attempt. Heil said Erdogan even recently talked about a swap.
“It certainly seems that Pastor Brunson has become a political pawn,” she told CBN News. “He lived 23 years in Turkey without any incident, without any problem.”
“After the failed coup attempt in July of 2016, then Pastor Brunson’s suddenly arrested as a national security threat and then remains in prison,” she continued.
“And just recently, President Erdogan has demanded a swap, basically saying a cleric for a cleric or a pastor for a pastor,” Heil said. “You have Fethullah Gulen; we have Pastor Brunson. Let’s do a swap.”
But she doesn’t believe the US will agree to the deal.
“I don’t believe that the US will ever trade prisoners; that’s not the way that we typically operate,” she told CBN News. “So I believe they’ll keep following through with Turkey, who is a NATO ally and continuing to demand his release.”
Heil said President Donald Trump has repeatedly asked for Brunson’s release. In addition, just last week, she said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Erdogan and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and again asked for the pastor to be freed
“It seems like this meeting last week between Tillerson, Erdogan and Cavusoglu, it seems like they came out of that meeting hopeful that the US-Turkey relationship will be restored,” Heil said. “So we’re hopeful that Pastor Brunson will be part of that resolution.”
In the meantime, Heil said the most important thing people can do for Brunson is pray for him, but she also encourages taking action by signing an ACLJ petition, “Free Pastor Andrew,” which has more than 426,000 signatures so far.
“That’s very helpful because as we speak to our government as well as Turkish government and European government, it’s very helpful just to show the mass amount of people who have their eyes on this matter and are concerned about this matter and are demanding his release,” she said.
EDITORS NOTE: I wonder if Jakes, Olsteen, Dollar, Copeland, the pope and the other filthy rich “men of G-d” have signed that petition! I wonder if they even took up an offering to help support this man’s family. I wonder if they’ve even used their resources to bring any significant attention to this matter. I wonder if they held any “night vigils,” I wonder if this man will even be thought of or mentioned during “lent,” I wonder what they would do if this were Oprah, Just wondering…….
The pastor is accused of trafficking more than 30 girls and women who were from various branches of his church
Former Idols SA contestants Neliswa and Anele Mxakaza have finally spoken out against their former pastor, Timothy Omotoso. Last year the Nigerian-born pastor made headlines after he was charged for human trafficking and rape and later discovered to be in South Africa illegally due to fraudulent papersThe senior pastor of the Jesus Dominion International Church was accused of keeping young female congregants of his church in a house in Umhlanga in Durban and sexually assaulting them.
Pastor Timothy Omotoso
During his court case early last year, Neliswa and Anele – who were members of his church and lived with him – came out in his defense and even claimed they loved him. Now the twins have issued a statement and revealed they always knew about the abuse that went on in the house in Umhlanga.
“We have lived in his house in Umhlanga for about a year, it was the worst experience ever,” they said. “We were actually pushed to please the man, we were told that God will punish us if we ever say anything against [Pastor] Omotoso. We lived a life full of threats and fear.”
Sexual comments
It is not clear whether these twins were sexually violated or not because according to DRUM they asserted that they were not sexually violated and that he only made sexual comments directed at them.
“He would make comments about certain parts of our bodies in front of all the other girls. He would also ask us personal questions about whether we’re having sex with our boyfriends.”
She added that this made them very uncomfortable, which is why they eventually decided to leave the house because they feared they would eventually be assaulted.
“We were made to believe Omotoso is the closest person to God and we can never have a relationship with God but only through Omotoso,” the statement further read.They added that they believe their spirits were controlled by the pastor and they could see all the wrongs, but were never bold enough to speak out.“We were even asked to go do newspaper interviews to protect Omotoso,” they said in the statement.
“The rape allegations were not new to us when Omotoso was arrested – it’s something we knew long before he got arrested.
“The girls would talk immediately after it happened in the house and when one was called to the upper room we knew what was going to happen to them, we were made to keep quiet and never say anything.
“Even when we had left the church we were still not free to talk, we were afraid something bad will happen to us or our families,” they said.
Attorney comment
Omotoso’s newly appointed attorney Peter Daubermann said that he is unsure how these allegations by the twins will affect the case at this point.
“We have not heard anything about these new allegations yet, so it is too soon to tell how it will affect our moving forward,” he told DRUM.
NPA communications manager Tsepo Ndwalaza was not immediately available for comment. The twins were contestants on season 9 of Idols SA.
According to News24, Omotoso and one of his co-accused appeared in the Port Elizabeth Magistrate’s Court on Monday. The case was postponed to March 7 because a third accused wasn’t present.
Tim Omotoso in police custody in South Africa
The pastor is accused of trafficking more than 30 girls and women who were from various branches of his church, and as of today remains incarcerated awaiting trial.
Omotoso’s website is still active and can be found here.
“It has been more than nine months now since Nwanguma was promised that her case would be looked into. Yet nothing had been done in that regard,”
Mrs. Brenda Nwanguma, a worker with Inner City Mission for Children (ICM4C), under the Christ Embassy Church canopy, is threatening to drag the church and Pastor Kenechukwu Kanu aka Kaycee to court.
Nwanguma, a member of the Christ Embassy Church, is demanding for justice in respect of alleged workplace harassment, intimidation, blackmail, and libel. Nwanguma’s lawyer, Samuel Akpologun, had already petitioned the church. Nwanguma is threatening to take the church and Pastor Kaycee to court if nothing was done to address and back.
Earlier this year, Nwanguma, a mother of three, had accused Pastor Kaycee of sexually harassing and victimizing her.
While Nwanguma accused Kaycee, a father of two, of sexual harassment, Kaycee countered by calling her a “loose woman who has slept with at least two to three men here. Her husband doesn’t know her. He should go and put his house in order. I’m a man of the cloth. There are certain things I shouldn’t say.”
Nwanguma had further accused Kaycee of having a penchant for sexually harassing and even succeeding in sleeping with women in the organization.
Nwanguma noted that it was because she rebuffed Kaycee’s sexual advances that led to her being victimized.
She has decided to take the matter to court after endlessly waiting to hear from the committee constituted by the church to look into the allegations she raised.
Part of Akpologun’s petition states: “It is our brief that on April 3, 2017, our client, Brenda Nwanguma, who is a staff in your organization, made a complaint to the Head of Administration of the said mission, Pastor Ifeoma Chiemeka, through electronic mail on the following; sexual harassment.”
She said that Pastor Kaycee, who is the head of the operation of this said mission, under which our client has worked as a staff, had been sexually harassing our client by making demands to have carnal knowledge of her in return for facilitating her transfer from a department with an oppressive boss, to another department.”
The lawyer further stated that because his client turned down Kaycee’s sexual advances, the cleric resorted to victimizing her by posting and transferring her twice, within the space of a month.
Akpologun noted: “The first vindictive transfer was made on January 3, 2017, whereby she was transferred to the Media Sub-department to act as a librarian. The second transfer was made via mail dated January 25, 2017. She was moved to the School Pastoral Care Unit to act as the pastoral care coordinator, thus effectively bringing her under the same boss, about whom our client had earlier complained.”
Speaking on discrimination, intimidation, and blackmail of his client, the lawyer noted that when his client was forced to report the situation to the Director of the Mission, Mrs. Omoh Alabi, the director allegedly refused, neglected, or omitted to respond to Nwanguma’s complaint. She also allegedly did not take any step to address or investigate the grave allegations contained in the email sent by Nwanguma to her on January 26, 2017.
Akpologun claimed that Omoh blackmailed and intimidated his client until she had to apologize to Kaycee and sent a copy of the letter of apology to Omoh before she was given an audience.
Thereafter, Omoh asked Nwanguma not to resume at work until “high authorities” had looked into her case and determined where exactly she would be working.
“It has been more than nine months now since Nwanguma was promised that her case would be looked into. Yet nothing had been done in that regard,” stated Akpologun.
The lawyer further stated that it was also his brief that since Omoh asked his client to stay away from work, his client had not been given any further instruction or information.
He also argued that his client’s salary, since she was asked to stay away, had been unduly withheld for no just cause for nine months now. He added: “When on April 28, 2017, the situation was reported to The New Telegraph; the management of the Mission convened a panel, invited our client and promised to look into her case after receiving evidence from her. She was further instructed to stay away from work till the outcome of the panel. Since then, till date, the said management has neither got in touch with our client nor paid her salaries due.
“It is our further brief that Pastor Kaycee caused a libelous publication to be made in the said New Telegraph Newspaper against our client. In the said publication of April 28, 2017, Pastor Kaycee falsely and maliciously alleged that our client is an adulterous woman, who had slept with more than two staff of the Mission. We have the instruction of our client to demand as follows; that the salaries of our client for the months of February to November be paid within 14 days.”
“That the report of the panel held in May 2017, be made available to our client through our office. That you either investigate the libelous publication made by Pastor Kaycee or prevailed on him to make a public apology for same which said apology must be published in the New Telegraph, where the libelous publication was made. That our client is restored to her job forthwith. Otherwise, we may be compelled to advise our client to seek necessary legal redress in the court without further notifying you.”
Since last year, Iran’s government has increased their crackdown on Christianity, with many – especially converts – arrested for various charges
The wife of an Iranian pastor sentenced to prison for ten years has been given a five-year jail sentence.
Last week (6 January 2018) a judge of the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced Shamiram Isavi Khabizeh to five years in prison for “acting against national security and against the regime by organizing small groups, attending a seminary abroad and training church leaders and pastors to act as spies.”
Shamiram was detained in June 2017, and released on $30,000 bail. Her husband, Pastor Victor Bet Tamraz, was previously sentenced to ten years imprisonment on 4 July 2017, also for acting against national security. Their son faces similar charges.
From left: Victor Bet-Tamraz, Amin Afshar-Naderi, Kaviyan Fallah-Mohammadi, and Hadi Asgari
A convert from Islam, Amin Afshar Naderi was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment and was granted bail on 25 July 2017. Hadi Asgari – another convert – was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for acting against national security, and was refused bail. Both have been under intense pressure to reconvert to Islam, but have remained firm in their faith.
All have appealed their sentences. Their hearing, initially supposed to be held in December 2017, has been postponed.
Since last year, Iran’s government has increased their crackdown on Christianity, with many – especially converts – arrested for various charges
Four Iranian converts to Christianity in the city of Karaj, Alborz province, were arrested less than two weeks before Christmas. Two others, Abdol-Ali Pourmand and Mohammed Ali Torabi were forced to sign blank confession papersduring their time in prison prompting speculation that Iranian authorities were attempting to use the documents to forge a fake confession to use against them.
Babylon Today 
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