New Charges Allege Rape by Prominent Religious Leader

By Sarah Posner
Investigative Fund
January 8, 2016

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AbuseTrackerArchive/2016/01/#124738

A woman has charged in an expanding sex abuse lawsuit that Bill Gothard, founder of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), a once-prominent evangelical ministry with ties to the Duggar family, raped her when she was a teenager.

The claim, made in an amended lawsuit filed by former employees, interns, and volunteers of the ministry, marks the first time one of a growing number of women who say Gothard sexually harassed them has accused the 81-year-old evangelist of rape.

As I reported for The Investigative Fund in October, five women sued the organization and its board of directors, alleging a pattern of sexual harassment and abuse that was enabled and even covered up by the organization's board. On January 6, lawyers for the plaintiffs filed an amended lawsuit, adding Gothard as a defendant and five more women as plaintiffs.

The original lawsuit came a month after publication of my investigation at Talking Points Memo's the Slice, reported in partnership with the Investigative Fund, about a long-simmering sexual harassment scandal at IBLP, and how the Duggars' reality show on The Learning Channel (TLC) sanitized IBLP's teachings when depicting the mega-family's fundamentalist Christian faith. The show included portrayals of the family's adherence to sexual "purity," including the chaste "courtships" between the older Duggar children and their future spouses.