Scandal at Oral Roberts U.
Televangelists and scandals seem to go together, and now some members of Oral Roberts’ family may be about to rise a few ranks on the faith-based-and-disgraced list that includes Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. This time, Roberts’ son, Richard, and Richard’s wife are apparently at the heart of the hullabaloo, and the wife’s penchant for texting underage fellows in the wee hours isn’t even the half of it.
AP via My Way News:
Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors’ expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter’s senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.
She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as “underage males.”
At a chapel service this week on the 5,300-student campus known for its 60-foot-tall bronze sculpture of praying hands, Roberts said God told him: “We live in a litigious society. Anyone can get mad and file a lawsuit against another person whether they have a legitimate case or not. This lawsuit … is about intimidation, blackmail and extortion.”