Surprised no one’s mentioned this, but earlier this week, new life was breathed into a major lawsuit against a large chunk of the empire formed by the late and unloved Jerry Falwell. On Tuesday, the Falwell empire’s law firm, Liberty Counsel, was added to a civil RICO suit alleging that several organizations with roots in Falwell’s ministry helped an “ex-lesbian” woman flee the country with her daughter rather than comply with an order to let her former partner have visits. That means we could be witnessing the beginning of the end of one of the major pillars of the religious right.
You may recall that since 2009, Lisa Miller, an “ex-lesbian” woman who was a member of Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church, openly flouted a Vermont court order to let her former lesbian partner, Janet Jenkins, have visitation with their daughter Isabella. By the fall of 2009, the Vermont courts lost patience and awarded Jenkins sole custody. However, on the day Miller was supposed to turn Isabella over to Jenkins, Miller was nowhere to be found. Eventually, it emerged that Miller had fled to Canada with Isabella in tow, and eventually journeyed to Nicaragua.
In 2012, Jenkins filed a civil RICO suit in Vermont federal court alleging that Thomas Road and Liberty University’s law school helped Miller make plans to flee as early as 2008. With the help of two Mennonite ministers, Timothy Miller and Kenneth Miller (no relation to Lisa Miller), as well as Christian direct-mail firm Response Unlimited, Lisa Miller left the country in September 2009. Jenkins contends that before then, a number of church elders helped Miller pack her things and sent them to Nicaragua.
Most damningly, Jenkins claims that Response Unlimited’s president, Philip Zodhiates, made a number of calls to Liberty Counsel on the day Miller fled. For years, Liberty Counsel and its chairman, Mat Staver—who is also Liberty Law’s dean—have claimed that Miller simply packed up and left without his knowledge or the knowledge of anyone aligned with TRBC.
The suit was put on hold after Zodhiates was charged with kidnapping in 2014—specifically, for driving Miller and Isabella to Buffalo in 2009. Zodhiates was convicted in September, and earlier this week was sentenced to three years in prison. He is the third person convicted in this case. Kenneth Miller was sentenced to 27 months in prison in 2012 for his role, though he only began serving his sentence last year after exhausting all appeals. Timothy Miller began cooperating with authorities in 2011 after the FBI discovered he’d helped Lisa Miller flee, and was sentenced yesterday to time served in prison (eight months in both the States and Nicaragua) and one year’s probation.
With Zodhiates’ case wound up, Jenkins sought to have Liberty Counsel, as well as Staver and Miller’s other lawyer, Rena Lindevaldsen, added to the RICO suit. The court granted the request; read the order here.
Jenkins contends that Lindevaldsen has known Miller’s whereabouts all along. Not only did she reportedly help pack Miller’s things, but she was reportedly among several people who helped pack Miller’s things. Staver was added to the suit because he was Lindevaldsen’s superior.
If there is anything at all to this, the entire Falwell empire is finished. For years, Liberty Law and Liberty Counsel have contended that ex-gay parents have a duty to engage in civil disobedience rather than comply with visitation orders. But this suit alleges that major elements of the Falwell empire went well beyond that—to being accomplices in a kidnapping.