LISTEN: A Georgia pastor and seven associates were indicted last month in an alleged multi-million dollar fraud conspiracy that targeted military personnel in Southeast Georgia. GPB's Orlando Montoya speaks with a former church member about her experiences in the church and asked a nonprofit watchdog how such a swindle could have happened.
Peter Biello: A Georgia pastor and seven associates were indicted last month in an alleged multi-million dollar fraud conspiracy that targeted military personnel in Southeast Georgia. U.S. Department of Justice officials charged the leaders of the House of Prayer Christian Churches of America, which also had churches in Augusta and in other states. The government alleges pastor Rony Denis and others used their church to manipulate members into forced marriages, into properties that generated rental income for the defendants, and into Veterans Administration benefits that were funneled into church-controlled accounts that paid for the defendants' credit card bills. That's according to the indictment. Prosecutors say the church's school, a seminary, earned church leaders $23 million in GI Bill payments. GPB's Orlando Montoya recently spoke with a former church member about her experiences in the church and asked a nonprofit watchdog how such a swindle could have happened. Orlando addressed the former church member, Abigail Bradeen, first.
Orlando Montoya: How did you get involved in the church and how did it affect your life?
Abigail Bradeen: I joined back in 2006. I was an active duty soldier at the time. I started in Fort Gordon in Augusta. After I graduated nursing school, I was transferred to Fort Stewart, which put me at Hinesville, which is the headquarters of House of Prayer. So I started in Augusta, I was on base living in the barracks, and they came to me in the barracks and invited me out to a dinner and Bible Q&A that was just for soldiers and veterans, really. And that's how I got started going. I was actually looking for a church at the time, so I went. It was a nice environment for soldiers because, I mean, everybody there were soldiers. We talked like soldiers talk. So it was really enticing. It grabbed me right away, and from there you get sucked in so fast because they always have events going every single day. So all of my free time outside of duty hours was actually at the church.
Orlando Montoya: And how did you realize that things were off?
Abigail Bradeen: You know, all of this fraud and everything that's on these indictments, I did not know, while I was there, that any of that was going on. Now my marriage happened while I was there. It was another guy, another member of the church. And they kind of pushed me towards this guy. And I didn't know that he's had such an extensive mental health history and a history of violence. So that was an abusive marriage, and that's what I was running away from. I left House of Prayer in 2009, and at the time I was separated from my husband, and I was living with Rony Denis's mother-in-law, which is actually just two houses down from Rony Denis. And he started having me meet with him directly, like private meetings at his house. And for me, that was the red flag because all of those conversations I had with him were usually really perverted and at one time he tried to push me to go back to my husband and I did not want to go back. So he used that to say that because I didn't want to go back my husband he accused me of living in homosexuality. That's the word they throw out there like a Salem witch hunt. So that's what he tried say about me, and I said, "You know what? Whatever you need to tell yourself, that's fine. That's fine, but I'm done." And that night, that night I left, and because I was staying with his mother-in-law who had door alarms on her door, it was a sneaky exit for me. It was like two o'clock in the morning. I had to sneak out of my bedroom window in my pajamas with everything that I could fit of my belongings into a pillowcase. And I ran to go meet a cab.
Orlando Montoya: How did you feel about the indictment and did the indictments sound like the church that you knew?
Abigail Bradeen: It did sound like it, after I left, even though I didn't know all that at the time — it was quite a few years before I found out what was really going on. I would say maybe 2016, 2017, I found the website, hopcc.com. And the people who started that site were my really close friends, John and Jennifer Rodriguez, and I heard their story about how they left and how their son almost got kidnapped. And that's what opened my eyes: In hearing their story, everything — everything made sense. Because what was going on, people were coming out and it was really serious. They were financially devastated and forced to file bankruptcy because not just the GI Bill fraud, but a lot of members had homes purchased in their names without their knowledge or their consent. They executed power of attorney documents that were forged to do this. So people came out of there financially devastated, having to file for bankruptcy, losing custody of their children.
Orlando Montoya: Abigail, I thank you for sharing your story. We're also joined by Will Hubbard, vice president for veterans and military policy at the nonprofit Veterans Education Success. Will, does what happened to Abigail and others involved with the House of Prayer Christian Churches of America point out the need for any federal policy changes?
Will Hubbard: Thanks for having us, Orlando, and thank you for highlighting this story. And also thank you to Abigail for being so brave to share your story. I know it's hard and it brings up a lot of memories, but it's important to get that message out there. It is important to highlight the fact that policy changes are needed. The big question we need to think about at this point is why was this allowed to happen in the first place? Why were GI Bill benefits going to a school that was obviously a scam and arguably a cult, by the description of its own members? That's the question we all need to look at. And the reality is right now GI Bill benefits are not as well overseen as they should be and the standards are not as strong as we believe they could be. And so that's something that we're fighting very hard to make sure changes in Congress so that stories like this don't happen again.
Orlando Montoya: The allegation is that they were using the VA benefits and funneling them to the church so that they would benefit the church leaders. How would they do that in a way that would not be seen by — by the law enforcement and all the authorities involved?
Will Hubbard: The current system relies on a lot of trust to begin with, but also enforcement mechanisms that are, frankly, not as strong as they should be in some states, and in certain cases, hardly exist at all. And so just having minimum standards to make sure that any schools that get into the system to begin with are offering a quality education that veterans can use their hard-earned benefits at. At present, we are working hard with Congress to make sure that these veterans do get their GI Bill benefits back. They were essentially stolen from them by this church, and it's something that we would like to see, at minimum, to make them whole.
Orlando Montoya: That was Will Hubbard, vice president for veterans and military policy at the nonprofit Veterans Education Success. And earlier we heard from Abigail Bradeen, a former member of the House of Prayer Christian Churches of America. Thank you both.
Abigail Bradeen: Thank you.
Peter Biello: Rony Denis and other church leaders have pleaded not guilty. Their attorney declined to comment further when reached for comment yesterday. The Department of Veterans Affairs told GPB the agency, quote, "takes seriously" its commitment to protecting all VA benefits from fraudulent activities. An agency spokesperson says House of Prayer has not been approved for GI Bill benefits since 2022 due to failure to meet program requirements.
