Was Dad Open to Questions?

This post is a lengthy one, so I apologize. But it covers a few different stories that are out there.

Someone on Instagram asked me about allegations that Dad demonized people who had questions about the Thompson case in 2017 and after. I can’t speak to any private conversations with the leadership team. I know what I saw publicly in them was they were very respectful of those who had questions.

Based on the people who have put names to these claims, I can say this: given their personalities, I would have no doubt that they were not exactly calm in their questions. I’m quite sure those questions came with an edge. So if they were passionate and accusatory in a question they believed in, why was the person answering it not allowed to be passionate and even defensive in their answer to it? Even looking at the way things were handled with staff this fall, those accusing Dad were allowed to say whatever they wanted anytime they wanted. Those defending Dad were told not to, because they said doing so would create a hostile work environment for those who questioned him. That’s a ridiculous double standard. So even if senior leadership had tense conversations with people back in 2017, I doubt they were the ones who initially raised the tone, and it is not an indication of hiding things. Of course now they have no use for Dad, so trashing him earns you kumbaya vibes from senior leaders.

Now, as for possible interactions with Dad, I can speak to the ones I observed. What I observed is very different than how many are now claiming it to be. Dad held staff meetings regarding this particular case at least twice. The first meeting allowed for questions and comments. The second meeting was a global staff meeting, again allowing time and space for questions and comments. On the second occasion, Dad allowed for anonymous questions to be submitted from all global staff. Tough questions were asked, and he answered them openly and without hesitation. I never got the impression he wasn’t open to questions. So I feel confident that he did not demonize or ostracize someone just for having a question. And as a side note, the people who know every single detail there is to be known about both the evidence and the personalities, still believe in him today. 

Ruth Malhotra, one of the ones alleging such things, has in no way acted like a person who had concerns about Dad the last few years. She invited herself to many of his events and contrary to what she often indicated, it wasn’t necessary for her to be at so many. She always found a way to be near my Dad at occasions/conversations/interactions she didn’t need to be involved with. She invited her family to any of my Dad’s events that she could, often when other staff family members didn’t take that liberty. She even went as far as pressuring organizers at my Dad’s funeral, telling them multiple times that she needed to sit with the immediate family. We found out about the request(s) after the service. Ruth hadn’t spoken to the family about it, making it clear this desire had very little to do with offering support and more about appearing she had a close relationship with my Dad and the family. That is not the kind of relationship she had with him or us, so the organizers didn’t seat her there.

Ruth has given very positive public interviews about him many times since 2017, including after he passed away. These are not the actions of someone who took issue with my Dad or his family.

STRANGE WAY TO HIDE

The fact that so much of that situation is known is because Dad went public by way of the lawsuit. If he hadn’t wanted to answer questions from the staff or anyone else, he wouldn’t have sued and made it public himself. Someone right now is saying “but what about the NDA?” Any reputable attorney knows an NDA is a very regular occurrence. In fact, RZIM (up until now because it would look pretty bad if they did) has essentially had terminated employees sign an NDA in order to get their severance. Most companies do. I would say many people at RZIM and on the board have signed NDAs at previous employers, in business dealings, in previous legal disputes, etc. An NDA is widely used and is often used for more reasons than to “suppress” information. In the context of what we’re talking about here, at its core an NDA is meant to help bring finality to the dispute. To put it in oversimplified terms, it means “let’s agree to disagree, drop it, move on, and if we can do that then there’s no need for further legal action.”

If the purpose and result of the NDA were about hiding information, he wouldn’t have sued to begin with. He released all the information he had and drew more attention to it by filing. His case and arguments are public because of him. There are a lot of decisions in that process that a guilty man would have made differently.

People have rewritten the narrative to say he made up his side and his approach was meant to intimidate the other side through legal shock and awe. But keep in mind this was federal court. So if I’ve done my homework correctly, to have survived dismissal and progressed to mediation means it met the requirements of this rule:

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a district court may dismiss a complaint, or any part of it, for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted if the plaintiff has not set forth factual allegations in support of his claim that would entitle him to relief. “To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” “A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.”¹⁷

That means his legal argument was not just smoke and mirrors. That means the court saw that at least on the surface, there was enough evidence to sustain his argument. And that would have taken more than his say so. You don’t get several hundreds of thousands of dollars into a federal RICO lawsuit with an “I know you are but what am I” defense.

WHAT ABOUT SIBERIA?

The report also says this: “Several RZIM staff reported to us that they were concerned about Mr. Zacharias travelling with a personal masseuse, not because they feared actual impropriety but because they feared the appearance of impropriety.”

These comments are meant to give examples of people’s concern, but seems like they give examples of people’s concern that Dad’s massage treatments could be misrepresented and misunderstood. Someone could accuse him of inappropriate behavior even if he was innocent. Someone could misrepresent his medically needed massages and say he was using them for other reasons. Someone, somewhere could spend a lot of time and money digging up hearsay accusations of abuse and misconduct and give the illusion of proof with the fact that he received frequent back treatments while traveling. 

Well, that sounds familiar.

Seems like those people were right. And the report has kindly documented their belief that there were reasons to believe that Dad could be totally innocent but still have his massage treatments used as “evidence” for wrong doing. Which is exactly what the report has done. Thanks for marginalizing and discrediting a huge chunk of your own report M&M. I appreciate it. 

(Now before some of my critics say “but they have emails too,” none of the emails prove a physical relationship. By the report’s own admission, they had some that at most “implied” a physical relationship, though not explicitly sexual. So they don’t even have concrete proof of any physical relationships at all. In short they’re using emails that “imply” a consensual nondescript physical relationship and frequent back massage treatments as evidence to support accusations of abuse and rape. That’s…….logically ambitious. And thats if this digital evidence is even legit – something we’re working to find out.)

Now, in regards to the report saying he sent one person to “Siberia” for being concerned about the appearance of impropriety, I believe I know which story they are referring to. And I believe it is being retrofitted to fit the new narrative. The staff member didn’t have any concern as to Dad’s intentions, as the report does say. And they were truly just trying to look out for him. But they believed one of the therapists to be dishonest, and believed they put on an act around Dad. The staff member believed this person was not honest in her behavior, and he was worried that one day she would say or do something that would reflect poorly on Dad. The irony of that concern is obvious considering where we’re at now with unverifiable accusations by anonymous sources.

Dad’s reaction to the individual concerned on his behalf can be attributed to two things. One, Dad had not seen any red flags in this person, and he thought this was simply a matter of something lost in translation. He thought the accusations were mean spirited. As evidenced by the people we do know to be involved with this, one of Dad’s strengths was also his weakness. He always fought for the underdog. He always wanted to believe the best in people. And as such he was not always the best judge of character in a person. As people like Anurag Sharma, Vicki Blue and others have shown, his faith was very often misplaced. People like them ended up using him in life and are now using him in death through their newfound “celebrity” in all of this. And if you think I’ve already used all of the evidence we have discrediting the two I’ve mentioned, you are mistaken. 

The second reason for his reaction is one I’ve made mention of already. When Dad started receiving consistent back treatments, he was in excruciating pain. We know because we were there with him every day. We know how much it drastically diminished Dad’s ability to do even every day tasks, let alone get on a plane and take the platform. He felt he could not endure the additional physical pain brought on by extensive travel without help. His medicinal options were limited because he did not want to take strong medication. (Even in his final days battling cancer, doctor’s struggled to get his pain managed because Dad so desperately didn’t want to take strong medicine.) He didn’t want pills. That left him with back treatments, which the doctors themselves recommended. Anyone who has dealt with chronic pain will understand that. 

When he told leadership he felt he could not travel without the benefit of regular back treatments, leadership objected to the idea of coming off the road. Dad had to keep going for the sake of the ministry and the team, according to them. Many people depended on him. The pressure to keep going was huge. Then he had this conversation I’ve just referred to. It didn’t matter that the staff member was looking out for Dad, which they were. To my exhausted Dad, it felt like he was being told he shouldn’t do the one thing that kept the pain manageable and kept him on the road. So there he was, at a major crossroads and weary, being told he shouldn’t stop traveling but also shouldn’t get treatment. That was how he saw the options being presented. Of course he was frustrated. Because he felt like he was being given no option. How many of us would interpret the situation any differently under that kind of strain?

At the end of the day, despite their disagreement on whether there were reasons to distrust this therapist, the staff member was not hindered in their path at RZIM one bit. They were not silenced. They continued to be promoted and be successful. Certainly doesn’t sound like a case of retaliation, does it? 

Everything I’ve said about my Dad is true. But despite the many compliments he deserves, that doesn’t mean my Dad was perfect. He was human. He got frustrated. He got impatient. He got tired. And when he was feeling those things, there were times where he didn’t handle a disagreement as well as he should have, regardless of the subject. There were times in life where he and I disagreed over things and you could say I was “sent to Siberia” too. There were disagreements we had that took some working through, like all people. And in those times, his reaction had nothing to do with compensating for being wrong on the subject or hiding something. It was simply the fact that Dad believed in what he was saying and was sometimes frustrated that I didn’t see it the same way, especially in an issue he felt to be important. 

Of course I can’t speak to every conversation he may have had that I wasn’t privy to. And I don’t have perfect knowledge of Dad. But I do have a whole lot more than those investigators. Their limited witness list and prepping of some of those witnesses helped ensure that. I have a lot more knowledge of him than Steve Baughman, who has spent years of his life watching my Dad live his. And I certainly know more than anyone who is relying solely on the words of a report that presents more bias and speculation than evidence. They can’t even assure the integrity of the little evidence they have by way of a declared chain of custody. Documentation like that is considered standard procedure for these things. But not in this case.

That’s what you get when you get a hit piece. This was about an agenda instead of an actual thorough investigation.