Bakker Shows No Remorse, Falwell Says : Evangelist Should ‘Return Millions’ to PTL, Successor Says

The Rev. Jerry Falwell today said that he doesn’t see “an ounce of repentance” in Jim Bakker and that the fallen PTL evangelist needs to come clean about a 1980 sexual encounter and his “homosexual problems.”

Bakker also should “return millions of dollars taken from the coffers of this ministry at the cost of widows” and people who sacrificed to make payments to the television ministry, Falwell said at a news conference after a meeting here of the PTL board.

He also said he has love in his heart for Bakker and noted that he also “loved” Richard Nixon. But, he said, that doesn’t mean that the former President should have been asked to return to the White House after Watergate, and the same applies to Bakker.

The PTL board, appointed by Falwell after Bakker turned the ministry over to the fundamentalist Baptist in March, is trying to bring fiscal control to PTL, now estimated to be $70 million in debt.

Pretense Charged

Late Tuesday on ABC’s “Nightline” program, Bakker accused Falwell of pretending that the takeover of PTL was necessary to forestall a “hostile takeover” by another TV evangelist, the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart.

Bakker said Falwell had promised him that he could return to PTL at any time.

Bakker said he was pressured to step down at a meeting with Falwell and others days before the sex scandal involving church secretary Jessica Hahn broke.

“We had 25 minutes to make this decision,” Bakker said. “Looking back, I made a terrible mistake.”

Falwell said today that Bakker wasn’t pressured: “We were not there 25 minutes. We were there six hours.”

Heard Different Account

Falwell also said he at first believed that Bakker had engaged in one brief sexual encounter with Hahn and that intercourse had not taken place because Bakker was impotent.

Falwell said that Bakker called him May 17 wanting to return to PTL and that he (Falwell) told him: “Since then I have learned not only did you have sex with her, so did John Wesley Fletcher (another evangelist), and another aide was going to, but she was unable to and was lying prostrate on the floor.”

Falwell said he had heard that Bakker asked that unnamed aide two weeks later, “Did you get her too?”

“That makes my blood boil,” Falwell said.

He said he told Bakker, “I would be doing a disservice to God to allow you to come back here.”

Falwell said he later “sat across the table” from men who described homosexual advances made by Bakker.

Sees Lack of Remorse

Asked during the news conference whether Bakker is ill, Falwell replied, “Either he has a terrible memory or is terribly dishonest, or he’s emotionally ill.”

Falwell said Bakker has shown no remorse for his acts.

Falwell said he asked Roe Messner, a contractor who is building a new hotel at PTL’s headquarters in Fort Mill, to go to Palm Springs to ask the Bakkers what PTL’s new management could do to help.

Messner came back with a shopping list from the Bakkers saying they would like to receive hospital insurance; Jim’s salary for life, at $300,000 a year; Tammy Bakker’s salary at $100,000 a year; rights to books, stocks, a house on the lake and the furniture in it; attorney fees, and cars.

“I don’t see any repentance there,” Falwell said.