Bishop Thomas Weeks, III has decided to execute a full throttle defense against his estranged wife, Prophetess Juanita Bynum. Weeks was accused of beating Bynum in a confrontation at an Atlanta hotel in August.
The pastor was indicted August 31 by a grand jury for aggravated assault, terrorist threats and 2 counts of simple battery, but a Fulton county judge dead docketed the indictment and released surety on his bail on Oct. 29.
Dead docketing is a practice in the state of Georgia whereby criminal charges are effectively dropped due to insufficient evidence to prove innocence or guilt (Source: GIS Info. View a copy of the document HERE.)
While Bynum, the self-labeled new face of domestic violence, feasted on media attention, he was getting minced in the media and assassinated in the court of public opinion.
Now, armed with a PR firm, Weeks is on an interview spree to disinfect what’s left of his reputation–appearing to follow his wife’s trail of tears already having been on the Tom Joyner show where 2 months ago she’d been candid about the alleged abuse.
The embittered bishop’s membership at Global Destinies Ministries has dwindled by over 1500 members over the past 4 months. Perhaps by telling his version of the story his members and others will see him in a more positive light. At his website he’s advertising 8 days of a new beginning for the watch night service at his church. After the embarrassing allegations he has withstood, it seems that he could use a fresh start.
In this continuing coverage of Bynum-Weeks, EUR’s Lee Bailey is one of the first to speak to the tarnished clergyman in a straight up, man-to-man conversation about the allegations he is facing. Among other defacing revelations, Weeks exposes what he believes are his wife’s chief motives including the thought that she desperately needs money for her ministry and wants him imprisoned to eliminate any chance of another woman marrying him.
Maintaining his innocence all the while Bishop Weeks claims this entire ordeal is a result of a set up.
Interview
Lee Bailey: Public perception is that Juanita Bynum is a victim of a beat down administered by you. So what is the truth?
Bishop Thomas Weeks: The truth is it wasn’t a beat down and the truth is that I am not an abuser. The truth is that I’ve been the one abused previously in my marriage and kept it silent. The fact still remains that I was the abused at any level in this relationship.
LB: So what is the public to believe then?
BTW: Well, the public is to believe whatever the media gives it. Obviously the fallacious information that was given to heighten this and to conjecture a persona. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I believe that true love is private and also the addition that my lawyers wanted me to keep silent until all evidence could be gathered to support the truth of the facts that we know since it has all now been disseminated and made clear. It now is apparently clear that there was over dramatization, conjecture, and misappropriation of words concerning any and all bruises and we find it appalling that we were set up to take a hit so that she could become the new face of domestic violence
LB: It sounds as if you are blaming the media or the media is in partnership with her
BTW: No the media only records what it is given and what it looks to be, and this is not of course a one time incident. There are plenty of women that have been officially and truly been abused by a man so the persona is already out there. This is not a novelty that someone just bust into this on August 22. However because that is already the template, a man is already assumed to be an abuser if a woman shows up with any marks on her. What we have to deal with is the motive that was not known on Aug 22. . . and it wasn’t clear that she took 4 and a half hours to recognize any bruises on her and of course the leg bruises that she had on her she did not acknowledge to the head of security at the hotel nor to the bellman, nor sought any police or medical attention. And then 4 and a half hours later after these bruises appear she uploads them to a website and then she goes to the hospital to say that she’s been abused and then tells the hospital that it had been two hours earlier which would have made it 1:30 not where it took place where I just pushed her off of me onto the ground 4 and a half hours earlier. So there was a whole lot that was never given to the media because it was already branded that I was an abuser, that she was horrifically beaten and abused, and kicked and stomped and the police report, excuse me, the hospital report show us clearly that she showed up at 3:03 a.m. And she walked in and then walked out 3 hours later with just some Motrin for painkillers.
LB: So are you saying she’s making all of this up?
BTW: I’m saying that the story that she’s giving is not true. Whoever made it up and gave it to the media certainly leaked it out and there is a consistent focus to do three key elements and possibly four. Number one is to destroy my integrity and credibility in the ministry, which would destroy the church, two, give her a cause that she’s never had before which will then, three, raise money that she needed desperately for her ministry and operations and four put me in jail and give up the void where she would no longer have to fill the emotional change and charge that she knew she didn’t want to possibly see another woman married to me sometime in the future. And this makes a perfect alibi for her to dramatize to do all four of these things.
LB: Well this makes her sound like a pretty evil woman?
BTW: Well we won’t try to make her sound that way we just give the facts and the facts remain consistent, they are proof positive and there are a lot of other things that can’t be said in just these short minutes that are very critical to the underlying motives that started even 2 and a half months before and were extensions to the other situations not just privy to our marriage but privy to emotional other things that have felt like betrayal from other people in the organization and other situations that began to build a foundation for all of these responses.
LB: To be honest about it, from the outside this is just a mess.
BTW: It is truly that. I think that its too much for her, for a person just to put together in a five minute overview and it’s not even a 50,000 overview clearing. You’d probably have to go to 100,000 feet to probably get the depth of it, but once you get the depth of it you’re saying ‘Oh, my God’ and unfortunately in respect to the media, the media doesn’t have a lot of time to spend on every detail of the story. So, people get bits and pieces of the puzzle and unfortunately they get it when they can find time to get it so there were a lot of things that were not put in place and when the puzzles laid out that this is just abuse and so forth and so on. I was willing to stay silent because I believe wisdom and maturity would set it, clarity would set in and obviously I believe that if the district attorney’s office and those who were working the case had time to come and interview me or investigate my side of what happened that night, they would get clarity. They would not have pushed so quickly to do an arrest and all the other items until they searched out all the motives and unfortunately that didn’t end up taking place.
LB: So what happened that night?
BTW: Well I save a lot of the details obviously for a day in court and I can say this: I walked away from the table after a discussion in two parts. It wasn’t for reconciliation, we had already previously reconciled days before that, had intimacy many times before that night. We were there talking about a need for her to make an important business decision that involved a church that she told she wasn’t going to come back to which she gave a cease and desist letter that we were trying to acknowledge and hold in order for her to come back and utilize it we had to deal with that very privately. I was challenged by her to acknowledge it and show that I had pure love in it and I walked away saying I was going to do it and she came behind me and she was not emotional. She began to become very aggressive and in times past I know what that aggression leads to. In her pinning me against her Range Rover I responded by pushing her off of me and from there she got up and the bellman finally decided to recognize that I was her husband per her. There was no pulling me off of her, there was no stomping, kicking, none of that. However, I would say this just for another point of clarity, my leaving the site was not because I did not want to stay and bring clarity, it was because I was forced to because of a person that wanted to fight me. I mean I’m not a person that wants to pick fights and do all those things. So unfortunately once again, the media were given what they were told and they had to believe it because that’s what all they were given. Now when people know there is another side to the story and I told the one time in a press conference to just hold judgment and there will be new perspectives coming. And when those perspectives come and you weigh it out as fact and not as hype or conjecture or whatever, you will be able to put it together clearly.
LB: So you’re somewhat speaking out now because?
BTW: Well, there’s a fine line between trying to protect your marriage and your relationship. And then also I dealt with four churches going through a very painful emotional time with their pastor. And then a few months prior I transitioned three of those churches to pastors and leaders to cover those ministries and those souls because I had to stay in Atlanta vis-à-vis the legal situation. And then the local church here that had over 2000 plus sons and daughters as many people would call the members of the church, I saw many of them go through a painful departure not knowing if their pastor was going to be locked up, if the church was going to be there the next Sunday. Then there was a [legion] of rumors that were sent from her camp into here to pull people away, to ‘dis-settle’ (sic) people to make them leave and members, or sons and daughters got tired of it and said ‘Bishop, you need to speak up and tell people what you know is the truth so that people can understand it’ and obviously after a magazine article came out in December with five pages of nothing but ‘villianation’ (sic) upon my life I had to start speaking out because it’s time out for just this being a pure travesty of what is not true.
LB: Now, I didn’t read the article but give me a couple of points that she made that you thought needed to be addressed or think need to be addressed.
BTW: She mentioned, one, about the house and she put incorrect information concerning that we were evicted from the house and we didn’t take care of it and that was not correct. The fact of the matter is that we had a one year lease. We honored the lease, we paid the lease, we moved out of the house according to the lease and our schedules were not necessarily apropos. We spent less than a day in the house a week and we had other properties which she did not acknowledge and she had to other properties and I had two other properties, so we weren’t homeless. We had a suite on campus that we used on Sundays or service days and it made it look like I kicked my wife out of the house and we were both homeless and that was not the case. And in fact, the builder appreciated us so much that he was willing to give us 90 days to reconsider and extend the lease and in the midst of that he decided, ‘Oh, I didn’t hear anything back from them so let me put official papers in to show that I could take the house back’ and that was 90 days past our 1-year lease. All that wasn’t clarified, it just pointedly said that ‘Hey, we lost the house, now I’m homeless and he moved me into church.’ That is not the truth. Another thing that was very evident was when she began to share about some dysfunction as in a trip where she says I took some of her luggage and threw it out and did all that stuff. That’s not true either. And then in addition there are a number of other pieces where there have been misstatements or inappropriate statements that just need to be dealt with and clarified.
LB: So what kind of person is she? The perception again that I’m getting--just hearing your side--she doesn’t sound like a nice person? But that’s just my perception.
BTW: Juanita is a great person that has gone through a lot of wounded areas in her ministry career and ministry is a very painful situation that people sometimes have to process; an experience that you would not necessarily want to share with your family or friends. Juanita is all respects a great person and one of the most giving people that you will ever meet. Her giving is sometimes a crutch that I think has enabled other people to be in her life because she sort of has friends because she’s always a giver. Long story short, in her ministerial career there have been a lot of areas were she’s been damaged or hurt and painfully in light of the word, misused and those pains don’t necessarily go away. In January of this year she felt like one of her senior administrators had betrayed her. And which that person did not, but that person was kind of put in a position and betrayed by another person and the clarity of that didn’t come out and still is not as clear as possible. She was carrying a lot of hurt from a number of other areas and it seemed as if her husband who now has let this house go, in her opinion 90 days after he let it go, has also done something negative. So she leaves the church and then asked me to speak good of her on a BET TV documentary of her which I refused to because I can’t speak well of a wife that destroyed almost two years and almost ten years of pastoring. Two years after ten years in Washington D.C. and all these other ministries. So there was a lot of dysfunction that was going on even before August 21 and the prior history of Juanita was that she had some emotional and mental challenges in times past and at times that seems to be the case where she kind of goes in and out of reason and wisdom and fact and truth and that’s the best way I can put it at this time, but there’s a lot more that could be said concerning how she can be a tremendous person in public and privately be somebody else.
LB: So what is or what was the attraction?
BTW: We both, five years ago, acknowledged the appreciation for our callings and our findings in ministry and to develop peoples’ lives. We both have a passion for that and I think she still does have a great, great passion for that. But in the process, there is wear and tear, there is time that you need to just come back and reflect, and take vacation, renew, restore, rejuvenate and those times didn’t happen often. One of the reasons why they did not happen often was because she was such a giver she gave to people. She covered car notes, house notes, education and financial notes, emergencies, insurances, all kind of things and she had approximately 30 to 40 people a month that were getting some kind of financial support from her in the tune between twenty-five and thirty thousand dollars that she gave out of her own life. Now that doesn’t allow you to kind of slow down and pause. That means that you have to continually generate twenty thousand dollars outside of your payroll, outside of your normal business expenses, out of your normal life care of yourself, and other things. You have this ‘other’ and it became a strain in the marriage because we could never develop our marriage more because she didn’t have as much time because she always had to go to do something because she always had responsibilities. So that triggered back and I became more of a workaholic and so there were other factors that led to the fabric of our marriage being softened and pliable and even bendable. And so there are a number of key ingredients that led to what August 21 came out. Obviously, most of it came out of hurt, anger, betrayal, and all these other things but there were other key components that if we spent time reflecting on it we could have done better changing them.
LB: I appreciate that but you didn’t quite answer the question. What beyond that attracted you to her and vice-versa? Without knowing the bottom, bottom line it seems like opposites attract or are there a lot of commonalities?
BTW: One of the statements I make in the book is that opposites attract but do they last? I think there is a balance that is needed because opposites do bring balance to each other but in the balance what is the common denominator? As I mentioned in the earlier response is that ministry was our common denominator. We have a passion to see people empowered by life teachings from a biblical perspective. That’s where our passions were. She was very creative, ingenuitive (sic), and all those other areas. I was very business; entrepreneurial, administrative ... we were opposites on those areas. She didn’t touch a laptop for seven months before I met her I touched a laptop seven times a day. These opposites kept balancing out.
I got more of a personality and laugh. She was very quick on her feet, jovial, kind of exciting every day. I’m very serious, nonchalant, and needed a personality so there was good and bad that rubbed off on both us; more good than bad. And the attraction was there for those commonalities. Unfortunately, the principles that hold a relationship together still have to be worked on even thought the attraction’s there. That was not necessarily put on the forefront so the attraction, though, it’s still there. We still appreciate each other for what we are as individuals but these other things came in between us...
In Part 2 of this exclusive interview, Bishop Weeks paints a picture of an obsessive, mentally and emotionally unstable spouse. Plus, he discloses what he plans do with his new book about their eroded relationship titled "What Love Taught Me."
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