Jerry Falwell Jr. |
According to Reuters, 29 year-old Giancarlo Granda is claiming he had a sexual relationship with Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife Becki. Jerry Jr., is the son of the late prominent, influential evangelical Christian, Jerry Falwell and was formerly president of Liberty University, an evangelical Bible college highly influential in conservative Christian circles. He is also a close ally of Donald Trump.
The scandal reveals the stinking hypocrisy festering at the heart of American evangelical Christianity in it's cosy alliance with the extreme Republican right in American politics, where any pretense of sexual morality or financial probity has been abandoned.
The photo on Instagram that was posted, then quickly deleted. Falwell later explained that the post was meant as a joke and the woman was his wife’s pregnant assistant. |
Giancarlo Granda claims his year-long affair began when he met the Falwells while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. He claims he used to have sex with Becki while her husband sat in the corner of the room and watched. Reuters claim to have seen "emails, text messages and other evidence that he says demonstrate the sexual nature of his relationship with the couple". Granda claims the liaisons took place multiple times a year in hotels in Miami and New York and at the couple's home in Virginia.
Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell Snr. and taken over by Jerry Jr. on his fathers death in 2007, boast a student roll of about 100,000 and has a strict code of morality which includes:
Sexual relations outside of a biblically ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman are not permissible at Liberty University.
However, they are permissible in various hotels and homes away from the university campus, it seems, at least for those who make the rules.
Last May, Reuters reported that the Falwells had asked Trump's fixer, Michael Cohen to help prevent some 'racy' photographs from becoming public knowledge. Cohen is currently in prison, serving a three-year sentence for federal campaign violations and lying to Congress - just one of a number of Donald Trump's close associates to go to prison. The 'racy' photographs are believed to be of Jerry Jr., his wife and Giancarlo Granda, enjoying one another's company.
Like Donald Trump, Jerry Falwell Snr. was married three times and divorced twice.
Becki Falwell, whom Jerry Jr. blamed for the affair, calling her relationship with Granda, 'inappropriate', is an influential political figure in Conservative Christian circles, for whom Trump's marital infidelities and admitted sexual molestation of women, seem unimportant.
She is on the advisory board of Women for Trump.
Amongst the material that Granda showed Reuters was a recording of a FaceTime conversation between him and Becki Falwell discussing their relationship, during which Becki was naked and Jerry Jr. could be seen peeking from behind a door. In other material seen by Reuters Becki can be heard complaining of Granda's relationship with other women and Jerry Jr. can be heard asking if he is trying to make Becki jealous. Clearly Jerry Jr. was fully aware of and complicit in Becki's 'inappropriate' relationship with Giancarlo Granda.
Granda told Reuters that although he entered into the sexual relationship with the Falwells willingly, he feels now that they preyed upon his "immaturity, naïveté, instability, or a combination thereof", because they identified him as suitable for their sexual escapades.
Clearly, Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife Becki epitomise modern Trump-supporting evangelical Christians where sexual promiscuity and arrogant abuse of power and privilege, and a casual disregard for the 'family values' they try to impose on others, are routine. These self-licencing pious, privileged frauds feel entitled to exemptions from the morality they try to make others live by.
For these people, the Bible is a book that should be followed to the letter - by others.
[Update 27 Aug, 2020] CNN are reporting that Jerry Falwell Jr. will receive $10.5 million in compensation from Liberty University. He confirmed to CNN that he will receive about $2.5 million during the next two years and another $8 million thereafter, because he resigned without a formal accusation of wrongdoing from his $1.5 million a year post.
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