An Orange County jury Monday, June 5 awarded $2 million in damages to the granddaughter of late televangelist Jan Crouch, finding that the minister acted outrageously when she blamed and berated her 13-year-old granddaughter after the girl told her she had been sexually assaulted by a church employee.
The jury deliberated nearly eight hours before determining that Jan Crouch, who co-founded the Trinity Broadcasting Network empire with her late husband Paul, caused her granddaughter Carra Crouch, now 24, years of emotional pain and suffering.
The judgment was $1 million for past emotional damage, and $1 million for future pain and suffering.
On the hook for $900,000 is the Trinity Christian Center of Santa Ana, the nonprofit that runs TBN, because jurors found the late Jan Crouch 45 percent responsible for causing Carra Crouch’s emotional distress.
Carra Crouch’s mother was assigned 35 percent, but she wasn’t even a defendant so she doesn’t have to pay. The remaining 20 percent was attached to the alleged rapist, who also was not a defendant and was never arrested.
Carra Crouch’s mother sat through the trial in support of her daughter.
While the judgment falls short of the $6 million Carra Crouch was seeking, her attorney, David Keesling, said it sends a strong message on how churches should handle reports of sexual assault.
“From now on, they’re going to have to go out there and explain to people why a Christian ministry would conduct themselves this way,” he said.
He said the money will pay for Carra Crouch’s past and future therapy and other expenses.
“This was more than just devastating, it was a life-shaping event that affected her and still does affect her,” Keesling said.
The verdict brings to an end five years of legal battles after Carra Crouch filed a personal-injury lawsuit against Trinity Christian Center in 2012, alleging she was sexually assaulted at a Praise-A-Thon fundraiser she attended with her grandmother in Atlanta in 2006.
In a three-week trial, Keesling said Carra Crouch came to her grandmother for comfort and protection after the incident, but instead she was yelled at and berated.
Jan Crouch, as an ordained minister, was legally required to report the incident under California’s mandatory reporting laws, he said, but she never called police because she was more concerned about the “bad press.”
Jurors believed Carra Crouch and found that her grandmother acted recklessly. However, jurors rejected the allegation that Jan Crouch failed in her duty as a mandated reporter.
Trinity attorney Michael King said the organization disagrees with the jury verdict and plans to appeal. King said the organization was absolved of allegations of a coverup because of jurors’ findings on the mandated reporter issue.
“We are disappointed that Jan Crouch has been held partially liable in the jury’s verdict but are pleased that TBN has been fully exonerated,” TBN said in a statement. “We’re weighing our options and will move forward under our new leadership.”
In the trial, King argued there was no evidence that Jan Crouch, who died in May 2016, yelled at her granddaughter or berated her.
King said Trinity had no obligation to do anything in this case, and that Carra Crouch went to her grandmother as a grandmother, not as a minister.
On that Atlanta night in 2006, Carra Crouch said she drank alcohol and watched a movie in her hotel room bed with the 30-year-old employee. She accused him of fondling and trying to kiss her and providing water that she suspects was laced with a drug that made her pass out, according to her lawsuit, and when she awoke she suspected she had been raped.
Standing in the courtroom hallway after the verdict, Carra Crouch said she is relieved the ordeal is over.
“This (lawsuit) has been going on since I was 18, so that has consumed my entire adult life,” she said. “It’s exciting that they’re being held accountable for at least part of the blame.”
Crouch, who works as an assistant in a medical office in Orange County, said the money will help pay for nursing school. She said she is working to heal emotionally and spiritually.
“I do have a relationship with God, but it took me a long time to get there,” she said. “I grew up with some pretty bad people, who were the complete opposite of what you would expect from Christian people. I was atheist until I was 21, but not anymore.”
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