The suit says the accusations come from a document compiled by a sister of Mrs. Roberts, Stephanie Cantese, community and governmental liaison aide for the Oral Roberts Ministries. No listed telephone number could be found for Ms. Cantese, and university officials did not make her available for questions. The university Board of Regents voted last Friday to hire an independent auditor to review the accusations.
…The state suit was filed by Mr. Swails along with Mr. Brooker, a professor in the government program, and his wife, Paulita Brooker, an adjunct professor of history, humanities and government and, since last year, an employee in the School of Lifelong Education. They said that after bringing accusations of wrongdoing to the attention of university officials, Mr. Swails and Ms. Brooker were fired and Mr. Brooker was pressed to resign. They said that in December 2005 Mr. Brooker was told by Mr. Roberts and Ms. Cantese to mobilize students on behalf of a candidate in the Republican primary for mayor of Tulsa, Randi Miller. Ms. Miller lost but was later elected a county commissioner. She did not return a call to her office. Mr. Brooker said he opposed the effort as illegal but was ordered to do it, anyway. In May 2006, the suit says, the I.R.S. investigated the university’s role in the campaign and Mr. Brooker gave inaccurate information to take the blame and shield Mr. Roberts and other officials in what Mr. Brooker called a cover-up. He says he was later made the scapegoat, denied $18,000 in pay and forced out.
The suit also says a student working in the Miller campaign, with access to Ms. Cantese’s computer, came across a “substantial documentation of immoral and improper conduct” and gave it to the professors. Mr. Roberts told Larry King that he had asked Ms. Cantese to be his “eyes and ears and from time to time to make notes on things that she heard.” Mr. Roberts described them only as rumors and said: “I laughed. They were so preposterous and untrue.”
Not being a lawyer, I don’t quite understand what I’m about to say here. A student essentially steals a file from Richard Roberts wife’s sister’s computer and turns it over to a professor, who then gives it to the University Board. He’s fired, and sues, using the allegations in the document. Is that admissible evidence? Other charges sound more solid, like a gajillion breaches of their not-for-profit status, political activity, or stiffing the IRS. And that may well be at the center of the suit.
I’m not un-biased here. I would love for every non-profit Religious Right Organization in America to lose their non-profit status if they breath a political breath. Driving through the Focus on the Family campus this summer, all I could think about is how much money was involved. James Dobson has become nothing but a political creature, yet his organization is tax-exempt – and there was some recent ruling that affirmed that status. That is ridiculous! But, for the moment, I’ll settle for Richard and Lindsay Roberts’ hide. Every little bit counts in the fight to force Christianity back where it belongs – into the business of the care of the soul, not the elections in Tulsa Oklahoma…
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