May 27, 2025 • 41 mins
Robert tells the story of Kevin Ontoniel Smith, a Jamaican-Canadian minister who created an apocalyptic Christian sect and slit his follower's throats in a COVID related panic.
Sources;
“Is Your Blood Clean?”: The Paranoid Pastor Who Turned His Church into a Violent Cult | The Walrus
Ontario college mum on cult pastor's PhD - Jamaica Observer
Preacher Kevin O. Smith, parishioners arrested for alleged human sacrifices
‘It was like prison’ | Lead Stories | Jamaica Gleaner
Naive Christians slammed for missing Kevin Smith red flags | News | Jamaica Gleaner
Kevin Smith’s money trail | Lead Stories | Jamaica Gleaner
‘He left a trail of pain and debt’ | Lead Stories | Jamaica Gleaner
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about
bad people who are the people you'll be hearing about
most in your daily life if you spend any amount
of time on social media or listening to the news.
But we're gonna be talking about a fun one today,
not as depressing as the bad people who make up
the rest of your day to day life. I don't know.
(00:26):
They make up my day to day life, and that's
pretty depressing. But not today, because we've got Molly Lambert
as a guest. Molly, welcome on the show. Are you
ready to have your day be worse?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Oh yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh great? A transition to the Tall Boys of ZeVA.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
You are.
Speaker 5 (00:45):
For some reason that's very funny to me.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah yeah. Twelve ounce has just wasn't enough. Molly, what
do you gotta plug today? At the start of the episode,
before we introduce our.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Bastard, I've got a book that came out called Double
Ax and Pop.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
Holy Congratulations, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
It's from commercial type. It's about musical duo acts and
everybody check it out. And then later this year I
have a podcast coming out called Jenna World, which is
about the history of the Peorn industry through kind of
the Jenna Jamison story.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Oh awesome, Yeah, that sounds fascinating. Well, today we're not
talking about Genna Jamison. We're not talking about anyone who
has ever done anything good at all. We are talking
about Kevin Smith. Not that Kevin Smith, not the one
who directed doc, although it is I don't know, we'll
(01:38):
title this the other Kevin Smith or some shit. We're
talking This guy is a Jamaican pastor who led a
charismatic Christian End Time sect in Jamaica and lost his
mind as a result of COVID lockdowns and wound up
trying to have slit dozens of people's throats and moss
during a church service. This is a wild story, and
the fact that he has just named Kevin Smith the
(01:59):
whole time is going to be frustrating. I'm gonna i'll
cop to that right now. If you want to imagine
silent Bob committing the heinous atrocities we're about to discuss,
that's your business, although you should probably also talk to
a therapist if you feel compelled to do that. Mollie,
you ever heard of this guy, I'm gonna guess not.
(02:20):
I had not until I started doing this digging.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
No, I've never heard of him.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Uh huh, Well, welcome to a real fascinating piece of
shit who is also kind of a Canadian bastard too,
So we've got that going for us, like Canadian Jamaican
real monster solidarity here in this week's episodes. And we'll
have all that and more when we come back from
the cold open.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Oh what.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
We're back, Mollie. You ready to get into it? Let's
do it, okay. So our bastard for this week's full
name was Kevin Antonio Smith on T O in I E. L. Right,
that's his name. We could call him Kevin O'smith to
differentiate him from again, silent Bob, but I don't know
(03:10):
how necessary that is. He was born in nineteen eighty two, probably,
although again, this guy is like a cult leader caught.
You never know with these fuckers. That's the first sign
someone's a cult leader, is like. The birth date's a
real open question, so funny probably, though there's some sources
that suggest he might be a little younger than this,
born more in the late eighties. And I've just got
(03:33):
no idea what day or month he came into the world.
I guess it doesn't matter all that much. He was
definitely born in a town called glengof GLn Goffe in
the parish of Saint Catharine. And this is in Jamaica.
It's one of the most prosperous parts of the island.
It's second only to Kingston as an industrial center, and
it's got good access to water and a really good
(03:54):
growing climate. So he comes up in like a fairly
you know, Jamaica is an island with a lot of poverty,
but he comes up in a fairly comfortable part of
the island compared to some other parts. We have very
little information about his early life, aside from the fact
that he would later claim to have been physically abused
by his father, who died when he was very young.
So his mom's going to raise him on her own
(04:15):
for much of his adolescence, which again not a wildly
uncommon cult leader backstory. And this statistically, you know, just
since the fact that she's a single mom might suggest
that he came up in a degree of poverty, but
there's not a lot of evidence either way, right Like,
In fact, it kind of seems the evidence suggests more
that she managed to keep them fairly comfortable I'm not
sure what she did, but they don't seem to have
(04:37):
been like on the edge of poverty or whatever. Right,
he claims to have been baptized at age nine, and
it's unclear which denomination he was from, but some sort
of Protestant sect, right, just based on kind of the
demographics of Jamaica and based on his later religious life,
it was some kind of evangelical Protestant sect that he's
(04:57):
baptized into. We can be pretty pretty sure of that.
Years later, as part of a court case that we
will talk about more in the future, Kevin would claim
to have again been sexually abused as a child by
a male relative, so both physically abused by his dad
and sexually abused by a male relative. We don't know
how old he would have been when this happened, but
he's probably pre adolescent, somewhere around like ten to twelve.
(05:18):
We know that he goes on to attend Jamaica College,
which confusingly is not a college, this is a high school.
I've read enough of the history to tell you I
can't give you a perfect idea of why they called
it Jamaica College, other than that word hasn't always meant
the same thing, right. I think the school is initially
established by like some I believe it's a Catholic member
(05:40):
of the clergy who like leaves a bunch of money behind.
But I forget exactly. But it's one of the best
secondary schools in all of Jamaica. Right, So this is
and it's not just I say it's primarily a secondary school.
I think you can start going there when you're about
ten years old, right, So it doesn't exactly map onto
what we call a secondary school. But this is a
real good school, and it's a public school.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
It's free to attend, and it's kind of got like
a degree of international fame. So being able to get
into Jamaica College suggests that you're like a kid who's
done really well in school or has connections or both.
Now my sources somewhat disagree here, but it seems like
he kind of he doesn't finish his education at Jamaica College.
He goes there. He probably starts when he's around ten,
(06:24):
and he probably leaves when he's around fourteen. The Toronto
Caribbean newspaper claims that this is when his mother moves
the family to Canada in nineteen ninety six, but there's
disagreement on when the family moves to Canada. The Walrus,
which is an award winning Canadian magazine, says they moved
when he was twelve, which would have been probably around
ninety four, although again we don't know his birthday really,
so it's unclear how much time he spent at Jamaica College,
(06:47):
but a report on his social media history by the
Jamaica Gleaner shows a photo of him wearing the school uniform,
so we know that he went there at some point, right,
So sometime between two and four years at this fairly
prestigious academy, and then the family emigrates to Canada, and
the fact that they were able to do so legally
again suggests kind of a degree of financial comfort, because
that's just not like a super cheap or easy thing, right,
(07:10):
And it probably also suggests that like there's a lot
of family support that's usually the case when people are
able to make this move from Jamaica to Canada, that
like members of their family kind of pool to help
make this possible, right, whatever the case, He graduates high
school in Canada and it's here that he starts preaching
for the first time. Right, and this is this is
where we start getting like the foreboding music. You know,
(07:32):
this kid is like one of these teenage preachers. Like
he gets into being an evangelical pastor at a very
early age, which is almost never a good thing, right,
Whenever someone's described as a gifted child preacher, which I've
found references to in the Toronto Caribbean newspaper, it's like
a bad thing, right, like that almost I've never heard
of that ending.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Well, hey, what if he's just got the touch?
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Come on, yeah, he's got the touch, He's got the power.
If you watch I always recommend the documentary Marjoe when
we talk about this, which is about a kid who
was like used by his parents as a preacher from
like age five or six on. It's a really fucked
up documentary, won an Oscar. But there's a lot of
this in the kind of Apostolic community and the Pentecostal community,
(08:20):
right that like this attitude that well, because you're sort
of touched by God to become a preacher, the younger
you can bring someone in and get them preaching. Number one,
it helps establish their career. You can be like I've
been doing this since I was sixteen or seventeen or
even younger, right, But it also it's kind of like
a it's a marketing tool, right that you've got. We've
(08:40):
got a child preacher, you know, God speaking of this
little young man, and you know you need to hear
what he's got to say. That's kind of a big
deal in the community. We're not entirely certain where he
comes up within sort of the evangelical community in Toronto.
I've heard references to the Apostolic community in Toronto, Caribbean,
(09:01):
although the Walrusk claims he joins the Exodus Deliverance Temple
in Mississaugua at age seventeen, and these are slightly in conflict,
although he could have done both, because that's just sort
of the way this community works. If that's the case.
The Exodus Deliverance Temple is founded in nineteen ninety nine,
which meant he would have joined the year it was founded.
(09:24):
And I kind of doubt that this is the case,
just because I looked at their website and they say
that when the church was founded, it was founded with
only a few family members in a quaint and old
white village hall. And he's not a member of the
family that founded this church. So I think it's more
likely that he comes out of the Apostolic community in Toronto.
But the Walrisks may have done, you know, have access
(09:45):
to information. I don't. I don't know if I'm getting
into the weeds too much on this sort of thing.
But if he gets started in the Apostolic Faith church
in Toronto, that is kind of a separate thing. And
the Apostolic Faith movement is a strict fundamentalist Pinecot sect
that originates actually in Los Angeles, right It gets its
start kind of in a Hollywood at the end of
(10:07):
the like right at the start of the nineteen hundreds
into the eighteen hundreds, start of the nineteen hundreds. And
this is there's like a wave of different evangelical Christian
revivals that sweep and they often do start in the
West Coast for all of its sort of reputation is
like a progressive haven. This is a thing that occurs
at the start of the nineteen hundreds. It occurs like
in the mid century, it occurs after the Hippie movement, right,
(10:30):
Like it's it's this constant place where you get these
sort of a static evangelical movements that like rise up
and they often will kind of sweep north in then
east from Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
OK, have you ever considered getting into it?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
I mean I kind of was as a kid, right
a little bit. I guess like I was sort of
I came out of the sect of the watch mc
call it the fake Catholic to the watch McCall, yeah,
what the fuck are we? What do we call this?
Everyone's shouting. Who knows what I mean by fake Catholics.
They're now the part of the African Anglican Church. But
(11:09):
we started out as this like kind of sect that
was sort of like Catholicism light. And then my church
left because they made a gay guy in California a
minister and that was or a bishop, and that was
not cool with a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I thought you were just like, they made a gay
guy and so the.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
No, no, no no, they let a gay guy be
a bishop and that was a real problem for the
guy who ran my church. So we had like news
cameras and shit at our church in Plano. It was
all deal. But this is a little bit of like
a different thing. It's called the Azusa Street Revival that
gives a start to the Apostolic faith movement that is
(11:45):
going to wind up probably being the church that Kevin Smith,
the other one gets involved in, was started by a
lady called Florence Crawford, and it's part of this wave
of evangelical revivals that sweeps la from nineteen oh sixty
nights fifteen, and it's characterized, like all Pentecostal revivals, by
these acts of like a parent mass mania. So you'll
(12:06):
get these groups of people who attend a preaching session
and they'll start babbling in tongues together and like having
what look like seizures where they're like twitching around on
the ground and shouting in fake languages. And this kind
of mania that spreads contagiously is a big part of
the movement, right. And so a mission comes out of
this on Azuza Street, which is why it's called the
(12:28):
Azuza Street Revival, and they start a newspaper called The
Apostolic Faith that begins circulating, and this lady Crawford, Florence Crawford,
is a part of it.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Now.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
The guy who'd kind of founded the movement was named
William Seymour, and he makes Crawford like the director of
state level efforts to bring more churches into the fold,
and they wind up having a power struggle, right because
Crawford is kind of looking to steer the ministry in
her own direction, and this leads to like a civil
war within the movement, and she winds up splitting and
(12:58):
forming the Apostolic Faith Church and none other than Portland, Oregon.
Classic story. If you get kicked out of LA, move
up to Portland. You know, many such cases, including several
people on this podcast.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, we get rent out of town, you come up
here to start your cult. Of course, whom's among us?
Whom's to among us?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Yeah, when your cult's too crazy for LA.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Right, right, time to go to Portland.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Time to Portland.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful in its own way. So shit
spreads from there. Once you're in Portland, you're not all
that far from Canada, and pretty soon the AFC is
affiliating with Like I mean, I think there's like twenty
four hundred affiliated churches around the world today, But they
move up to Canada pretty quickly, and they wind up
setting up shop in Toronto in like nineteen forty three,
(13:48):
which is when a Canadian named Stanley Hancock founds an
Apostolic Faith newsletter in the city. Here's how the organization
he established, which Kevin is probably winds up joining, describes
its founding. After reading an Apostolic Faith paper. Stanley Hancock
received his baptism and was banned from church. In nineteen
forty three, he and others started the first Apostolic Faith
(14:08):
church in Canada. Now there are eleven and the Apostolic
Faith Church. It falls under this whiter umbrella of charismatic Christianity, right,
which is a chunk of Protestantism, who believes in brief
Number one, the Holy Spirit can and does directly enter
people to change them and thus change the world. And
(14:29):
number two, through this method, by sending the Holy Spirit
into people, God bestows gifts upon them like prophecy and healing.
He can like spontaneously heal your injuries by sending the
Holy Spirit into you. And number three, and this is
the most important part of charismatic Christianity. It's a lot
of fun to writhe around on the ground and pretend
to speak in a fake language. People love it.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
You could just take acid, you know, at a py
trance festival or whatever to get the same experience. But
they didn't have sy trance back then. We just didn't
have the technology, nor did they have acid. Really, I
don't know if my side trans jokes are gonna land
with anyone less than thirty seven years old. Kids, I'll
probably listen to a hundred gets while you take your drugs.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Now, no trans is.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Oh, is it back? Did it come back? Thank God
a Betha was really suffering. It'll be fine, Yeah, yeah, excellent.
So Pentecostals are again part of this. And when I
talk about the Pentecostal Church, like, these guys are part
of the charismatic movement, but there's divisions within Charismatic Christianity
based on like do you believe speaking in tongues is
(15:35):
a necessary precursor to being baptized? Do you have to
prove the Holy Spirit has entered you right or not?
So it's kind of like a whiskey bourbon sort of deal.
Pentecostals are all part of the Charismatic movement, but the
Charismatic movement isn't just Pentecostals right now. One thing all
these churches have in common is that they're always sort
of scouting for young men with what the rest of
(15:58):
us might call strong cult leaders vibes. You know, we
didn't have TikTok or like streaming back then, so as
someone with those vibes couldn't just start a media career
like they had, they pretty much like getting involved in
a church or like Dianetics was basically their best option,
you know, in the mid century. And Kevin though, comes
(16:19):
up in this period right before the Internet's gonna really
take off, and he gets scouted at around age seventeen
by this community. On the brief autobiography for one of
his now scrubb social media accounts, he claims at the
age of seventeen he was sent to thirty three countries
within two years as a profit to the Nations. And
this is probably true that like once they figure out
(16:40):
this kid's got the gift of gab, and you can
kind of set him up in front of any church
you want, and he'll keep them entertained and giving money,
donating money for a couple of hours. You fly him
all around, right, you put him up, he's like crashing
in churches and whatnot around the world. But you fly
him around and he's both building his own kind of platform,
but he's also raising money for the wider organization and
(17:03):
for each of these individual churches, and this is a
whole industry, right. This is like the charismatic pastor industrial
complex pretty much, right, which is what like Marjo documents
and why I recommend watching that documentary. So he's good
at preaching to crowds and gathering followers, and it would
have been a cinch for him to raise money for
mission trips and even convince the leaders of his church
(17:24):
to pay for him to go and preach the gospel.
He claims that he was ordained at age eighteen by
an organization called the National Evangelists for Canada, and I
can't find any evidence that this group exists. People lie
about this all the time. But also the reporting for
this comes from a Jamaican news site, and it's based
on claims made by Kevin and based on just the
(17:44):
differences in dialects spoken. It's possible that this is a
real organization. They just gave kind of a name based
on sort of the differences in dialects that made sense
to them. But that doesn't directly correspond with what the
organization is called in Canada. Right, there's some organizations with
similar names. I'm not sure. I don't doubt that he
was ordained in some Pentecostal organization or another. It's not
(18:08):
like being a priest in the Catholic Church, where you
have to go through school. Somebody just decides to ordain you.
When you're ordained and you get maybe a piece of
paper or whatever, it's very easy. It's like my experience
with becoming a judge. There you go, yeah, there you go.
His denomination again, there's no seminary degree required, no qualifications.
The Walris notes that Kevin himself claims, and I'm talking
(18:31):
about a new site when I say that, claims that
Kevin says that ministers are qualified as ministers when they
feel the call of God on their life, and that's
pretty consistent in this community. For his part, Kevin would
claim that he was around eighteen or nineteen when his
grandfather first saw some of the early preaching he'd done
and during a phone call, informed Kevin that he was
(18:52):
a prophet. And I'm gonna play you with video of
his excellency, doctor Kevin Osmith discussing this conversation with his
grand father. Because it's about time you get an idea
of how this guy sounds and talks.
Speaker 6 (19:05):
I'm talking about I'm eighteen nineteen in terming the grandpa
And he said, but you are a prophet. I said, Grandpa,
how do you know I'm a prophet?
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Who told you?
Speaker 6 (19:14):
Ah, grandson? I said, Grandpa, and not coming after phone
until you explain to me how you know I'm a prophet.
He said, you're preaching your tapes I have and I
listened to them. I know what a prophet is.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
And he said, you are an annanted man of God,
my grandfather. Who I thought, there mother, He said, lod
I have that sin, but God opens my understanding to
know who come out of my generations.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
Your mona is to give your handless, and you are.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Pont to get profet, and you shall go to it.
He set no.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Level of which.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Ralph shall ever stop.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
What a fun guy, all right, just making some points?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, make it some points. No level of witchcraft will
stop you. This is something I tell our podcasters very regularly.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
He looks a little more like the other Kevin Smith
than I expected.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, finally I use for Ai cut him into all
the Jay and Silent Bob movies.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Yeah, he looks a little like Silent Bob. Like I'm surprised.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah, not very silent, though distinctly loud, Bob speaking of
things that are distinctly loud.
Speaker 7 (20:29):
But like sometimes that's super true because the volume of
some of the auto ads are crazy loud for no
reason and we have no control over it.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah. Well, anyway, here's some ads and we're back.
Speaker 5 (20:48):
So back again.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, we're back again. Let's keep talking about the other
Kevin Smith. Legally, I have to really emphasize it's the
other one. Now, that right up, and the Toronto Caribbean
Newspaper continues. He boasts of the fact that he was
the youngest Jamaican born bishop in Jamaica's church history. Kevin
completed a Bachelor of Theology degree, a doctorate degree from
(21:11):
Vision International University in Ramona, California, and a Doctor of
Ministry from Mount Olive Bible Institute and Seminary in Toronto, Canada.
He was a licensed counselor and certified psychotherapist. And that
all sounds very impressive. I can verify some of this,
but the stuff I can verify doesn't matter. I have
no idea if he was the youngest Jamaican more born
(21:32):
bishop in Jamaica's church history, because again, this is not
like the Catholic Church, where like a bishop is a
real position. You can just call yourself a bishop, or
you can convince a friend to call you a bishop,
and then you're a bishop, right, Like, it's not difficult,
That is so true.
Speaker 7 (21:50):
Bishop Molly, m m yeah, come on, Bishop Sophie, Yes,
Bishop Molly, Bishop Sophie.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
As Look, the pope is a Robert. I think that
means I get splash over pope power. I'm making some
fucking secret cardinals.
Speaker 5 (22:03):
Just a sprinkle of poping.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I watched, I watched fucking conclave. I know that I
have the power to make secret cardinals that can just
pop out at any time. You might be a cardinal
listening right now. You have no way of knowing until
you like walk into a Catholic church and demand their
secret hidden gold, which I assume every Catholic church has
not an expert on the religion that I'm pope of.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
So I'm gonna find out where the gold is.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah, go find out. Get in there. Now. These institutes
that he claims to have fancy degrees from are like
real but also not right, because this is like whenever
you hear a cult leader be like, I'm a doctorate
in this. I'm a therapist in this. It's always some
kind of fake and there's a whole industry in creating
fake churches for like evangelical ministers to claim that they've
(22:53):
got fancy and impressive degrees. Reporters from Jamaica Observer called
Vision University to see if Kevin and had received a
bachelor and a doctorate there and quote. We were told
that such information could only be provided in response to
a written request, and only students are allowed to make
that request. Now these guys had led. Yeah, they can't
even verify that, or they won't. But the news reaches
(23:17):
out to these guys after he cuts a bunch of
people's throats in a church service, right, So Vision International
doesn't want to claim him. So I decided to just
like look into the school to see, like is this
even a real school? Like is there a chance anyone
has ever earned a real degree from Vision International University? And,
at the risk of getting sued, I think the answer
(23:37):
is no. If you go to their website, they bragg
that you can quote earn an affordable Christian ministry or
business degree on your time, and their motto is taking
the whole world to the whole world. Now, I'll let
Sophie scroll through the website while we discussed this fine
institution in more detail so you could get a look
at Yeah, save time and money on your college degree.
(23:58):
That always is the first a real college. Yeah, they've
got like a lot of good stock photos. There's like
a young black lady punching the sky defiantly with her
diploma and the claim that Vision International holds prestigious international
accreditation from ASIC. Right now, you're wondering what that is, right,
prestigious international accredit. That must mean it's a real school. Right.
(24:21):
It says it's prestigious, So that's got to be legitimately accredited, right. Well,
I looked into it because I thought that was odd.
People who are accredited from legitimate organizations never have to
tell you that the accrediting organization is legitimate. That's the
first sign that someone's not part of a legitimate accrediting organization.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
HARVARDOK, as a graduate of Podcast University, I don't know
what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Great movie than you see you.
Speaker 5 (24:50):
I really enjoy the stock photo of this guy.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah, the guy holding two degrees aren't two respected degrees
in just.
Speaker 5 (24:56):
Two years and it looks like he's like floating on
a cloud.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
If you go to like Harvard's website, Harvard number one
will not give you two degrees in two years, but
doesn't have to tell you the degrees respected because it's
a real school. And even like you go to UTD,
right where I briefly went before dropping out, they never
had to brag on their website that they were accredited
from a real organization because you just know it's a
(25:21):
real school. So I googled Vision International University fake and
the second search result was the Wikipedia page for list
of unaccredited institutions of higher Learning, which seemed odd because
they ensured us that they were accredited by someone real. Now,
the first result when I looked into that was someone
on the forum for degree info dot com back in
(25:41):
two thousand and two asking is this a good school
or a fraud? And someone pointed out that like, well,
they offer a master's in creation science, which means they
fall under a religious exemption in California, which is not
accreditation right. It means California can't stop them from giving
out religious degrees, but they're not approved by the state
as like a real college, you just can't stop someone
(26:02):
from giving out degrees with titles like Master of Theology
or Doctor of Ministry. But they're not allowed to give
out secular degrees like an MS a Master of Science.
And they claim to right. And one reason I'm interested
in this is because there's an attempt within sort of
this chunk of the evangelical movement. One reason this is
interesting is that there's an attempt within this chunk of
(26:22):
the evangelical movement to create people who can get jobs
as science teachers, right because they have MS degrees and
then teach in Christian secondary schools about stuff like creationism. Right.
So that's what Vision International is doing. But they're not
accredited to give out an MS in the state of California.
So then I looked into that ASIK accreditation, right, which
(26:44):
is why they're how they claim to be a legitimate
university ASIC. ASIK stands for the Accreditation Service for International Colleges.
And this is a real organization. It's a private educational
agency in the United Kingdom that is literally based out
of a semi detached duplex residential property and stocked it
on teas which doubles is the residential address for its creators.
(27:07):
So great, very legitimate organization run out of the home
of the people who run it, just like this podcast
and ASEX whole business is accrediting private UK colleges for
visa purposes, and they are recognized by the UK government
and this capacity, but they've been repeatedly criticized for being
what's called a run around accreditor. And another poster from
(27:30):
a different threat and Degree Info explains the key difference
is that accreditation in the UK appears vastly different from
accreditation in the US. If your UK university has a
royal charter, then that's all that really needs to operate.
Accreditation is wholly voluntary and doesn't confer degree granting authority
because that's not how degree granting authority is conferred in
the UK. The issue with A six seems to be
(27:51):
that some of the schools accredited by them lack institutional
accreditation or authority to award degrees in their respective country.
So Vision International is accredited through ASIK, but ASIK is
not approved in the UK to accredit a school, it
means a different thing than it does in the US.
They have no ability to grant degrees in the US,
and they also don't really have the ability to grant
(28:12):
degrees that are recognized by the UK. It just means
that if you go here, you can get an educational
visa in the UK. They're kind of playing with the
fact that the same word means different things in two countries.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
I fell down this wormhole for way too long trying
to figure out how this fake college for Christian scam
artist works. And so now you're all going to learn
about it.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Yeah, I'm gonna enroll.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yeah, get your degree for sure. Yes, of course, get
your Master of science.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
I'm gonna get two degrees.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
This is double Fistingham.
Speaker 5 (28:44):
Is this very classic you? You're like, I suffered, you
must suffer. That's you. That's very classic you.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah, just doing with degrees what punk kids in the
early two thousands did with tall boys.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
What you're doing with ZVS now.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
What I'm doing with ZV right now. Yeah. So the
poster then goes on to discuss Warnborough College in Ireland,
which is not a real college. It's not a recognized
institute of learning in Ireland but pretends to be because
it has an ASIK accreditation. The US Department of Education
does not recognize ASIK accreditation, although they might in the future,
given where we're headed.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
Every time you say ask I.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Think of shoes, is that a shoebrand, Sophie, it certainly is. Yeah,
that's a more legitimate company than the ASIK of the UK.
Speaker 7 (29:29):
They're like good shoes, like good quality, like for your
feet and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Well, this is not a good quality accreditation organization. In
two thousand and nine, extensive reporting showed that there's some
very shady details about how ASIK got recognized in the UK.
A journalist named Andrew Norfolk wrote an article on the
matter with the title man given job of closing bogus
colleges was sacked by university and the man who's the
founder of ASIK is Maurice Dimmock, who, along with his wife,
(29:56):
lives in the detached duplex that doubles his A six headquarters.
He had been director of international operations for a real school,
Northumbria University, until two thousand and three, when he was
fired for reasons neither he or the school will ever discuss,
which I'm sure means good things always not shady. When
your school won't even tell anyone why they fired you,
(30:16):
I'm sure no crimes were committed.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Somehow, the UK Home Office ignored numerous concerns and complaints
about this guy and gave his company the job of
determining which private colleges were real for visa purposes, and
ASIKA credited one hundred and eighty schools in its first
two years, The Times reports. Among them is a Manchester
college that The Times exposed last month as the front
for an immigration scam, which helped one thousand fake students
(30:39):
enter or stay in Britain. Another in London issued more
than twenty five hundred bogus postgraduate diplomas in two months
last year, earning its owners, who have fled the country
and estimated five million pounds. So great organization, very real school.
That's what we can say is that Kevin Smith gets
his doctorate from an entirely real university. Again, it's important
(31:00):
to discuss this, even though we're getting a little bit
off topic from the other Kevin Smith, because every one
of these abusive Christian cult leaders you come across today
has some kind of PhD or other fancy sounding degree
from one of these fake schools. There's a whole ton
of them. One of the claims I found is that
Vision International and around two this and two was show
claiming to have four thousand campuses in more than one
(31:22):
hundred countries, and to the best of my knowledge, Vision
has thirty full in part time employees, which it's hard
to keep four thousand campuses operative on thirty employees. And
it kind of seems like they're just counting everyone who
registered online as a campus, like you're a campus for
Vision International University. If you log on with your laptop,
(31:43):
whatever coffee shop you're in as a campus. I love that.
I need to start a fake college, like Sophie, we
got to get in on this fucking racket.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
We're not doing that. We're not.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
There's a lot of money.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
And I go in ful tate. I'm sorry, Mollie.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Do you like the sound of Professor Lambert? You can
be given outates in like forty five minutes, you.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
Know, sorry, that's Bishop, doctor Lambert.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Come on, I'm a bishop.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Doctor, Bishop Lambert. Yeah, you could give out what kind
of degree would you want to hand out to people?
What would you feel confident giving like in terms of doctorates?
Speaker 3 (32:16):
I mean whatever they'll give me money for, right, That's
how we're going to do this scam.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, yeah, I mean college scam college. I'd like to
make surgeons like that feels that feels satisfying to know
I'd created a lot of surgeons are who are going
out there cutting into people. You know, as long as
I get to a non extradition country very quickly after
handing out four thousand or so diplomas is crib. So
I should also note that initially, Vision University was an
(32:43):
offshoot of a Pentecostal school in Tasmania founded by an
Australian pastor named kin Chant. And I just mentioned that
because I found a photo of him that I have
to show you guys.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
It's really kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Hey, I can that mustache. It's beautiful, all right, he
looks cool. He does look cool. That's a sweet ass mustache.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
And Chant is a great name.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Can Chant too solid name? I'm happy with him.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
I mean Chant, it's right in the name.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah right, Yeah, it's perfect name for an evangelical pastor,
especially with a soup strainer like that. The acoustics had
to be great, you know, it would act like having
like baffling panels on your ceiling. I trust him, Yeah,
he seems legitimate. So I said we'd get back to
Kevin Smith the bad one, and I meant it, but
I also kept running across funny stuff about this school
(33:32):
that I didn't know where to stop. According to the
nineteen ninety four edition of Name It and Frame It
by Stephen Levkoff, which is a book about fake colleges,
Vision Quote also offers a special additional ten percent tuition
reduction for students to enroll within the next thirty days,
which is a real sign that someone's got an actual
college going. Real colleges give you bonuses like that, right,
(33:55):
sat up in thirty days and get ten percent off. Okay,
Now back to Kevin for realsies. In addition to his
definitely fake degree, he claimed to attend Tyndale University, which
is a real and respected private Evangelical Christian university. He
also claims to have a Doctorate of Ministry from Mount
Olive Bible Institute in Toronto, which seems to be about
(34:16):
as real as Vision but has a very similar name
to an actual college that's in the United States, which
I think is the point and laying out Kevin's educational history.
The Walras, who is again a Canadian news site, noted
while he has referred to himself as a registered clinical
counselor and sought after holistic psychotherapist. He has never been
registered with a College of Registered Psychotherapists in Ontario, so
(34:39):
he's a Christian psychotherapist, which is different from being a
psychotherapist in the way that any medical establishment recognizes. Now
while he's getting all these fake degrees and maybe one
real degree in addition to several other questionable certifications, Smith
grew up and seems to have made his living operating
a ministry in Toronto and traveling around the world to
give speeches at different churches. Sometime around the turn of
(35:02):
the millennium, he found his own ministry, which he calls
CHOS Deliverance International, and the initials Chaos is just the
initials of his name. On August twenty second, two thousand
and six, he returns from one of his overseas preaching
trips to the UK. The Walrus writes quote Smith was
jet lagged and lonely, craving to spend time with someone
besides his brother. I wanted, you know, emotional company. Smith
(35:23):
would later recall as per court documents, so he perused
online ads for escorts and reached out to a man
for his services Matt, whose real name is under a
court ordered publication ban, arrived at Smith's home around ten
thirty one evening. I would need him to be as
inconspicuous as possible because I lived straight and I'm a Christian.
Smith would recall there was a conflict happening inside of
me in essence to what I was going to do
(35:43):
or not do. Now what he did, according to Matt's allegations,
is sexually assault Matt, who goes to the police. The
next day, Smith is arrested and charged. He would later
claim that Canadian police tried to use his Jamaican ancestry
in the local stigma against homosexuality in Jamaica again Saint him,
and he claims he told them gays are just people
who need redirection, which does do a great job of
(36:06):
making me more sympathetic to his case. But he's been
accused basically of calling this guy in and then sexually
assaulting him. Right now, the case these allegations against him
wind through the Canadian court system for the next several
months and the next year. In early two thousand and seven,
he gets married and possibly as a way to kind
of distract from the fact that this is really bad
(36:27):
pr to his ministry. He's either eighteen or twenty five
when he gets married. I found different things on different
news sites. It kind of depends on whether or not
he was actually born in nineteen eighty two or not.
Whatever the case, this marriage does not seem to have
really been like it certainly doesn't last. There's debate as
to whether or not it was legitimate. They very quickly split.
(36:49):
In the Walrus Rites, Smith's x's wife described him as
verbally abusive in someone who led about his private life.
He is not living an honest life, she would later recall.
According to court records and the Toronto Caribbeans Report ADS,
there have been allegations that his wife caught him having
sexual relations with men. She reported to senior ministers in
the church organizations, but they denied it and there were
no reprimand or consequences. So, you know, not a story
(37:12):
we've ever heard before anywhere else. Wow, powerful up and
coming guy gets caught violating the tenets of his religion
for personal reasons and also violating a sex worker, and
it all gets smoothed over because hey, you know, he's
he brings in money. Probably shouldn't segue to ads with that,
but they also bring in money.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
Wow, use ads. Wow, we're back.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
So I know the timeline is kind of screwy here.
When he gets married, how old he is? You know,
this is a guy who gives multiple versions of different
stories and different news reports. I see give different things.
I don't actually know what's subjectively the truth. I haven't
seen a birth certificate here. But you know, basically one
of two things happens. Either he marries this lady to
try to distract from the scandal, or they had been
(38:06):
they'd get married and stay that way for years, but
she had seen signs that he was kind of living
a lie and eventually tries to report them. In either case,
the two of them split up and he goes on
trial later in two thousand and seven for sexual assault.
And this trial we can confirm absolutely happened, right. There's
plenty of court records in Canada over it. During the trial,
(38:28):
Smith identifies himself as an international minister of religion who
had preached in three hundred different cities. He says, we
do crusades all around the world in churches and open
fields and stadiums and things to that magnitude to preach
the gospel Smith's lawyer denied that anything non consensual had happened,
and under oath he claimed that Matt had tried to
extort him for money during a private religious counseling session.
(38:51):
Quote the prosecutor in her closing argument shredded Smith's testimony.
His life in his platform is a facade. She said.
Mister Smith's reputation and his public persona are his primary concern,
and he will go to any extent to preserve that facade.
In the end, this judge found Smith guilty of sexual assault,
sentencing him to six months in jail, followed by two
months of probation. Mister Smith, it seems to be the
(39:12):
judge said to quote, a parable might be viewed as
a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Yeah, and she's got it right here. She has definitely
like locked this guy's number down. Unfortunately, she's going to
be the last person to clock him for a while.
And he is going to basically as soon as he
splits up with his wife, flee the country, right, So
he leaves Canada for Jamaica. He breaches the terms of
his probation. He's supposed to attend counseling, and he's like no,
(39:40):
I'm just going to go back to Jamaica and start
a church there, and he's going to remain in Jamaica
for the next six years where he starts a local
church and he burrows into the Pentecostal community and he
starts accruing clout followers and eventually wealth. So that's where
we are at the end of part one, and this
is going to lead us to what I would describe
as a shock bloody conclusion to come in part two
(40:02):
where this one ends is pretty fucking intense. But Molly,
that's what we got for the start of this episode.
How you feeling as we sort of close out part one?
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Uh, I truly don't know where this is going.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
So a lot of people get in their throat slit.
Oh no, yeah, yeah, I got weird number woild would
be anything higher than one.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
Okay, yeah, I guess let's find out.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Yeah, I guess, let's find out. And that's the episode.
Speaker 5 (40:32):
We should plug. Jake Anerhan's new project.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Oh yeah, Jake's got a new podcast, Away Days. Check
it out on wherever our podcasts exist.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
They Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
(41:03):
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash
at Behind the Bastards
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about
bad people who are the people you'll be hearing about
most in your daily life if you spend any amount
of time on social media or listening to the news.
But we're gonna be talking about a fun one today,
not as depressing as the bad people who make up
the rest of your day to day life. I don't know.
(00:26):
They make up my day to day life, and that's
pretty depressing. But not today, because we've got Molly Lambert
as a guest. Molly, welcome on the show. Are you
ready to have your day be worse?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Oh yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh great? A transition to the Tall Boys of ZeVA.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
You are.
Speaker 5 (00:45):
For some reason that's very funny to me.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah yeah. Twelve ounce has just wasn't enough. Molly, what
do you gotta plug today? At the start of the episode,
before we introduce our.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Bastard, I've got a book that came out called Double
Ax and Pop.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
Holy Congratulations, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
It's from commercial type. It's about musical duo acts and
everybody check it out. And then later this year I
have a podcast coming out called Jenna World, which is
about the history of the Peorn industry through kind of
the Jenna Jamison story.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Oh awesome, Yeah, that sounds fascinating. Well, today we're not
talking about Genna Jamison. We're not talking about anyone who
has ever done anything good at all. We are talking
about Kevin Smith. Not that Kevin Smith, not the one
who directed doc, although it is I don't know, we'll
(01:38):
title this the other Kevin Smith or some shit. We're
talking This guy is a Jamaican pastor who led a
charismatic Christian End Time sect in Jamaica and lost his
mind as a result of COVID lockdowns and wound up
trying to have slit dozens of people's throats and moss
during a church service. This is a wild story, and
the fact that he has just named Kevin Smith the
(01:59):
whole time is going to be frustrating. I'm gonna i'll
cop to that right now. If you want to imagine
silent Bob committing the heinous atrocities we're about to discuss,
that's your business, although you should probably also talk to
a therapist if you feel compelled to do that. Mollie,
you ever heard of this guy, I'm gonna guess not.
(02:20):
I had not until I started doing this digging.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
No, I've never heard of him.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Uh huh, Well, welcome to a real fascinating piece of
shit who is also kind of a Canadian bastard too,
So we've got that going for us, like Canadian Jamaican
real monster solidarity here in this week's episodes. And we'll
have all that and more when we come back from
the cold open.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Oh what.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
We're back, Mollie. You ready to get into it? Let's
do it, okay. So our bastard for this week's full
name was Kevin Antonio Smith on T O in I E. L. Right,
that's his name. We could call him Kevin O'smith to
differentiate him from again, silent Bob, but I don't know
(03:10):
how necessary that is. He was born in nineteen eighty two, probably,
although again, this guy is like a cult leader caught.
You never know with these fuckers. That's the first sign
someone's a cult leader, is like. The birth date's a
real open question, so funny probably, though there's some sources
that suggest he might be a little younger than this,
born more in the late eighties. And I've just got
(03:33):
no idea what day or month he came into the world.
I guess it doesn't matter all that much. He was
definitely born in a town called glengof GLn Goffe in
the parish of Saint Catharine. And this is in Jamaica.
It's one of the most prosperous parts of the island.
It's second only to Kingston as an industrial center, and
it's got good access to water and a really good
(03:54):
growing climate. So he comes up in like a fairly
you know, Jamaica is an island with a lot of poverty,
but he comes up in a fairly comfortable part of
the island compared to some other parts. We have very
little information about his early life, aside from the fact
that he would later claim to have been physically abused
by his father, who died when he was very young.
So his mom's going to raise him on her own
(04:15):
for much of his adolescence, which again not a wildly
uncommon cult leader backstory. And this statistically, you know, just
since the fact that she's a single mom might suggest
that he came up in a degree of poverty, but
there's not a lot of evidence either way, right Like,
In fact, it kind of seems the evidence suggests more
that she managed to keep them fairly comfortable I'm not
sure what she did, but they don't seem to have
(04:37):
been like on the edge of poverty or whatever. Right,
he claims to have been baptized at age nine, and
it's unclear which denomination he was from, but some sort
of Protestant sect, right, just based on kind of the
demographics of Jamaica and based on his later religious life,
it was some kind of evangelical Protestant sect that he's
(04:57):
baptized into. We can be pretty pretty sure of that.
Years later, as part of a court case that we
will talk about more in the future, Kevin would claim
to have again been sexually abused as a child by
a male relative, so both physically abused by his dad
and sexually abused by a male relative. We don't know
how old he would have been when this happened, but
he's probably pre adolescent, somewhere around like ten to twelve.
(05:18):
We know that he goes on to attend Jamaica College,
which confusingly is not a college, this is a high school.
I've read enough of the history to tell you I
can't give you a perfect idea of why they called
it Jamaica College, other than that word hasn't always meant
the same thing, right. I think the school is initially
established by like some I believe it's a Catholic member
(05:40):
of the clergy who like leaves a bunch of money behind.
But I forget exactly. But it's one of the best
secondary schools in all of Jamaica. Right, So this is
and it's not just I say it's primarily a secondary school.
I think you can start going there when you're about
ten years old, right, So it doesn't exactly map onto
what we call a secondary school. But this is a
real good school, and it's a public school.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
It's free to attend, and it's kind of got like
a degree of international fame. So being able to get
into Jamaica College suggests that you're like a kid who's
done really well in school or has connections or both.
Now my sources somewhat disagree here, but it seems like
he kind of he doesn't finish his education at Jamaica College.
He goes there. He probably starts when he's around ten,
(06:24):
and he probably leaves when he's around fourteen. The Toronto
Caribbean newspaper claims that this is when his mother moves
the family to Canada in nineteen ninety six, but there's
disagreement on when the family moves to Canada. The Walrus,
which is an award winning Canadian magazine, says they moved
when he was twelve, which would have been probably around
ninety four, although again we don't know his birthday really,
so it's unclear how much time he spent at Jamaica College,
(06:47):
but a report on his social media history by the
Jamaica Gleaner shows a photo of him wearing the school uniform,
so we know that he went there at some point, right,
So sometime between two and four years at this fairly
prestigious academy, and then the family emigrates to Canada, and
the fact that they were able to do so legally
again suggests kind of a degree of financial comfort, because
that's just not like a super cheap or easy thing, right,
(07:10):
And it probably also suggests that like there's a lot
of family support that's usually the case when people are
able to make this move from Jamaica to Canada, that
like members of their family kind of pool to help
make this possible, right, whatever the case, He graduates high
school in Canada and it's here that he starts preaching
for the first time. Right, and this is this is
where we start getting like the foreboding music. You know,
(07:32):
this kid is like one of these teenage preachers. Like
he gets into being an evangelical pastor at a very
early age, which is almost never a good thing, right,
Whenever someone's described as a gifted child preacher, which I've
found references to in the Toronto Caribbean newspaper, it's like
a bad thing, right, like that almost I've never heard
of that ending.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Well, hey, what if he's just got the touch?
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Come on, yeah, he's got the touch, He's got the power.
If you watch I always recommend the documentary Marjoe when
we talk about this, which is about a kid who
was like used by his parents as a preacher from
like age five or six on. It's a really fucked
up documentary, won an Oscar. But there's a lot of
this in the kind of Apostolic community and the Pentecostal community,
(08:20):
right that like this attitude that well, because you're sort
of touched by God to become a preacher, the younger
you can bring someone in and get them preaching. Number one,
it helps establish their career. You can be like I've
been doing this since I was sixteen or seventeen or
even younger, right, But it also it's kind of like
a it's a marketing tool, right that you've got. We've
(08:40):
got a child preacher, you know, God speaking of this
little young man, and you know you need to hear
what he's got to say. That's kind of a big
deal in the community. We're not entirely certain where he
comes up within sort of the evangelical community in Toronto.
I've heard references to the Apostolic community in Toronto, Caribbean,
(09:01):
although the Walrusk claims he joins the Exodus Deliverance Temple
in Mississaugua at age seventeen, and these are slightly in conflict,
although he could have done both, because that's just sort
of the way this community works. If that's the case.
The Exodus Deliverance Temple is founded in nineteen ninety nine,
which meant he would have joined the year it was founded.
(09:24):
And I kind of doubt that this is the case,
just because I looked at their website and they say
that when the church was founded, it was founded with
only a few family members in a quaint and old
white village hall. And he's not a member of the
family that founded this church. So I think it's more
likely that he comes out of the Apostolic community in Toronto.
But the Walrisks may have done, you know, have access
(09:45):
to information. I don't. I don't know if I'm getting
into the weeds too much on this sort of thing.
But if he gets started in the Apostolic Faith church
in Toronto, that is kind of a separate thing. And
the Apostolic Faith movement is a strict fundamentalist Pinecot sect
that originates actually in Los Angeles, right It gets its
start kind of in a Hollywood at the end of
(10:07):
the like right at the start of the nineteen hundreds
into the eighteen hundreds, start of the nineteen hundreds. And
this is there's like a wave of different evangelical Christian
revivals that sweep and they often do start in the
West Coast for all of its sort of reputation is
like a progressive haven. This is a thing that occurs
at the start of the nineteen hundreds. It occurs like
in the mid century, it occurs after the Hippie movement, right,
(10:30):
Like it's it's this constant place where you get these
sort of a static evangelical movements that like rise up
and they often will kind of sweep north in then
east from Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
OK, have you ever considered getting into it?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
I mean I kind of was as a kid, right
a little bit. I guess like I was sort of
I came out of the sect of the watch mc
call it the fake Catholic to the watch McCall, yeah,
what the fuck are we? What do we call this?
Everyone's shouting. Who knows what I mean by fake Catholics.
They're now the part of the African Anglican Church. But
(11:09):
we started out as this like kind of sect that
was sort of like Catholicism light. And then my church
left because they made a gay guy in California a
minister and that was or a bishop, and that was
not cool with a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I thought you were just like, they made a gay
guy and so the.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
No, no, no no, they let a gay guy be
a bishop and that was a real problem for the
guy who ran my church. So we had like news
cameras and shit at our church in Plano. It was
all deal. But this is a little bit of like
a different thing. It's called the Azusa Street Revival that
gives a start to the Apostolic faith movement that is
(11:45):
going to wind up probably being the church that Kevin Smith,
the other one gets involved in, was started by a
lady called Florence Crawford, and it's part of this wave
of evangelical revivals that sweeps la from nineteen oh sixty
nights fifteen, and it's characterized, like all Pentecostal revivals, by
these acts of like a parent mass mania. So you'll
(12:06):
get these groups of people who attend a preaching session
and they'll start babbling in tongues together and like having
what look like seizures where they're like twitching around on
the ground and shouting in fake languages. And this kind
of mania that spreads contagiously is a big part of
the movement, right. And so a mission comes out of
this on Azuza Street, which is why it's called the
(12:28):
Azuza Street Revival, and they start a newspaper called The
Apostolic Faith that begins circulating, and this lady Crawford, Florence Crawford,
is a part of it.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Now.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
The guy who'd kind of founded the movement was named
William Seymour, and he makes Crawford like the director of
state level efforts to bring more churches into the fold,
and they wind up having a power struggle, right because
Crawford is kind of looking to steer the ministry in
her own direction, and this leads to like a civil
war within the movement, and she winds up splitting and
(12:58):
forming the Apostolic Faith Church and none other than Portland, Oregon.
Classic story. If you get kicked out of LA, move
up to Portland. You know, many such cases, including several
people on this podcast.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, we get rent out of town, you come up
here to start your cult. Of course, whom's among us?
Whom's to among us?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Yeah, when your cult's too crazy for LA.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Right, right, time to go to Portland.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Time to Portland.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful in its own way. So shit
spreads from there. Once you're in Portland, you're not all
that far from Canada, and pretty soon the AFC is
affiliating with Like I mean, I think there's like twenty
four hundred affiliated churches around the world today, But they
move up to Canada pretty quickly, and they wind up
setting up shop in Toronto in like nineteen forty three,
(13:48):
which is when a Canadian named Stanley Hancock founds an
Apostolic Faith newsletter in the city. Here's how the organization
he established, which Kevin is probably winds up joining, describes
its founding. After reading an Apostolic Faith paper. Stanley Hancock
received his baptism and was banned from church. In nineteen
forty three, he and others started the first Apostolic Faith
(14:08):
church in Canada. Now there are eleven and the Apostolic
Faith Church. It falls under this whiter umbrella of charismatic Christianity, right,
which is a chunk of Protestantism, who believes in brief
Number one, the Holy Spirit can and does directly enter
people to change them and thus change the world. And
(14:29):
number two, through this method, by sending the Holy Spirit
into people, God bestows gifts upon them like prophecy and healing.
He can like spontaneously heal your injuries by sending the
Holy Spirit into you. And number three, and this is
the most important part of charismatic Christianity. It's a lot
of fun to writhe around on the ground and pretend
to speak in a fake language. People love it.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
You could just take acid, you know, at a py
trance festival or whatever to get the same experience. But
they didn't have sy trance back then. We just didn't
have the technology, nor did they have acid. Really, I
don't know if my side trans jokes are gonna land
with anyone less than thirty seven years old. Kids, I'll
probably listen to a hundred gets while you take your drugs.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Now, no trans is.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Oh, is it back? Did it come back? Thank God
a Betha was really suffering. It'll be fine, Yeah, yeah, excellent.
So Pentecostals are again part of this. And when I
talk about the Pentecostal Church, like, these guys are part
of the charismatic movement, but there's divisions within Charismatic Christianity
based on like do you believe speaking in tongues is
(15:35):
a necessary precursor to being baptized? Do you have to
prove the Holy Spirit has entered you right or not?
So it's kind of like a whiskey bourbon sort of deal.
Pentecostals are all part of the Charismatic movement, but the
Charismatic movement isn't just Pentecostals right now. One thing all
these churches have in common is that they're always sort
of scouting for young men with what the rest of
(15:58):
us might call strong cult leaders vibes. You know, we
didn't have TikTok or like streaming back then, so as
someone with those vibes couldn't just start a media career
like they had, they pretty much like getting involved in
a church or like Dianetics was basically their best option,
you know, in the mid century. And Kevin though, comes
(16:19):
up in this period right before the Internet's gonna really
take off, and he gets scouted at around age seventeen
by this community. On the brief autobiography for one of
his now scrubb social media accounts, he claims at the
age of seventeen he was sent to thirty three countries
within two years as a profit to the Nations. And
this is probably true that like once they figure out
(16:40):
this kid's got the gift of gab, and you can
kind of set him up in front of any church
you want, and he'll keep them entertained and giving money,
donating money for a couple of hours. You fly him
all around, right, you put him up, he's like crashing
in churches and whatnot around the world. But you fly
him around and he's both building his own kind of platform,
but he's also raising money for the wider organization and
(17:03):
for each of these individual churches, and this is a
whole industry, right. This is like the charismatic pastor industrial
complex pretty much, right, which is what like Marjo documents
and why I recommend watching that documentary. So he's good
at preaching to crowds and gathering followers, and it would
have been a cinch for him to raise money for
mission trips and even convince the leaders of his church
(17:24):
to pay for him to go and preach the gospel.
He claims that he was ordained at age eighteen by
an organization called the National Evangelists for Canada, and I
can't find any evidence that this group exists. People lie
about this all the time. But also the reporting for
this comes from a Jamaican news site, and it's based
on claims made by Kevin and based on just the
(17:44):
differences in dialects spoken. It's possible that this is a
real organization. They just gave kind of a name based
on sort of the differences in dialects that made sense
to them. But that doesn't directly correspond with what the
organization is called in Canada. Right, there's some organizations with
similar names. I'm not sure. I don't doubt that he
was ordained in some Pentecostal organization or another. It's not
(18:08):
like being a priest in the Catholic Church, where you
have to go through school. Somebody just decides to ordain you.
When you're ordained and you get maybe a piece of
paper or whatever, it's very easy. It's like my experience
with becoming a judge. There you go, yeah, there you go.
His denomination again, there's no seminary degree required, no qualifications.
The Walris notes that Kevin himself claims, and I'm talking
(18:31):
about a new site when I say that, claims that
Kevin says that ministers are qualified as ministers when they
feel the call of God on their life, and that's
pretty consistent in this community. For his part, Kevin would
claim that he was around eighteen or nineteen when his
grandfather first saw some of the early preaching he'd done
and during a phone call, informed Kevin that he was
(18:52):
a prophet. And I'm gonna play you with video of
his excellency, doctor Kevin Osmith discussing this conversation with his
grand father. Because it's about time you get an idea
of how this guy sounds and talks.
Speaker 6 (19:05):
I'm talking about I'm eighteen nineteen in terming the grandpa
And he said, but you are a prophet. I said, Grandpa,
how do you know I'm a prophet?
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Who told you?
Speaker 6 (19:14):
Ah, grandson? I said, Grandpa, and not coming after phone
until you explain to me how you know I'm a prophet.
He said, you're preaching your tapes I have and I
listened to them. I know what a prophet is.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
And he said, you are an annanted man of God,
my grandfather. Who I thought, there mother, He said, lod
I have that sin, but God opens my understanding to
know who come out of my generations.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
Your mona is to give your handless, and you are.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Pont to get profet, and you shall go to it.
He set no.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Level of which.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Ralph shall ever stop.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
What a fun guy, all right, just making some points?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, make it some points. No level of witchcraft will
stop you. This is something I tell our podcasters very regularly.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
He looks a little more like the other Kevin Smith
than I expected.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, finally I use for Ai cut him into all
the Jay and Silent Bob movies.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Yeah, he looks a little like Silent Bob. Like I'm surprised.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah, not very silent, though distinctly loud, Bob speaking of
things that are distinctly loud.
Speaker 7 (20:29):
But like sometimes that's super true because the volume of
some of the auto ads are crazy loud for no
reason and we have no control over it.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah. Well, anyway, here's some ads and we're back.
Speaker 5 (20:48):
So back again.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, we're back again. Let's keep talking about the other
Kevin Smith. Legally, I have to really emphasize it's the
other one. Now, that right up, and the Toronto Caribbean
Newspaper continues. He boasts of the fact that he was
the youngest Jamaican born bishop in Jamaica's church history. Kevin
completed a Bachelor of Theology degree, a doctorate degree from
(21:11):
Vision International University in Ramona, California, and a Doctor of
Ministry from Mount Olive Bible Institute and Seminary in Toronto, Canada.
He was a licensed counselor and certified psychotherapist. And that
all sounds very impressive. I can verify some of this,
but the stuff I can verify doesn't matter. I have
no idea if he was the youngest Jamaican more born
(21:32):
bishop in Jamaica's church history, because again, this is not
like the Catholic Church, where like a bishop is a
real position. You can just call yourself a bishop, or
you can convince a friend to call you a bishop,
and then you're a bishop, right, Like, it's not difficult,
That is so true.
Speaker 7 (21:50):
Bishop Molly, m m yeah, come on, Bishop Sophie, Yes,
Bishop Molly, Bishop Sophie.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
As Look, the pope is a Robert. I think that
means I get splash over pope power. I'm making some
fucking secret cardinals.
Speaker 5 (22:03):
Just a sprinkle of poping.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I watched, I watched fucking conclave. I know that I
have the power to make secret cardinals that can just
pop out at any time. You might be a cardinal
listening right now. You have no way of knowing until
you like walk into a Catholic church and demand their
secret hidden gold, which I assume every Catholic church has
not an expert on the religion that I'm pope of.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
So I'm gonna find out where the gold is.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah, go find out. Get in there. Now. These institutes
that he claims to have fancy degrees from are like
real but also not right, because this is like whenever
you hear a cult leader be like, I'm a doctorate
in this. I'm a therapist in this. It's always some
kind of fake and there's a whole industry in creating
fake churches for like evangelical ministers to claim that they've
(22:53):
got fancy and impressive degrees. Reporters from Jamaica Observer called
Vision University to see if Kevin and had received a
bachelor and a doctorate there and quote. We were told
that such information could only be provided in response to
a written request, and only students are allowed to make
that request. Now these guys had led. Yeah, they can't
even verify that, or they won't. But the news reaches
(23:17):
out to these guys after he cuts a bunch of
people's throats in a church service, right, So Vision International
doesn't want to claim him. So I decided to just
like look into the school to see, like is this
even a real school? Like is there a chance anyone
has ever earned a real degree from Vision International University? And,
at the risk of getting sued, I think the answer
(23:37):
is no. If you go to their website, they bragg
that you can quote earn an affordable Christian ministry or
business degree on your time, and their motto is taking
the whole world to the whole world. Now, I'll let
Sophie scroll through the website while we discussed this fine
institution in more detail so you could get a look
at Yeah, save time and money on your college degree.
(23:58):
That always is the first a real college. Yeah, they've
got like a lot of good stock photos. There's like
a young black lady punching the sky defiantly with her
diploma and the claim that Vision International holds prestigious international
accreditation from ASIC. Right now, you're wondering what that is, right,
prestigious international accredit. That must mean it's a real school. Right.
(24:21):
It says it's prestigious, So that's got to be legitimately accredited, right. Well,
I looked into it because I thought that was odd.
People who are accredited from legitimate organizations never have to
tell you that the accrediting organization is legitimate. That's the
first sign that someone's not part of a legitimate accrediting organization.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
HARVARDOK, as a graduate of Podcast University, I don't know
what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Great movie than you see you.
Speaker 5 (24:50):
I really enjoy the stock photo of this guy.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah, the guy holding two degrees aren't two respected degrees
in just.
Speaker 5 (24:56):
Two years and it looks like he's like floating on
a cloud.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
If you go to like Harvard's website, Harvard number one
will not give you two degrees in two years, but
doesn't have to tell you the degrees respected because it's
a real school. And even like you go to UTD,
right where I briefly went before dropping out, they never
had to brag on their website that they were accredited
from a real organization because you just know it's a
(25:21):
real school. So I googled Vision International University fake and
the second search result was the Wikipedia page for list
of unaccredited institutions of higher Learning, which seemed odd because
they ensured us that they were accredited by someone real. Now,
the first result when I looked into that was someone
on the forum for degree info dot com back in
(25:41):
two thousand and two asking is this a good school
or a fraud? And someone pointed out that like, well,
they offer a master's in creation science, which means they
fall under a religious exemption in California, which is not
accreditation right. It means California can't stop them from giving
out religious degrees, but they're not approved by the state
as like a real college, you just can't stop someone
(26:02):
from giving out degrees with titles like Master of Theology
or Doctor of Ministry. But they're not allowed to give
out secular degrees like an MS a Master of Science.
And they claim to right. And one reason I'm interested
in this is because there's an attempt within sort of
this chunk of the evangelical movement. One reason this is
interesting is that there's an attempt within this chunk of
(26:22):
the evangelical movement to create people who can get jobs
as science teachers, right because they have MS degrees and
then teach in Christian secondary schools about stuff like creationism. Right.
So that's what Vision International is doing. But they're not
accredited to give out an MS in the state of California.
So then I looked into that ASIK accreditation, right, which
(26:44):
is why they're how they claim to be a legitimate
university ASIC. ASIK stands for the Accreditation Service for International Colleges.
And this is a real organization. It's a private educational
agency in the United Kingdom that is literally based out
of a semi detached duplex residential property and stocked it
on teas which doubles is the residential address for its creators.
(27:07):
So great, very legitimate organization run out of the home
of the people who run it, just like this podcast
and ASEX whole business is accrediting private UK colleges for
visa purposes, and they are recognized by the UK government
and this capacity, but they've been repeatedly criticized for being
what's called a run around accreditor. And another poster from
(27:30):
a different threat and Degree Info explains the key difference
is that accreditation in the UK appears vastly different from
accreditation in the US. If your UK university has a
royal charter, then that's all that really needs to operate.
Accreditation is wholly voluntary and doesn't confer degree granting authority
because that's not how degree granting authority is conferred in
the UK. The issue with A six seems to be
(27:51):
that some of the schools accredited by them lack institutional
accreditation or authority to award degrees in their respective country.
So Vision International is accredited through ASIK, but ASIK is
not approved in the UK to accredit a school, it
means a different thing than it does in the US.
They have no ability to grant degrees in the US,
and they also don't really have the ability to grant
(28:12):
degrees that are recognized by the UK. It just means
that if you go here, you can get an educational
visa in the UK. They're kind of playing with the
fact that the same word means different things in two countries.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
I fell down this wormhole for way too long trying
to figure out how this fake college for Christian scam
artist works. And so now you're all going to learn
about it.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Yeah, I'm gonna enroll.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yeah, get your degree for sure. Yes, of course, get
your Master of science.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
I'm gonna get two degrees.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
This is double Fistingham.
Speaker 5 (28:44):
Is this very classic you? You're like, I suffered, you
must suffer. That's you. That's very classic you.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah, just doing with degrees what punk kids in the
early two thousands did with tall boys.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
What you're doing with ZVS now.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
What I'm doing with ZV right now. Yeah. So the
poster then goes on to discuss Warnborough College in Ireland,
which is not a real college. It's not a recognized
institute of learning in Ireland but pretends to be because
it has an ASIK accreditation. The US Department of Education
does not recognize ASIK accreditation, although they might in the future,
given where we're headed.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
Every time you say ask I.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Think of shoes, is that a shoebrand, Sophie, it certainly is. Yeah,
that's a more legitimate company than the ASIK of the UK.
Speaker 7 (29:29):
They're like good shoes, like good quality, like for your
feet and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Well, this is not a good quality accreditation organization. In
two thousand and nine, extensive reporting showed that there's some
very shady details about how ASIK got recognized in the UK.
A journalist named Andrew Norfolk wrote an article on the
matter with the title man given job of closing bogus
colleges was sacked by university and the man who's the
founder of ASIK is Maurice Dimmock, who, along with his wife,
(29:56):
lives in the detached duplex that doubles his A six headquarters.
He had been director of international operations for a real school,
Northumbria University, until two thousand and three, when he was
fired for reasons neither he or the school will ever discuss,
which I'm sure means good things always not shady. When
your school won't even tell anyone why they fired you,
(30:16):
I'm sure no crimes were committed.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Somehow, the UK Home Office ignored numerous concerns and complaints
about this guy and gave his company the job of
determining which private colleges were real for visa purposes, and
ASIKA credited one hundred and eighty schools in its first
two years, The Times reports. Among them is a Manchester
college that The Times exposed last month as the front
for an immigration scam, which helped one thousand fake students
(30:39):
enter or stay in Britain. Another in London issued more
than twenty five hundred bogus postgraduate diplomas in two months
last year, earning its owners, who have fled the country
and estimated five million pounds. So great organization, very real school.
That's what we can say is that Kevin Smith gets
his doctorate from an entirely real university. Again, it's important
(31:00):
to discuss this, even though we're getting a little bit
off topic from the other Kevin Smith, because every one
of these abusive Christian cult leaders you come across today
has some kind of PhD or other fancy sounding degree
from one of these fake schools. There's a whole ton
of them. One of the claims I found is that
Vision International and around two this and two was show
claiming to have four thousand campuses in more than one
(31:22):
hundred countries, and to the best of my knowledge, Vision
has thirty full in part time employees, which it's hard
to keep four thousand campuses operative on thirty employees. And
it kind of seems like they're just counting everyone who
registered online as a campus, like you're a campus for
Vision International University. If you log on with your laptop,
(31:43):
whatever coffee shop you're in as a campus. I love that.
I need to start a fake college, like Sophie, we
got to get in on this fucking racket.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
We're not doing that. We're not.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
There's a lot of money.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
And I go in ful tate. I'm sorry, Mollie.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Do you like the sound of Professor Lambert? You can
be given outates in like forty five minutes, you.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
Know, sorry, that's Bishop, doctor Lambert.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Come on, I'm a bishop.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Doctor, Bishop Lambert. Yeah, you could give out what kind
of degree would you want to hand out to people?
What would you feel confident giving like in terms of doctorates?
Speaker 3 (32:16):
I mean whatever they'll give me money for, right, That's
how we're going to do this scam.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, yeah, I mean college scam college. I'd like to
make surgeons like that feels that feels satisfying to know
I'd created a lot of surgeons are who are going
out there cutting into people. You know, as long as
I get to a non extradition country very quickly after
handing out four thousand or so diplomas is crib. So
I should also note that initially, Vision University was an
(32:43):
offshoot of a Pentecostal school in Tasmania founded by an
Australian pastor named kin Chant. And I just mentioned that
because I found a photo of him that I have
to show you guys.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
It's really kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Hey, I can that mustache. It's beautiful, all right, he
looks cool. He does look cool. That's a sweet ass mustache.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
And Chant is a great name.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Can Chant too solid name? I'm happy with him.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
I mean Chant, it's right in the name.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah right, Yeah, it's perfect name for an evangelical pastor,
especially with a soup strainer like that. The acoustics had
to be great, you know, it would act like having
like baffling panels on your ceiling. I trust him, Yeah,
he seems legitimate. So I said we'd get back to
Kevin Smith the bad one, and I meant it, but
I also kept running across funny stuff about this school
(33:32):
that I didn't know where to stop. According to the
nineteen ninety four edition of Name It and Frame It
by Stephen Levkoff, which is a book about fake colleges,
Vision Quote also offers a special additional ten percent tuition
reduction for students to enroll within the next thirty days,
which is a real sign that someone's got an actual
college going. Real colleges give you bonuses like that, right,
(33:55):
sat up in thirty days and get ten percent off. Okay,
Now back to Kevin for realsies. In addition to his
definitely fake degree, he claimed to attend Tyndale University, which
is a real and respected private Evangelical Christian university. He
also claims to have a Doctorate of Ministry from Mount
Olive Bible Institute in Toronto, which seems to be about
(34:16):
as real as Vision but has a very similar name
to an actual college that's in the United States, which
I think is the point and laying out Kevin's educational history.
The Walras, who is again a Canadian news site, noted
while he has referred to himself as a registered clinical
counselor and sought after holistic psychotherapist. He has never been
registered with a College of Registered Psychotherapists in Ontario, so
(34:39):
he's a Christian psychotherapist, which is different from being a
psychotherapist in the way that any medical establishment recognizes. Now
while he's getting all these fake degrees and maybe one
real degree in addition to several other questionable certifications, Smith
grew up and seems to have made his living operating
a ministry in Toronto and traveling around the world to
give speeches at different churches. Sometime around the turn of
(35:02):
the millennium, he found his own ministry, which he calls
CHOS Deliverance International, and the initials Chaos is just the
initials of his name. On August twenty second, two thousand
and six, he returns from one of his overseas preaching
trips to the UK. The Walrus writes quote Smith was
jet lagged and lonely, craving to spend time with someone
besides his brother. I wanted, you know, emotional company. Smith
(35:23):
would later recall as per court documents, so he perused
online ads for escorts and reached out to a man
for his services Matt, whose real name is under a
court ordered publication ban, arrived at Smith's home around ten
thirty one evening. I would need him to be as
inconspicuous as possible because I lived straight and I'm a Christian.
Smith would recall there was a conflict happening inside of
me in essence to what I was going to do
(35:43):
or not do. Now what he did, according to Matt's allegations,
is sexually assault Matt, who goes to the police. The
next day, Smith is arrested and charged. He would later
claim that Canadian police tried to use his Jamaican ancestry
in the local stigma against homosexuality in Jamaica again Saint him,
and he claims he told them gays are just people
who need redirection, which does do a great job of
(36:06):
making me more sympathetic to his case. But he's been
accused basically of calling this guy in and then sexually
assaulting him. Right now, the case these allegations against him
wind through the Canadian court system for the next several
months and the next year. In early two thousand and seven,
he gets married and possibly as a way to kind
of distract from the fact that this is really bad
(36:27):
pr to his ministry. He's either eighteen or twenty five
when he gets married. I found different things on different
news sites. It kind of depends on whether or not
he was actually born in nineteen eighty two or not.
Whatever the case, this marriage does not seem to have
really been like it certainly doesn't last. There's debate as
to whether or not it was legitimate. They very quickly split.
(36:49):
In the Walrus Rites, Smith's x's wife described him as
verbally abusive in someone who led about his private life.
He is not living an honest life, she would later recall.
According to court records and the Toronto Caribbeans Report ADS,
there have been allegations that his wife caught him having
sexual relations with men. She reported to senior ministers in
the church organizations, but they denied it and there were
no reprimand or consequences. So, you know, not a story
(37:12):
we've ever heard before anywhere else. Wow, powerful up and
coming guy gets caught violating the tenets of his religion
for personal reasons and also violating a sex worker, and
it all gets smoothed over because hey, you know, he's
he brings in money. Probably shouldn't segue to ads with that,
but they also bring in money.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
Wow, use ads. Wow, we're back.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
So I know the timeline is kind of screwy here.
When he gets married, how old he is? You know,
this is a guy who gives multiple versions of different
stories and different news reports. I see give different things.
I don't actually know what's subjectively the truth. I haven't
seen a birth certificate here. But you know, basically one
of two things happens. Either he marries this lady to
try to distract from the scandal, or they had been
(38:06):
they'd get married and stay that way for years, but
she had seen signs that he was kind of living
a lie and eventually tries to report them. In either case,
the two of them split up and he goes on
trial later in two thousand and seven for sexual assault.
And this trial we can confirm absolutely happened, right. There's
plenty of court records in Canada over it. During the trial,
(38:28):
Smith identifies himself as an international minister of religion who
had preached in three hundred different cities. He says, we
do crusades all around the world in churches and open
fields and stadiums and things to that magnitude to preach
the gospel Smith's lawyer denied that anything non consensual had happened,
and under oath he claimed that Matt had tried to
extort him for money during a private religious counseling session.
(38:51):
Quote the prosecutor in her closing argument shredded Smith's testimony.
His life in his platform is a facade. She said.
Mister Smith's reputation and his public persona are his primary concern,
and he will go to any extent to preserve that facade.
In the end, this judge found Smith guilty of sexual assault,
sentencing him to six months in jail, followed by two
months of probation. Mister Smith, it seems to be the
(39:12):
judge said to quote, a parable might be viewed as
a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Yeah, and she's got it right here. She has definitely
like locked this guy's number down. Unfortunately, she's going to
be the last person to clock him for a while.
And he is going to basically as soon as he
splits up with his wife, flee the country, right, So
he leaves Canada for Jamaica. He breaches the terms of
his probation. He's supposed to attend counseling, and he's like no,
(39:40):
I'm just going to go back to Jamaica and start
a church there, and he's going to remain in Jamaica
for the next six years where he starts a local
church and he burrows into the Pentecostal community and he
starts accruing clout followers and eventually wealth. So that's where
we are at the end of part one, and this
is going to lead us to what I would describe
as a shock bloody conclusion to come in part two
(40:02):
where this one ends is pretty fucking intense. But Molly,
that's what we got for the start of this episode.
How you feeling as we sort of close out part one?
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Uh, I truly don't know where this is going.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
So a lot of people get in their throat slit.
Oh no, yeah, yeah, I got weird number woild would
be anything higher than one.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
Okay, yeah, I guess let's find out.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Yeah, I guess, let's find out. And that's the episode.
Speaker 5 (40:32):
We should plug. Jake Anerhan's new project.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Oh yeah, Jake's got a new podcast, Away Days. Check
it out on wherever our podcasts exist.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
They Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
(41:03):
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash
at Behind the Bastards
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Robert Evans
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