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Have you ever been accused of something so egregious that you almost lost your job for it?
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Maybe you were afraid you were going to go to jail because of this accusation?
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If you resonate with those questions, then you are going to want to hear what Marcus Watson has to say.
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My guest today is a perfect guest to have on at the end of this Tribute to Masculinity series that I have been doing, because he went through such an ordeal as a pastor of a church being accused by someone in his church for something so egregious and his attitude about it, his reflections on it.
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He goes through all of it.
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You are going to enjoy this episode.
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Be so encouraged.
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Welcome to Honest Christian Conversations.
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I'm Anna Murdy.
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Let's get to it.
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Courage.
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Welcome to Honest Christian Conversations.
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I'm Anna Murby.
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Let's get to it.
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Before the episode starts, make sure you follow the show so you never miss another episode.
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Marcus, thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk with me.
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I heard you talking on the Bleeding Daylight podcast about your story.
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That was an emotional roller coaster, I must say, and that's somebody who is listening to it, so I can only imagine how terrible it was for you to have to go through such a situation, to be accused of such heinous things, and there's no proof of it, but it does mess with people's minds, their thoughts about you, and I'm very excited to talk to you and to uncover all this, especially during my tribute to masculinity.
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I think this is a perfect, perfect conversation to have, because this hits right at that.
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So thank you for coming on.
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Yeah, I'm very glad to be here.
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Thanks for having me.
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Yeah, all right.
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Well, give us a brief overview of the situation.
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It's hard to believe it's been now 10 years ago that it started and it's in some ways it feels like a long time ago.
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In some ways it still feels very fresh.
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My life is still sort of living out.
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I'm still living out the ramifications of all the stuff that happened, both negative and positive.
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So, basically, what happened was about 10 years ago.
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I'm a Presbyterian pastor in San Diego and our executive presbyter asked to meet with me and he came over to my house.
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I was on sabbatical, interestingly at the time, just about two weeks into it, and so he came over and basically said that someone at our church had accused me of having a problem with pornography.
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Now, full disclosure have I ever looked at pornography?
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Yes, however, it's very important for me not to, and so for a long time, I'd had accountability software and accountability partner, and so when those accusations came, I was like, well, okay, you know, I wasn't too worried about it because I knew that there wasn't any, wasn't going to be anything on my laptop.
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There wasn't going to be.
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You know, I would have my accountability partner who'd be able to provide actual evidence of accountability reports.
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You know those kinds of things.
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So I'm like, okay, well, what would you like to do?
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And he said, well, I'd like to take your laptop and have a forensic analyst look at it.
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I was like you want it now?
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He said that'd be good.
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So I gave him the laptop and he had said that it would take a few days and those few days turned into a few weeks.
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So that became kind of frustrating.
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About two or three weeks after he had taken my laptop, he called me and he said well, I can't give your laptop back because it's now a potential criminal investigation.
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And I was like what, what are you talking about?
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And of course I'm thinking like what in the world could they possibly have found?
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I know I didn't put anything illegal on there.
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At the time our tech guy at our church had become, unfortunately, kind of a nemesis and I was like did he put something on there?
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He didn't.
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But I feared that that's where I would have went to.
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Yeah, yeah, well, I wondered that.
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So it wasn't him.
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But I wondered like, okay, did somebody put terrorist stuff on?
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there bomb making instructions or put child pornography on there.
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The accusation was pornography.
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So I'm like, did they put child pornography?
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That was my fear.
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My fear was, is it going to look like I'm guilty of something?
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So that sort of put me into a dark spiral.
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Because, well, one of the problems was that our presbytery wasn't following its due process.
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We have due process in our denomination.
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Our book of order says here are the steps you take if there are accusations and allegations.
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And I was being denied my due process, and so that made me feel really scared.
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To be honest.
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I was like I don't know what to do about this.
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I have no power, I have no control.
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There's nothing that I can do.
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This is a secret investigation that's taking place.
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I was pretty, pretty scared.
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During that time I did have some really great support.
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So one of my best friends, who was also my accountability partner, also a Presbyterian pastor in our Presbytery, really went to bat for me, and so he would have meetings with people that I couldn't have meetings with.
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He made phone calls that I couldn't make, he sent emails that I couldn't send, and so he was really, really supportive, and so what this did, was it kind of brought to light for me, my own sense of unworth, maybe, where I was wrestling with why would they do this to me?
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Because I wasn't in a big church and I was like they wouldn't do it to so-and-so from that big church or so-and-so from that big church, but they'll do it to me from little my church, you know.
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And so it kind of hit me in this place of well, marcus, this is how you get treated.
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It sort of made me feel very unvaluable, unworthy I don't know if those are the best words, but I just didn't feel like I was worth very much, except for the fact that my friend Kevin was really there for me.
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He would text me about every other day how are you doing today?
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He would take me out to dinner every now and then and again, like I said, really go to bat for me.
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And I remember driving home from one of our meetings, just going out to dinner, and I was like man Lord, why is he doing this for me?
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He doesn't have to do this.
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And then I just sort of realized, oh, I feel like I don't deserve it.
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I feel like I don't deserve it.
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And so the next day I went to the beach and I just kind of spent a few hours there and I had come to this realization that I felt like, yeah, this is all sort of affirming in an unhealthy way that I'm unworthy of love and of care and of justice.
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So I just I was praying and I had to start repeating to myself I deserve to be loved, I deserve to be loved, I deserve First of all.
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I started saying, lord, I deserve your love, and not in the sense that I've earned God's love, but as a human being, created in the image of God, right, I'm valuable enough to him, to God, to be loved.
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So I had to use the word deserve.
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Because what I realized for 30 years I'd been telling myself, you know, every time I would pray for forgiveness, I'd say Lord, please forgive me, I don't deserve your love.
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And it was just sort of like a routine thing that I would say.
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And I was like, oh my gosh, I've been telling myself this message that I don't deserve to be loved.
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I know that there are people in the world who would say and lots of Christians probably, who would say well, we don't deserve to be loved.
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I understand, but I'm worthy of it because God said you are worthy of my love because you've been created in my image, so I had to to be loved by people too.
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I deserve to be treated well, I deserve to be treated with kindness and I deserve, in my particular case, I deserve due process because I've been promised it in our book of order and so I deserve that.
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I'm worthy of that.
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And so, anyway, I had to undo this message in my head and that was a very, very healing experience for me.
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So one of the other important, very healing moments was when I met with an attorney, because I didn't have any, I wasn't being given any protections by our denomination, which normally I would have been.
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And so I met with this attorney and I said here's what I'm being accused of.
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And basically she said in the beginning she said, listen, if you're guilty, like of child pornography that's that was my fear Then I'm not going to, I'm not going to represent you.
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But she listened and after about an hour of us just kind of sharing what was going on, she said to me well, I can tell you're not guilty, and I said you can, how?
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can you tell?
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And she said well, you're not asking the right questions.
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I was like what do you mean?
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She said, well, if you were guilty, you'd be asking questions like how much time am I looking at what's our defense gonna be?
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And she said and you're just asking how you can get your laptop back?
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And I was like, oh, Finally someone is there who gets it, that's exactly how I felt.
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That's exactly it I can imagine that that was a very stressful time.
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Were you married at this time?
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Did?
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You have a family.
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Were they supportive as well?
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Yeah, for sure.
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My wife was in that meeting with me, the attorneys with the attorney, and my kids were young so I didn't tell them what was going on.
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My youngest still doesn't really know, he won't listen to this podcast.
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I'll tell him eventually when he's a little bit older.
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I have told my older two and so they know the story.
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Yeah, it was very, very stressful, and yet what I learned is that that's where at least in my experience, I think that that's where God meets us, or where we become the most open to God, god's presence, god's love, god's just being with us.
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I experienced this.
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I had a pretty dark moment, but pretty transformative moment.
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I spent a lot of time in silence.
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I was on sabbatical.
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For the first three months of this I was on sabbatical, so I had a lot of time to myself.
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I'm really grateful.
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I mean, it was kind of a pretty terrible sabbatical because of this, but I can imagine it would be.
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Yeah, but I was also kind of grateful that I didn't have to go to work or come up with sermons and everybody, yeah, see everybody.
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And it's like who?
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Who?
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Yeah the whispers and who?
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who made the accusation?
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I don't know who.
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I had this moment because I spent a lot of time in the scriptures just reading and silence and prayer, and I spent a lot of time in the Psalms of lament Right, and these are the Psalms where the psalmist oftentimes David, who is crying out to God why are you letting my enemies get the better of me and destroy my enemies, and things like that.
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I'm like reading this, I'm like yeah, yeah, that's how I feel I get it.
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Now I was going to ask did you think that you were a little bit like David whenever he was crying out saying avenge me, lord, you know, I'm clean of this absolved of this Absolutely, absolutely.
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Because you know, prior to this it's not like I had really ever had any enemies, but this time I felt like I had enemies.
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I'm like I pain and fear.
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So you cry out to God rescue me, destroy my enemies.
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So I really really appreciated those and I had a moment, after spending time in one of those Psalms, I kind of put my Bible down and I was just kind of sitting quietly and I started thinking about all the worst things that could happen and I thought to myself man, I could lose my job if it looks like I'm guilty.
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And then I thought I could lose my ordination.
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I was like I could lose my reputation and all these people would think this thing is true of me.
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That isn't actually true.
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And then I thought I could lose my family if it looks like I'm guilty of this.
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I don't know, I don't think I would have, but that's where my mind went.
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Yeah, we spiral when things are going bad.
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Yeah, and that's what was happening as I was spiraling and then I thought I could lose my house, I could become a registered sex offender, and everywhere I go I would have to say this thing about myself that isn't true, right?
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No-transcript.
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And I was like oh, oh.
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And all of a sudden I understood God's love in a way that I had never understood it before.
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I had always preached God's unconditional love and taught and believed in God's unconditional love.
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Yeah, God loves me unconditionally.
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Yippee, you know, but it's like.
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It's different.
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It hits different when you experience it, yeah, when you're in the depths like that in the, in the, in the pit, like the psalmist says, the Myrie was a Myrie pit or something like that.
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Myrie clay, yeah, and and all of a sudden it's like, yeah, but you might sink into this pit, but you will never lose my love.
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And you think about Paul who said nothing can separate us from his love, neither height nor depth, right?
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All of that Anyway, that was a transformative moment for me and I would say that that was almost like the turning point of my life.
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I almost kind of think of my life as before that moment and after that moment and it kind of changed everything for me.
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It changed the way I think about God, it changed the way I think about myself, it changed the way I think about other people.
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It changed the way I think about my work as a pastor.
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In other words, I no longer feel like it's my responsibility to get people to believe certain right doctrines.
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I just want people to know that they are God's beloved and if they can begin to believe that about themselves, then God will work out the doctrines.
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I mean I'll still teach what I need to teach, but I'm not going to push people away just because they don't happen to have the same exact beliefs that I do.
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I just want them to know that they're loved.
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I'll conclude my story here, so, before my sabbatical ended.
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So we're like eight or 10 weeks into it.
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At this point I called my executive presbyter and I said well, actually he met with me and he said I just want to let you know that they haven't found anything on my laptop.
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And I was like it's funny, because I didn't react and say, oh hooray, you know, I just kind of I just went okay, yeah, yeah, duh, exactly, that's what it was, that's exactly right.
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But it was a relief.
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I was like, okay, good, well, okay, they know now that there's nothing there.
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Our executive president knows that there's nothing there, yeah.
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And then I was getting ready to go back to work, but I hadn't got my laptop back yet.
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He said it's ready, you can go pick it up.
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And I said okay, great, I'll go pick it up from whoever had it.
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And then my friend Kevin said why don't you talk to your attorney before you go pick it up?
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Just ask her advice.
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And so I did.
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And she said hey, hey, hey, he should not even be talking to you actually, because this is an open investigation.
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As far as we understand right, we haven't gotten any confirmation yet.
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By the way, it was the FBI that ended up with my laptop, and so that was mind blowing.
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My attorney was the one who found that out for me.
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But she said tell him your executive presbyter that he can bring it to my office and you can get it from me.
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And so I emailed him and I said, yeah, this is what my attorney said, because it's still an open investigation.
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And his response was four words Marcus, what investigation?
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And then his name.
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And I was like what?
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And I was so angry because it was like he was pretending that nothing had even happened and I think he was probably protecting himself because he was not following the rules.
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I mean, like I said, the whole due process thing.
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He was not giving me my due process and he could have gotten into big, big trouble for that.
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So anyway, I think he was protecting himself.
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But it made me pretty upset until he got my laptop back.
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But because it was a secret investigation, sort of an under the table investigation, there was no official record of it, and so the person who had made the accusation who I later found out was a staff person at our church, now had the opportunity to make formal allegations.
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So she, she kind of she didn't want to make formal allegations, she's just sort of lobbed the accusation out there, but nothing in writing and then it was sort of taken up in this under the table way.
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But now she's like, well, I can make these formal allegations.
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And so she did.
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And so that kicked off.
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Then an actual formal investigation, following all the rules and the due process and all that.
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And when that news came to me I was just like what again?
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And I was like Lord, what are you doing?
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Why, why are you letting this happen?
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And that lasted.
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I mean, that feeling lasted for an hour or two.
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And then, as I kind of calmed down after the news came, I kind of felt like you know what?
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God, you got me through it once, you'll get me through it again.
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And he did so.
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They did a formal investigation and then I was officially exonerated.
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So I was unofficially exonerated the first time because the FBI said, yeah, there's nothing there.
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Second time I was officially exonerated.
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It's in the record books.
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And then after that the staff person just would not let it go.
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I don't know why she was so adamant about this.
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Vendetta gets you for something petty.
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That is a good question.
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Here's what I do know this staff person said to another staff person, who then told me that she had said I was telling Pastor Marcus about my husband's pornography problem and he just didn't react the way I thought he would.
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I bet he's got a problem with that too, and so, as far as I know, that was the source and she had told me I don't know for sure, but she had told me that there'd been abuse in her past and so maybe some things got triggered in her that led to these accusations and she was just convinced that I was guilty of these things.
00:17:42.303 --> 00:17:51.034
Wow, but yeah, but she, she went to the session which is our board of elders and wrote a letter and made the same allegations again.
00:17:51.034 --> 00:17:54.261
And here's where I had a little another moment of grace.
00:17:54.261 --> 00:17:57.544
I had been keeping a chronology of everything that happens.
00:17:57.544 --> 00:17:59.631
It's like I better, I better keep track of everything.
00:17:59.671 --> 00:18:10.359
So I, I, I had that and I shared it with our session, our elders and my friend Kevin came and he said hey look, I have years worth of accountability reports if you want to see them.
00:18:10.359 --> 00:18:12.854
We had a new executive presbyter by this point.
00:18:12.854 --> 00:18:21.201
The other one had moved to another state and he said as far as the presbytery is concerned, this is a closed matter, so I let the elders talk about it.
00:18:21.201 --> 00:18:27.214
I recused myself for about half an hour, came back and they said Marcus, we want you to know that you have our trust as our pastor.
00:18:27.214 --> 00:18:28.881
I was like awesome, great.
00:18:29.849 --> 00:18:42.060
I didn't say that out loud, but I felt that you know, and then they said and we're not going to ask for your resignation, which was one of the things that was on the table, and we are going to brace for a potential lawsuit from the staff person.
00:18:42.060 --> 00:18:46.246
I was like wow, so they were with me, except for one person.
00:18:46.246 --> 00:18:55.561
One of the elders, for whatever reason, decided that she believed the allegations and she started calling people in the congregation saying Pastor Marcus is into child pornography.
00:18:55.561 --> 00:18:58.054
And I didn't know that.
00:18:58.054 --> 00:19:11.916
Most of us didn't know that at first, the other elders and I but about two weeks later we started hearing that this was going around and when I heard that I was like, oh, I think this is probably the end for me here, because how do you come back from that?
00:19:11.916 --> 00:19:12.178
Right?
00:19:12.730 --> 00:19:14.036
Yeah, it's not easy.
00:19:14.417 --> 00:19:27.439
Yeah, so we had a congregational meeting and somebody made the motion to dissolve the relationship with me that's kind of the Presbyterian language dissolve the relationship between church and pastor and it passed by a margin of two votes.
00:19:27.439 --> 00:19:37.801
I don't think everyone in the church was against me, but what I think is, when you have allegations like that, it's like, well, I don't know if Pastor Marcus did this or not, but let's just play it safe and get a new pastor.
00:19:37.801 --> 00:19:44.455
So that was it for me at that church.
00:19:44.476 --> 00:19:49.737
Interestingly, it actually felt like a huge relief, to be honest, because by that point I think at that point it would because you're just tired of all this.
00:19:50.038 --> 00:19:55.233
Yeah, it had been almost a year, 11 months, and I was just like I'm ready to be gone from here.
00:19:55.233 --> 00:20:09.117
The very next day, I was on a flight to Little Rock, arkansas, for a pastor's week-long retreat, which had been on my calendar for six months already, and I was like, wow, the day after, lord, you knew I was going to need it today.
00:20:09.871 --> 00:20:10.673
He's that good.
00:20:10.974 --> 00:20:11.517
That's right.
00:20:11.517 --> 00:20:12.058
That's right.
00:20:12.058 --> 00:20:14.438
There's nine more years of story after that.
00:20:14.438 --> 00:20:17.159
But never thought I'd be back in church ministry.
00:20:17.159 --> 00:20:18.595
I was like I'm done being a pastor.
