Telling the Truth - And a Correction

Last Sunday morning, March 13, 2022, as many readers are probably aware, Robert Hahn devoted his pulpit time exclusively to a “response” to matters that have been reported on this blog.

This blog has no intention of becoming engaged in an internet war of words with Robert Hahn.  But three points ought to be addressed so that readers are not misled.

This blog did indeed reach out to “Allison”

During his pulpit time last Sunday, Hahn told his congregation, sorrowfully and indignantly, that this blog had posted the piece entitled “Why Didn’t Anyone Help?” without ever even having reached out to “Allison”, the woman mentioned in the piece who had been abused by her husband.

This accusation was flatly untrue and Hahn’s righteous indignation was an act.  The Editor of this blog had repeated contact with Allison, including one short phone call and multiple text messages going back several months and up to shortly before the blog went live. Indeed, their first contact was initiated by the Editor herself, who felt Allison had been terribly betrayed by the leadership at her church. She contacted Allison hoping to offer some sort of help. The Editor has archived all of the messages between herself and Allison.

As the original post stated, Allison was not “interviewed”, as a number of other persons have been whose stories have appeared or will appear on this blog.  Allison, on the advice of counsel, made clear that she could not be involved in the story that was to be published on Survivors of Chesapeake Church. She did say that “Sara has the right to tell her story.”

The Editor received information from Allison back in September before the custody battle began, and has also talked with a number of people close to Allison.

Any of the Elders, or Robert Hahn himself, could have ascertained the truth simply by contacting this blog.

Did Allison ask that the blog be removed?

Hahn also asserted in his Sunday morning remarks that, after the post entitled “Why Didn’t Anyone Help?” was published, Allison had asked this blog to take it down.

This is not quite true.  Allison had been sent the post beforehand, read it over, and said she could not comment on it. She did not ask the Editor to not post it.

The morning the blog went out, Allison panicked and messaged the editor asking to “take out as much of me or delete it and tell it in a different way.” The Editor didn’t receive that text until much later, because she was in surgery, which she had informed Allison about earlier.

The editor explained that by that point, the post had been seen by thousands of people. The editor chose to keep the piece up because so much time had passed and because, ultimately, it was Sara’s story. She is truly sorry if she caused Allison any additional stress or pain. At the time, she felt the decision was the right decision.

It should be noted that Allison never asked the blog not to post the piece in the first place.  Much of what Hahn told the congregation was a fabrication.

Yes, Robert Hahn asked “Sara” to lie

In the course of his remarks, Hahn also flatly denied the statement in the blog post that he had asked “Sara” not to report the abusive incident to the police.  As the post explained, Sara is the social worker and then-church employee who had personally witnessed Allison’s being abused by her husband.  Hahn also denied that he had asked Sara not to testify in court (if called upon) as to what she had seen – in other words, denied that he had asked her to lie.

The only witnesses to these conversations, of course, were Sara and Robert Hahn, leaving no third person in a position to corroborate what was said.

This blog stands by its original reporting.  Sara herself, who is well-known to many in the Chesapeake Church community, is a credible person and a respected professional in her field.  Her account of her conversations and interactions with Hahn was consistent and believable.  She had no reason to invent anything.  What Hahn was telling her not to do not only shocked her conscience, but would have required her to ignore all that she had learned in the course of her professional training about appropriate responses to spousal abuse.

And Hahn’s “let’s sweep this under the rug” instructions to Sara were consistent with his suspicious attitude toward Allison during the meeting in January 2021 in which he and the Elders openly encouraged the abused wife to doubt her own experience and, unkindly and inexcusably, threw in Allison’s face her own earlier marital failings.

Finally, Sara told family and friends at the time, in January 2021, what Hahn had said to her about not calling the police and not telling the truth if summoned to court. Her story was not new-minted when she was interviewed by the Editor.

Getting the story right: a correction

The recent post entitled “A Law Unto Himself,” included a brief mention of the abolition of the church’s Board of Deacons.  The post asserted that it was Robert Hahn who did away with the Board of Deacons.

A reader has kindly brought it to our attention that this assertion was inaccurate. This reader, who was active in the church during the early 2000s as a Deacon and as a ministry leader, advises us that it was the Deacons themselves, as a group, who came to realize that the biblical role of deacons was being performed adequately by the church’s ministry leaders.

“After months of prayer and discussion,” he states, “we, as a group, recommended to the session of elders that the Board of Deacons end and recognize that the deacon role was being fulfilled by the ministry leaders of the church.”  He states that the members of the church voted to accept this recommendation, marking the end of the formal Diaconate.

This former Deacon states that the Deacons’ recommendation was not influenced by Robert Hahn or by the Elders.

We appreciate this clarification and have edited the “A Law Unto Himself” post accordingly.  Since the Book of Church Order made no provision for Deacons, we mistakenly assumed that the Board of Deacons was abolished as a result of its adoption.  That was not the case, and Hahn was not responsible for the change.  The Board of Deacons had been eliminated before the Book of Church Order was adopted.  We stand corrected.

It remains the case that the Articles of Incorporation, which expressly provide for a Board of Deacons and set forth their responsibilities, were never amended to reflect the church’s decision to do without a formal Board of Deacons.