Home Christian News Former RZIM Leader: Abdu Murray Interview With the McDowells ‘Not Appropriate’

Former RZIM Leader: Abdu Murray Interview With the McDowells ‘Not Appropriate’

Murray told the McDowells that RZIM hired Miller & Martin to conduct an independent investigation and to find out the truth “no matter how uncomfortable.” But he failed to acknowledge that RZIM had initially retained a law firm with ties to Ravi’s RICO lawsuit. In Weitnauer’s view, that decision indicates RZIM’s priorities at that point were loyalty to Zacharias more than they were discovering the truth. What’s more, said Weitnauer, Murray was opposed to Miller & Martin’s report being released publicly, and the RZIM board only decided to release it because of pressure from the public and the media. 

Carson Weitnauer: There’s More

In the interview with the McDowells, Murray acknowledged many failures, but he also told them, “I never advocated for trying to silence or intimidate victims.”

Yet Carson Weitnauer shared a troubling conversation he had with Murray in October 2020 in which the latter said he did not want to release Lori Ann Thompson from the NDA she had signed. According to Weitnauer, Murray’s reasoning was that if they did release Thompson, “She can say anything she wants. She can lie about how many times they talked on the phone. She can lie about what they said on the phone. And we have no way whatsoever of saying that did or didn’t happen. And she entered into that NDA with lawyers. It wasn’t like she was sitting in a room somewhere by herself, her and her husband cowering in the corner crying.”

For Murray to say that after it had become plain that Thompson had repeatedly been slandered for speaking out against a sexual predator is “heartbreaking,” said Weitnauer. He also described a conversation he had with Murray where Murray pressured him not to push for Thompson to be released from her NDA because of the emotional pain it was causing Sarah Davis, Ravi Zacharias’s daughter.

“For Abdu to claim to the McDowells that he never wanted to silence or intimidate victims,” said Weitnauer, “or to [columnist and author] David French, that he never wanted anyone to feel marginalized or disloyal…those statements are not at all aligned with my own personal experience.”