Stanley blamed Strickland as the reason why he, Fleming, and Causey “unfortunately…are having to do some of this cleanup.”
Survivor Claims Joiner Has Been Abusing Women Since He Started In Ministry
In her statement, the survivor claims that Joiner has been using his positions of authority to “abuse women” since he started in ministry and shared that she “became one of Reggie’s targets in the early 2000s as a student in high school.”
She went on to share that Joiner groomed her at an early age. After she turned 18, he started giving her more attention, gifted her a purity ring, a job working for him, and money. He told her he thought of her as a “daughter.” She even said, “Despite my having zero experience (in life or career) or even a day of higher education, Reggie invited me to every meeting, every meal, every work trip, every family dinner, and vacation.”
Within weeks of her working for Joiner, she said that he started asking more personal questions about her home life, dating life, and sex life. She recalled the time that Joiner “called college admission offices posing as my dad” and “helped me register for classes. She said the he even “started introducing me as his fourth daughter.”
Describing what others around her were seeing, the survivor said:
During this time I was surrounded by people who observed Reggie’s excess of attention toward me. But it was dismissed due to the habitual nature of Reggie’s pattern of behavior toward women. North Point family ministries staff talked openly about Reggie’s “lack of boundaries,” and told me that I was “one of Reggie’s girls.” It was well-known and acknowledged that Reggie frequently created bogus jobs for young, attractive women. Those closest to him also knew he liked to work remotely, sometimes from hotel rooms “just to get away from everyone.” The general consensus could be summed up as, “that’s just how Reggie is.” In my early twenties, I assumed that if this didn’t seem like a problem to grown adults with real careers, then it must simply be the way things occur in the real world.
The survivor shared that one of her high school friends warned her by telling her “the only reason a grown man wants to spend that much time with an 18 year old is because he wants to have sex with her.” But she said she “balked” at her friend’s warning and remembers Joiner’s response after she told him what her friend had said. “To my surprise,” she claims, “he didn’t balk. He confessed he would be lying if he said the thought had never crossed his mind.”
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She continued, “But, he explained, he was a man. He told me that’s just the way men are wired. He told me men thought about sex with every woman they saw.” Joiner than asked her if she “thought any less of him” because he thought that, she said. “I told him I didn’t,” said the survivor. “I repeated back to him the story he had told me. He was just a man. He couldn’t help it.”
As the months went on, the survivor said that Joiner started to confide in her more by confessing his, and other people’s, secrets to her. “He told me how lonely he was,” she stated, and that “he couldn’t trust anyone, not even therapists. Everyone was out to get him.” She said that Joiner “fell apart in front of me, telling me he couldn’t go on. He wanted to quit his job. He wanted to live in a cabin in the woods. He wanted to die.”
The survivor said that Joiner would tell her that “the only way he could go on was if I, the keeper of his secrets, still believed he was good.” She shared that made her feel like she “was suddenly the caretaker in our relationship. I felt responsible, not only for him, but also, by extension, everyone impacted by his ministry.”
“I became aware that my real job, since my other job had never been clearly defined,” said the survivor, “was to absolve him of his sins, excuse his behavior, and reassure him that he was good. I believed he had done so much for me; surely, I could do this for him in return.”
