Danny Shelton's Grand Smokescreen Scheme
New Phase: Plan B
A new phase of the Danny Shelton Corruption Scandal was launched on January 24, 2007, when Attorney Harold Lance
issued a unilateral statement on behalf of Adventist Services and Industries (ASI). This statement
is favorable to Danny Shelton even though there never was an investigation by ASI. The sending
out of this statement was a blatant and grievous violation of the confidentiality agreement that Lance
imposed on all participants in the discussion, and it contains a number of critical errors of fact as well.
By January 26, 3ABN had posted the statement on their website, something that
Lance's confidentiality agreement was intended to avoid. Requests to Lance for ways to rectify this matter have thus
far gone unanswered. And the posted statement differs from Harold Lance's, raising questions as to whether
3ABN and/or Danny Shelton directly or indirectly participated in the drafting of that statement.
All this was a Plan B, as it were, of a smokescreen scheme 3ABN president Danny Shelton wrote about on December
5, 2006, in the email that appears below, an email written in response to information
given by his own board chairman, Dr. Walt Thompson.
Information from Dr. Walt Thompson
According to Dr. Thompson, Danny had told him in 2003
that the Tommy Shelton child molestation allegations were about 30 years old, when the
2003 Glenn Dryden letter
that prompted their conversation indicated that there were misconduct allegations as recent as three years
old at that time.
According to Dr. Thompson, Danny also had said in 2003 that the child molestation allegations were due to a
feud between Dryden and Tommy, when the facts are that for 8 years after Tommy's ordination was revoked in 1985
over some of these allegations, Dryden still lived 800 miles away. While Tommy pastored in West Frankfort,
Illinois, Dryden was pastoring in Dunn Loring, Virginia.
Thus, apparently, Danny Shelton lied to cover up Tommy's child molestation allegations,
and we reach that conclusion based on the written testimony of his own board chairman and staunch defender.
Whether Dryden's allegations are true or not is beside the point. Allegations are allegations, and there
obviously were allegations of sexual misconduct that occurred as late as 2000 in Dunn Loring, Virginia, based
on Dryden's 2003 letter.
Danny's December 5, 2006, Email
Notice carefully Danny's first response to Dr. Thompson's request that Bob Pickle verify the information
that Danny had given Dr. Thompson:
|
-------- Original Message --------
| From: |
Danny Shelton |
| To: |
Bob Pickle |
| CC: |
Walt Thompson |
| Subject: |
RE: Some additional verification needed for Walt Thompson's statements. |
| Date: |
Tue, 5 Dec 2006 09:16:41 -0600 |
|
Bob,
As you know we are letting ASI handle the situation regarding my divorce from Linda.
Did I have biblical grounds for my part in the divorce of Linda and me.
Many lies have been spread by Linda and others using people like Gailon Joy and others.
According to you and Gailon and several others, the 3ABN leadership
including myself, have covered up my wrong doing by making Linda
the scape goat.
Either this is true or it is not. Much has been said by Johann,
Arild, Barbara K. and people who didn't even know Linda and
me.
ASI will decide who is doing the cover up. Somebody is lying!
After hearing the testimony and evidence from both sides ASI
will make a decision. Should ASI decide that the 3ABN board
and myself did not "scapegoat Linda" to cover up my sins, then,
in my opinion it will become obvious to the public that maybe
many of these other accusations are lies also.
If on the other hand ASI decides that me and the 3ABN board
covered up my sins to scapegoat Linda, then I believe that it
will become obvious that I am probably lying when I deny many
of the other accusations coming from Linda and her group.
That's why I choose to wait until ASI handles this huge issue
of mine and Linda's divorce before answering questions of all
the other accusations manufactured by Linda, Gailon, Derrell
Johann, Barbara Kerr and others who have or has had an ax to
grind with 3ABN.
For every person accusing me and 3ABN of dong wrong I can show
thousands who will testify of all the good that 3ABN in doing
including nearly all of it's employees.
Danny
|
Several points may be noted.
- Danny in this email is responding to the resurfacing of allegations in 2003, which is a year before
Linda's alleged and apparently unproven affair in 2004. How then can
the Tommy Shelton child molestation allegations have anything
whatsoever to do with Linda, Gailon, Derrell, Johann, Barbara
Kerr, and Arild, all of whom became alienated from Danny due to the events of 2004?
- Since the source of the information being asked about is Dr. Walt Thompson, and
everything is supposed to be "lies," is Danny calling his staunch defender, Dr. Thompson, a liar?
- While denying that he is using Linda as a "scape goat" or
smokescreen, Danny at the same time made crystal clear that he
intended to use a positive decision by ASI as a smokescreen. He
planned to use that decision to prove to everyone that he has to be
telling the truth about everything else, even if he prohibits
an investigation into everything else.
The Grand Scheme
Prohibit an investigation into everything else? That is exactly what Danny did, as made clear
in Harold Lance's statement issued January 24, 2007, and now posted at 3ABN's website. Thus Danny is undoubtedly
pleased that he has succeeded in obtaining his objective: getting
some sort of positive decision from ASI that he can use in his
defense without actually disclosing any evidence one way or the other.
Plan A was to get a positive statement after an ASI panel review of the situation. Plan B
was to get a positive statement anyway, just without a panel review.
Yet Harold Lance's statement, unfortunately for Danny, contains
some fatal flaws and errors that make it quite clear
that it is both distorted and inaccurate.
ASI is a good organization, and it pains us to see Danny Shelton so determined to either rule or ruin
that he is willing to jeopardize ASI's reputation rather than step aside.
As we have been accessing the situation a bit by looking through old correspondence, we have been
forced to revise this introduction in order to be as truthful and accurate as possible
(old edition here). While at
first we had wanted to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, we have discovered
over the last 24 hours that there is little doubt about it: Someone at high levels of ASI leadership
appears to have conspired with Danny Shelton to thwart the investigation before it ever got started.
Simply put, the whole ASI tribunal idea was negotiated by a high-level Seventh-day Adventist
Church leader in order to hear the evidence Gailon Arthur Joy had discovered regarding a large range of issues.
And someone within ASI appears to have conspired with Danny Shelton to do two things:
- Exclude Gailon Joy from the very tribunal that had been
proposed to hear the evidence of corruption he had uncovered.
- Exclude the very allegations the tribunal process was supposed
to consider, and only look at the Danny-Linda thing.
We have no doubt that the rank and file of ASI will be very disappointed at what they read here.
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