You Can’t Handle the Truth
Defamation actions in cases of abuse
“If I talk about what he did to me, can he sue me?”
Many survivors of abuse have asked me that question.
We instinctively know that healing requires talking about what happened to us — as Dr. Diane Langberg often says, healing from trauma takes talking, tears, and time. But even after we finally realize that what happened to us is wrong, many of us fear talking about it, especially after hearing about survivors being sued by their abusers.
Here’s the hard truth: Anyone can sue anyone for anything.
I have given that answer to survivors, whether their experience involves interpersonal, institutional, sexual, spiritual, domestic abuse…. And while it’s true, an individual case of abuse and any instance of speaking out about it have their own set of unique risks. There are also different ways to try to protect yourself against being the target of a defamation lawsuit by your abuser.
Note: Nothing in this article should be construed as legal advice or as establishing an attorney-client relationship. Please consult an attorney to understand your legal rights and specific risks related to these issues.
“What if my abuser denies what he did after I speak out? Can I bring a defamation case against him for calling me a liar?”
Defamation cases in the context of abuse allegations can be both swords and shields. Alleged abusers like Johnny Depp can use them as swords to attack the truth as told by their victim (Amber Heard),1 and survivors like E. Jean Carroll can use them as shields to defend the truth when it is denied by their abuser (Donald Trump).
Although those were some of the most famous abuse defamation cases, they were not the first:
It’s not unheard of for people accused of sex crimes to sue their accusers for defamation. In 2015, Ray McDonald – a former player for the San Francisco 49ers – sued a woman who had accused him of rape (a judge ultimately tossed the case). Comedian Bill Cosby threatened and then backed off on filing a defamation suit against Beverly Johnson, a former model who claimed in a Vanity Fair article that Cosby had drugged and molested her.2
In one case, a sexual abuser filed a defamation lawsuit against his victim the day he pled guilty to assault. It took six years for the victim to be vindicated, both with a unanimous verdict in her favor in her civil suit against the abuser for sexually assaulting her and with a dismissal of the defamation case. Thankfully, a large law firm took her cases pro bono.
I personally faced the question of whether to bring my own case of defamation against Dave Ramsey after he lied about me on stage to his whole company.3 Then on the flip side, once I healed more and gained the strength and support to speak more publicly about the abuse in my marriage and the bullying and spiritual abuse of Dave and his team, I had to weigh the risks of whether uber litigious, bully Dave, or my ex-husband, would try to bring a defamation case against me.4 While the truth is a complete defense to defamation, a common tactic of bullies is to bring a defamation case in order to wear you down and attempt to bankrupt you in court while you attempt to prove that you’re telling the truth.
In that same vein, the Southern Baptist Convention was sued by two individuals that were named as abusers in its report from Guidepost Solutions.5 The report was tasked with investigating how the SBC responded to reports of abuse and identifying any additional alleged abuse within SBC leadership. In full disclosure, I represent the non-party victim (who was not sued for defamation) of one of the alleged abusers who did sue the SBC and Guidepost. In the other case, the alleged abuser actually sued his victim as well as the SBC and Guidepost.
How a defamation action can re-victimize a survivor
Imagine being the victim of a powerful person’s sexual or other abuse, and then being forced to defend yourself in court and in the public eye, spending significant amounts for legal fees and being drug through the mud.
For many victims, they were gaslit by their abusers for years or decades that the abuse either (1) wasn’t abuse, or (2) was their fault.
When they finally wrestle with the facts, wrestle with the power and other dynamics at play that provided the foundation for the abuse, and wrestle themselves out of the mis-assignment of responsibility on them6 that the abuser fostered and perpetuated, their mind is unshackled from the abuser’s warped mindset. His control is finally gone.
But then a defamation action basically takes those same twisted arguments and perpetuates them again, using the U.S. court system to attempt to enshrine them with legitimacy. In that way, a survivor can be victimized three painful times:
By the original abuse
By the mishandling of their allegations when they report them, especially painful if the allegations were received and mishandled by a church or purportedly faith-based organization
By the court system in being forced to relive what happened to them and defend the truth and their own responses to being victimized
Recently, well-known pastor T.D. Jakes filed his own defamation suit when a man accused him on a podcast of sexually assaulting him in a hotel room on a trip as well as proposing an ongoing sexual relationship in the 1980’s.
That case highlights a legal recourse that survivors may be able to take advantage of in defending themselves against a defamation claim by their alleged abuser: Anti-SLAPP statutes. These statutes are meant to quickly end a case brought essentially to intimidate or bankrupt someone for exercising their First Amendment rights to speak out. SLAPP stands for “strategic lawsuits against public participation.” In states that have anti-SLAPP statutes, a defendant in a defamation suit can bring a motion to dismiss based on anti-SLAPP, which delays discovery, often the most expensive phase of a lawsuit, until the court rules.
The defendant in T.D. Jakes’ lawsuit has filed an anti-SLAPP motion, attaching to it affidavits that specifically detail the alleged actions of Jakes.7 The motion also alleges that speaking about the alleged assault was in the context of a broader public conversation about abuse within the church and Youngblood’s own abuse of others, a topic of public interest and benefit.
Slander in the Bible
Many survivors have shared stories of staying silent because they were worried that by sharing their story, they would be accused of slander. Or, the church or ministry environment they were in specifically referenced slander as saying something bad about someone, whether or not it was true.
Legally, slander by definition is a false statement.
Some might argue that the Bible means something different by slander, lumping it in with gossip as some type of unwholesome speech. However, for both concepts, it is really the state of the heart in speaking about the issue. As one commentator noted, for gossip, “there needs to be evil intent behind the sharing of it (out of a bad heart). The gossip must be seeking some kind of personal satisfaction and seeking to bring another person down unnecessarily.”8 Further, “slander is more specifically saying something evil about someone that is not true and thereby injuring their “good name.”9
Speaking out in the face of a possible defamation action
So how can survivors balance the desire to speak out about their abuse, whether it is to process their abuse, to potentially identify other victims, to warn others, and/or for accountability for their abuser, with the risk of being targeted with a defamation action?
As with any legal defense, it is helpful to have documentation. The more documentation you have, either in the way of witnesses, correspondence such as emails, texts, or letters, audio or video recordings, diaries, or other evidence of the abuse or the circumstances surrounding it, the safer you are in the event of threatened defamation suit. Truth is a complete defense to defamation.
Planning out one’s public statements with an attorney is another step that can better protect a survivor from a defamation suit. Attorneys experienced with these cases can help avoid landmines that might increase the risks if such a case were brought.
Additional resources for survivors in evaluating their risks related to a possible defamation suit:
What Sexual Assault Survivors Should Know About Defamation, by Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation
A Guide to Defamation for Survivors of Sexual Assault or Harassment, by The Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund
Survivors Speaking Out: A Toolkit About Defamation Lawsuits and Other Retaliation By and For People Speaking Out About Sex-Based Harassment, by National Women’s Law Center
Although these resources might specifically reference sexual abuse and/or harassment, the information in them is useful for all types of abuse.
In the end, abuse survivors are some of the strongest people I know. Many have cast all fear to the side and spoken out boldly despite risks of a defamation action.
God honors the truth. His desire is for justice and truth.
When we speak about our difficult experiences of abuse from a place of loving ourselves, loving others, and yes, as we heal, loving our abusers enough to seek their accountability, I believe God honors that.
Warmly,
The Depp-Heard defamation case was pretty extreme. It was brought based on Heard’s op-ed in the Washington Post in 2018 headlined with “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.” She never mentions Depp, but refers to herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”
Many people don’t realize that prior to Depp winning his defamation case against Amber Heard, a court in the U.K. found her allegations to be substantially true. The first Depp abuse case came when Depp sued The Sun newspaper when it called him a “wife beater.” The judge in that case found that 12 of 14 events of abuse detailed by Heard were proven to a civil liability standard. Because Heard was not a party to the U.K. suit, it did not preclude him re-litigating the issue of whether or not he abused Heard. Instead the case turned into a circus where the waters were muddied and underhanded tactics used to influence social media and thus, public perception. A podcast, “Who Trolled Amber?” explored this influence. In the end, the goal was for Depp to bring his career back to life and in that, he was successful.
Marcos Breton, “Is this sex offender really suing his victim because she called him a rapist on Facebook?” The Sacramento Bee, 10/3/2016.
These two episodes of the Untangled Faith podcast explain the “Got Your Six” speech where the slander (verbal defamation) occurred: Part 1 and Part 2. The statute of limitations for slander in Tennessee is incredibly short - six months. Although I didn't learn of the contents of the Got Your Six speech until the fall of 2019 (the speech was in May 2019), I would have had to bring suit at the latest in early 2020. At that time, I was still dealing with significant impacts of trauma and so were my kids. The last thing on my mind was suing Dave Ramsey.
This was a reasonable fear given that in 2020, Dave’s team sent cease and desist letters to several former Ramsey families after Amy Fritz (who later started the Untangled Faith podcast which delved further into this and other issues related to spiritual abuse and harm in the church) wrote a blog post alluding to Ramsey’s cover up of my ex-husband’s abuse and affairs. Dave had already sued others who spoke negatively about the company. Ultimately, each of us in our own time had to break through the fear, the fear of man, because it was intentionally crafted by Dave and Ramsey Solutions in order to keep people quiet. That is a common tactic with abusers. For myself, I decided that speaking the truth was the best path, was the healing path, and actually protected me more in the end.
In Hunt v. Southern Baptist Convention, former president of the SBC Johnny Hunt was accused of sexual assault by the wife of an SBC pastor. While Hunt has told about four versions of the facts beginning with not even knowing the couple all the way to alleging that it was consensual encounter that did not constitute adultery, we await the court’s ruling on the defendants’ motions for summary judgment. Meanwhile, the case is set for trial in June 2025.
In Sills v. Southern Baptist Convention, former seminary professor David Sills was accused of initiating a sexual relationship with a student. Although the student was an adult at the time, certain power dynamics can exist, and were alleged in that case, where meaningful consent to a sexual relationship does not exist. The survivor also alleged specific intimidation and coercion in that case.
“[T]he foundation of all abuse is the mis-assignment of responsibility. So the abuse victim accepts that assignment of responsibility as being theirs.” Bob Hamp, What the Healing Journey Looks Like, The Flying Free Podcast with Natalie Hoffman (episode 277)
The Affidavit of defendant Duane Youngblood alleges that around 1986, Jakes “pulled me close and tried to kiss me. The next morning, he called my family’s home, spoke to my mother, and then told me he wanted me to be the only person he had a sexual relationship with when he came to town. He also made it clear that I wasn’t to be involved with anyone else and promised to take care of me for life. I did not agree to this.” The Affidavit of his brother, Richard Edwin Youngblood also alleges being propositioned by Jakes specifically, Jakes sharing inappropriate sexual information, then also, “while I was laying in my bed, I felt Elder Jakes climb into my bed. He pressed his body against mine and asked, ‘Youngblood, do you feel that?’ He was referencing his erection that he was pressing against my back side. I got up out of bed in complete shock as he also got up from the opposite side and met me. He grabbed me by my arms and pulled me to him and started trying to kiss me.”
Pearlsandswinesite.com, “Gossip, Slander, and Reporting Abuse: Pushing Back on Poor Exegesis” 7/18/2023 (retrieved 3/6/2025).
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