Episode Details

Thirty-four women. That's how many came forward with allegations of harassment and misconduct against Bill Gothard, the founder of one of the most powerful fundamentalist Christian organizations in American history. Some were teenagers when the alleged conduct occurred. Many had been personally recruited by Gothard to work at his headquarters. All of them came from families already embedded in his system — a system that taught, as its central doctrine, that questioning authority was the spiritual equivalent of stepping into Satan's territory.Gothard has denied all allegations. He resigned from the Institute in Basic Life Principles in 2014 after an internal investigation found he had acted "inappropriately" but not "criminally." He has never been charged.The Institute in Basic Life Principles isn't a fringe group. At its peak, IBLP claimed over two and a half million seminar attendees. Its homeschooling arm, the Advanced Training Institute, educated thousands of children with a curriculum built around Gothard's personal interpretations of scripture. Governors, congressmen, and presidential candidates attended its conferences. Its most famous adherents — the Duggar family — brought the organization into living rooms across America through reality television.This is the first installment of a five-part investigation into IBLP — not just the public figures, but the doctrine, the training centers, the political reach, and the survivors who got out. In 2025, the Texas Supreme Court allowed a lawsuit to proceed alleging that IBLP's teachings were engineered to create conditions enabling abuse within families. That case is pending. Gothard is ninety-one. The organization still operates from its Texas headquarters. And the question at the center of this series is the one the system was designed to prevent anyone from asking: who was holding the man at the top accountable?

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