New Life Church leader Ted Haggard was once one of America's most charismatic and powerful evangelical leaders, with an audience of more than 30 million people. Ted began counseling foreign dignitaries and consulting on a weekly basis with President George W. Bush. By 2005, Time magazine named him one of the most influential evangelicals in America.
But no one—not even his devoted wife, five children and his Colorado Springs, Colorado-based congregation—suspected that Ted was paying an admitted male escort for crystal meth. In November 2006, Mike Jones publicly alleged he'd engaged in a three-year sexual relationship with the pastor, which Ted immediately denied. Three days after the scandal broke and after a voice mail featuring Ted asking Mike for drugs was released, Ted's story unraveled. Eventually, Ted admitted to sexual immorality and to buying drugs. He later resigned from the church he helped to found.
In his first television interview since the scandal, Ted talks with Oprah about why he kept secret a part of his life he calls dark and repulsive.
"It was the first time that dark area of my life I'd worked so hard to fight against was coming to the surface," he says. "And to say it, and to talk about it, was so shameful and shocking. Even to me."
Ted says he spent years trying to deny his attraction to men, struggling with what he saw as a conflict between this attraction and his love for being a pastor. "I loved the whole dynamic of serving people," he says. "But then I had this other thing inside of me that seemed so contrary to that."
In the months leading up to the scandal, Ted says he would walk around his church in the middle of the night, praying to God.
"I'd pray, 'God, do whatever it takes'," he says. "Because I knew I was on a road that was going to kill me. And then the month before Mike Jones spoke up, I was at our prayer and fasting center and I laid on the floor and said, 'Oh, God, never again. I'll never do that again.'"
For months, he worried that if his secret surfaced he'd lose everything meaningful in his life, including his family and his church. Ted says he prayed desperately that "God would do a miracle in me and I would be okay before I embarrassed my family and my friends."
Ted says he always knew his sexuality was complicated for him, calling it "the internal war inside of me." Because of the complex nature of his feelings and his position with his church, Ted says he sought counsel from spiritual leaders, some of whom said he should further immerse himself in church work. "I kept trying to deal with it within spiritual circles, and that didn't work out," he says.
Ted says it was only during therapy after the scandal that he came to terms with his sexuality. He says a therapist has described his sexuality as "heterosexual with homosexual attachments." While he can't speak for others, Ted says he feels that while he's not gay, he also does not fit into "the normal boxes" people use to define sexuality.
In addition to confronting his sexuality, Ted says therapy also helped him address sexual abuse he says he suffered as a child. "I never saw it as abuse," he says. "And then in therapy I told them about how in the 6th grade I was still wetting the bed and they said, 'Oh. There is something there.'"
Ted says his work in therapy for both the sex scandal and his childhood abuse helped him come to peace with who he is. And while he says he still has sexual thoughts about men, he no longer feels compelled to act on them.
The peace that had evaded Ted for so many years was due largely, he says, to a struggle to be the ideal version of who he thought the world expected. "I wanted to be the good guy," he says. "I just wanted to be faithful to my wife. I wanted to be faithful to the wonderful people that came to New Life Church. And so I would say, 'If I pray and fast one more time,' I would get strength."
But Ted says it was immediately after the scandal that he began to tell the truth fully, admitting everything to his wife, Gayle.
"[Now] it's the first time in my life that I haven't had these wars going on, and the difference is [that] I've had two years of open process where I don't have people looking at me as a leader," he says. "I'm just a guy."
Gayle, Ted's wife of 30 years, heard about the accusations against her husband the same way everyone else did—during the interview Mike Jones gave on the radio in November 2006. She says she laughed when she heard what Mike was accusing her husband of—especially the drug aspect—because it seemed so far-fetched.
"I thought, '[Mike] obviously does not know my husband,' because my husband didn't drink alcohol, didn't smoke cigarettes. Not even in high school did he tamper with any kind of drugs," she says.
Earlier in their marriage, Gayle says Ted had told her that he struggled with homosexual thoughts, but now—decades into their marriage and five children later—she assumed he had those thoughts under control. After the radio interview aired, Gayle and Ted went to their attorney's office, where Ted told her the unthinkable. "He said, 'Gayle, part of this is true.' And the first words out of my mouth were: 'Who are you?'" Gayle says.
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In the days that followed, Ted says he came clean with Gayle about his sexual immorality and drug use. "I can't think of anything that would have been a greater shock to me, and, literally, I felt as though the rug had been pulled out from under me," Gayle says.
Yet, she stayed by her husband's side. "I was going to stay with Ted because, first of all, I love him deeply and I knew that we had a very real relationship," she says.
Through therapy, Gayle says she realized that her marriage wasn't a lie and that Ted's struggles were only one aspect of him and didn't take away from the life they had built together. "I choose to forgive him, and I choose to love him. I made the decision. Then I had to work it out. And that was the painful process for me."
In the HBO documentary The Trials of Ted Haggard, filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi follows Ted and his family over an 18-month period as they struggle to rebuild their lives after the scandal. The documentary chronicles the Haggard family in Scottsdale, Arizona, moving first to a friend's home and then into an apartment. It also shows Ted's many unsuccessful attempts at finding a job.
Ted says he and his family felt as though they were living "in exile" because the terms of the settlement they reached with the church forced them to leave their home in Colorado and stay out of the public eye. Money was tight, and Ted spiraled into moments of self-pity. In the documentary, he calls himself a "first-class loser."
In a recent interview, Ted apologized to Mike and the gay community for how he handled himself when the scandal broke. In response, Oprah reads a statement from Mike:
"Dear Ted: You have publicly apologized to me. I accept your apology. However, I cannot speak for the millions of proud gay men and women. I hope you understand the anger and sadness that overcame me once I discovered who you were. As a gay man who has fought for gay rights since my early teens, continually being treated as a second-class citizen has never set well with me. I've second-guessed myself so many times on my actions that I, too, have been brought to tears and loneliness. I believe you are a good person and could do so much more. My only sadness is that you've decided to make your comeback so publicly that it will open old wounds and new ones. My best to you and your family."
"I'm grateful for that statement, and I don't want to cause wounds to anyone," Ted says. "I hope any wounds that our story opens will be an opening so they can be cleansed and healed."
The announcement—and exile—hurt not just Ted and Gayle. It also deeply affected their five kids.
Marcus and Christy, the two oldest children, recall hearing the news in a family meeting. While they knew about the accusations through the media, Marcus—who is also a preacher—says hearing his father's admission of the truth was different. "It was a sad meeting, but the decisiveness—it was so humbling," he says. "There was an immediate relief that I think we felt as kids—mixed with anger, frustration."
Christy also says that family meeting was a revelation. "I never had a dad I felt I could really relate to," she says. "And suddenly to see this vulnerable, honest man in front of me opened an opportunity for me to really know who my father really was for the first time."
Marcus says the children did not dwell on the details of their dad's sexuality. Instead, they focused on keeping the family together. "We knew that this kind of thing had the potential to rip our family apart. ... We committed to working through the anger, the frustration, the sadness, the yelling and stomping out, the fights that we would have to go through," he says. "We committed to go through that process so that we could be committed to each other."
Ted says that while his actions may have been hypocritical when he was a pastor, he did not engage in hateful speech from the pulpit against homosexuals. "Now, I do believe the Bible is the word of God. I believe God's ideal for us is to live in heterosexual monogamous marriages. I just believe that," he says. "I think it's an ideal, just like I wish there wasn't divorce. So an ideal is that there not be divorce, but there is divorce. An ideal is that heterosexual monogamous marriages would be there, but that's an ideal."
Ted says he and Gayle, as church leaders, made their private lives more public than many others in their position. "We were very open, very transparent, about everything—except this one area of my heart," he says.
Why did he keep such an important part of his life hidden from his church? "I thought it would go away," Ted says. "Unfortunately, that's the state in a lot of leadership roles. And when you're in a leadership role, whether it's political or a religious leadership role, that exists. And I'm not saying that as an excuse."
Despite being having lied for so long about such an essential part of his life, Ted says that in no way makes the rest of his life—especially his religious life—a lie. "After going through this experience, I believe everybody is in need of redemption. Some sins are more socially unacceptable than others, but we all need redemption, and [God] graciously provides it," he says. "And I know, from firsthand experience, that he loves unrighteous people. Because when I couldn't seek him anymore, he came and got me."
At his lowest point, Ted says he even contemplated suicide. "Jesus came to me, and he said, 'Now we're ready. Now I can save you.' And that's when my life started to change," Ted says. "Because he sought me instead of me seeking him."
The experience, Ted says, has taught him a tremendous lesson. "We've learned about the power of love and the power of hate. The power of hate, though, is incredible," he says. "Hatred is so destructive and judgment, especially prejudgment, just leaves a person with no where to go."
"It sounds like you'd make a better minister now," Oprah says.
"No question," Ted says. "Now that I'm disqualified, I'm qualified."
After this show was taped, a former church volunteer, identified as "Grant," leveled new allegations against Ted. Grant accuses Ted of performing a sex act in his presence and sending explicit text messages in 2006.
Ted responds, writing: "Oprah, I did not reveal the relationship on your show out of privacy concerns—even though there was never any physical contact. I have regretted my irresponsible behavior. I apologized to Grant, my family and the church two years ago. I now ask him again for his forgiveness as well as the people of the church."
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