Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about
Speaker 2: bad people who are the people you'll be hearing about
Speaker 2: most in your daily life if you spend any amount
Speaker 2: of time on social media or listening to the news.
Speaker 2: But we're gonna be talking about a fun one today,
Speaker 2: not as depressing as the bad people who make up
Speaker 2: the rest of your day to day life. I don't know.
Speaker 2: They make up my day to day life, and that's
Speaker 2: pretty depressing. But not today, because we've got Molly Lambert
Speaker 2: as a guest. Molly, welcome on the show. Are you
Speaker 2: ready to have your day be worse?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh great? A transition to the Tall Boys of ZeVA.
Speaker 4: You are.
Speaker 5: For some reason that's very funny to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. Twelve ounce has just wasn't enough. Molly, what
Speaker 2: do you gotta plug today? At the start of the episode,
Speaker 2: before we introduce our.
Speaker 3: Bastard, I've got a book that came out called Double
Speaker 3: Ax and Pop.
Speaker 5: Holy Congratulations, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 3: It's from commercial type. It's about musical duo acts and
Speaker 3: everybody check it out. And then later this year I
Speaker 3: have a podcast coming out called Jenna World, which is
Speaker 3: about the history of the Peorn industry through kind of
Speaker 3: the Jenna Jamison story.
Speaker 2: Oh awesome, Yeah, that sounds fascinating. Well, today we're not
Speaker 2: talking about Genna Jamison. We're not talking about anyone who
Speaker 2: has ever done anything good at all. We are talking
Speaker 2: about Kevin Smith. Not that Kevin Smith, not the one
Speaker 2: who directed doc, although it is I don't know, we'll
Speaker 2: title this the other Kevin Smith or some shit. We're
Speaker 2: talking This guy is a Jamaican pastor who led a
Speaker 2: charismatic Christian End Time sect in Jamaica and lost his
Speaker 2: mind as a result of COVID lockdowns and wound up
Speaker 2: trying to have slit dozens of people's throats and moss
Speaker 2: during a church service. This is a wild story, and
Speaker 2: the fact that he has just named Kevin Smith the
Speaker 2: whole time is going to be frustrating. I'm gonna i'll
Speaker 2: cop to that right now. If you want to imagine
Speaker 2: silent Bob committing the heinous atrocities we're about to discuss,
Speaker 2: that's your business, although you should probably also talk to
Speaker 2: a therapist if you feel compelled to do that. Mollie,
Speaker 2: you ever heard of this guy, I'm gonna guess not.
Speaker 2: I had not until I started doing this digging.
Speaker 3: No, I've never heard of him.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, Well, welcome to a real fascinating piece of
Speaker 2: shit who is also kind of a Canadian bastard too,
Speaker 2: So we've got that going for us, like Canadian Jamaican
Speaker 2: real monster solidarity here in this week's episodes. And we'll
Speaker 2: have all that and more when we come back from
Speaker 2: the cold open.
Speaker 3: Oh what.
Speaker 2: We're back, Mollie. You ready to get into it? Let's
Speaker 2: do it, okay. So our bastard for this week's full
Speaker 2: name was Kevin Antonio Smith on T O in I E. L. Right,
Speaker 2: that's his name. We could call him Kevin O'smith to
Speaker 2: differentiate him from again, silent Bob, but I don't know
Speaker 2: how necessary that is. He was born in nineteen eighty two, probably,
Speaker 2: although again, this guy is like a cult leader caught.
Speaker 2: You never know with these fuckers. That's the first sign
Speaker 2: someone's a cult leader, is like. The birth date's a
Speaker 2: real open question, so funny probably, though there's some sources
Speaker 2: that suggest he might be a little younger than this,
Speaker 2: born more in the late eighties. And I've just got
Speaker 2: no idea what day or month he came into the world.
Speaker 2: I guess it doesn't matter all that much. He was
Speaker 2: definitely born in a town called glengof GLn Goffe in
Speaker 2: the parish of Saint Catharine. And this is in Jamaica.
Speaker 2: It's one of the most prosperous parts of the island.
Speaker 2: It's second only to Kingston as an industrial center, and
Speaker 2: it's got good access to water and a really good
Speaker 2: growing climate. So he comes up in like a fairly
Speaker 2: you know, Jamaica is an island with a lot of poverty,
Speaker 2: but he comes up in a fairly comfortable part of
Speaker 2: the island compared to some other parts. We have very
Speaker 2: little information about his early life, aside from the fact
Speaker 2: that he would later claim to have been physically abused
Speaker 2: by his father, who died when he was very young.
Speaker 2: So his mom's going to raise him on her own
Speaker 2: for much of his adolescence, which again not a wildly
Speaker 2: uncommon cult leader backstory. And this statistically, you know, just
Speaker 2: since the fact that she's a single mom might suggest
Speaker 2: that he came up in a degree of poverty, but
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of evidence either way, right Like,
Speaker 2: In fact, it kind of seems the evidence suggests more
Speaker 2: that she managed to keep them fairly comfortable I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what she did, but they don't seem to have
Speaker 2: been like on the edge of poverty or whatever. Right,
Speaker 2: he claims to have been baptized at age nine, and
Speaker 2: it's unclear which denomination he was from, but some sort
Speaker 2: of Protestant sect, right, just based on kind of the
Speaker 2: demographics of Jamaica and based on his later religious life,
Speaker 2: it was some kind of evangelical Protestant sect that he's
Speaker 2: baptized into. We can be pretty pretty sure of that.
Speaker 2: Years later, as part of a court case that we
Speaker 2: will talk about more in the future, Kevin would claim
Speaker 2: to have again been sexually abused as a child by
Speaker 2: a male relative, so both physically abused by his dad
Speaker 2: and sexually abused by a male relative. We don't know
Speaker 2: how old he would have been when this happened, but
Speaker 2: he's probably pre adolescent, somewhere around like ten to twelve.
Speaker 2: We know that he goes on to attend Jamaica College,
Speaker 2: which confusingly is not a college, this is a high school.
Speaker 2: I've read enough of the history to tell you I
Speaker 2: can't give you a perfect idea of why they called
Speaker 2: it Jamaica College, other than that word hasn't always meant
Speaker 2: the same thing, right. I think the school is initially
Speaker 2: established by like some I believe it's a Catholic member
Speaker 2: of the clergy who like leaves a bunch of money behind.
Speaker 2: But I forget exactly. But it's one of the best
Speaker 2: secondary schools in all of Jamaica. Right, So this is
Speaker 2: and it's not just I say it's primarily a secondary school.
Speaker 2: I think you can start going there when you're about
Speaker 2: ten years old, right, So it doesn't exactly map onto
Speaker 2: what we call a secondary school. But this is a
Speaker 2: real good school, and it's a public school.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's free to attend, and it's kind of got like
Speaker 2: a degree of international fame. So being able to get
Speaker 2: into Jamaica College suggests that you're like a kid who's
Speaker 2: done really well in school or has connections or both.
Speaker 2: Now my sources somewhat disagree here, but it seems like
Speaker 2: he kind of he doesn't finish his education at Jamaica College.
Speaker 2: He goes there. He probably starts when he's around ten,
Speaker 2: and he probably leaves when he's around fourteen. The Toronto
Speaker 2: Caribbean newspaper claims that this is when his mother moves
Speaker 2: the family to Canada in nineteen ninety six, but there's
Speaker 2: disagreement on when the family moves to Canada. The Walrus,
Speaker 2: which is an award winning Canadian magazine, says they moved
Speaker 2: when he was twelve, which would have been probably around
Speaker 2: ninety four, although again we don't know his birthday really,
Speaker 2: so it's unclear how much time he spent at Jamaica College,
Speaker 2: but a report on his social media history by the
Speaker 2: Jamaica Gleaner shows a photo of him wearing the school uniform,
Speaker 2: so we know that he went there at some point, right,
Speaker 2: So sometime between two and four years at this fairly
Speaker 2: prestigious academy, and then the family emigrates to Canada, and
Speaker 2: the fact that they were able to do so legally
Speaker 2: again suggests kind of a degree of financial comfort, because
Speaker 2: that's just not like a super cheap or easy thing, right,
Speaker 2: And it probably also suggests that like there's a lot
Speaker 2: of family support that's usually the case when people are
Speaker 2: able to make this move from Jamaica to Canada, that
Speaker 2: like members of their family kind of pool to help
Speaker 2: make this possible, right, whatever the case, He graduates high
Speaker 2: school in Canada and it's here that he starts preaching
Speaker 2: for the first time. Right, and this is this is
Speaker 2: where we start getting like the foreboding music. You know,
Speaker 2: this kid is like one of these teenage preachers. Like
Speaker 2: he gets into being an evangelical pastor at a very
Speaker 2: early age, which is almost never a good thing, right,
Speaker 2: Whenever someone's described as a gifted child preacher, which I've
Speaker 2: found references to in the Toronto Caribbean newspaper, it's like
Speaker 2: a bad thing, right, like that almost I've never heard
Speaker 2: of that ending.
Speaker 3: Well, hey, what if he's just got the touch?
Speaker 2: Come on, yeah, he's got the touch, He's got the power.
Speaker 2: If you watch I always recommend the documentary Marjoe when
Speaker 2: we talk about this, which is about a kid who
Speaker 2: was like used by his parents as a preacher from
Speaker 2: like age five or six on. It's a really fucked
Speaker 2: up documentary, won an Oscar. But there's a lot of
Speaker 2: this in the kind of Apostolic community and the Pentecostal community,
Speaker 2: right that like this attitude that well, because you're sort
Speaker 2: of touched by God to become a preacher, the younger
Speaker 2: you can bring someone in and get them preaching. Number one,
Speaker 2: it helps establish their career. You can be like I've
Speaker 2: been doing this since I was sixteen or seventeen or
Speaker 2: even younger, right, But it also it's kind of like
Speaker 2: a it's a marketing tool, right that you've got. We've
Speaker 2: got a child preacher, you know, God speaking of this
Speaker 2: little young man, and you know you need to hear
Speaker 2: what he's got to say. That's kind of a big
Speaker 2: deal in the community. We're not entirely certain where he
Speaker 2: comes up within sort of the evangelical community in Toronto.
Speaker 2: I've heard references to the Apostolic community in Toronto, Caribbean,
Speaker 2: although the Walrusk claims he joins the Exodus Deliverance Temple
Speaker 2: in Mississaugua at age seventeen, and these are slightly in conflict,
Speaker 2: although he could have done both, because that's just sort
Speaker 2: of the way this community works. If that's the case.
Speaker 2: The Exodus Deliverance Temple is founded in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: which meant he would have joined the year it was founded.
Speaker 2: And I kind of doubt that this is the case,
Speaker 2: just because I looked at their website and they say
Speaker 2: that when the church was founded, it was founded with
Speaker 2: only a few family members in a quaint and old
Speaker 2: white village hall. And he's not a member of the
Speaker 2: family that founded this church. So I think it's more
Speaker 2: likely that he comes out of the Apostolic community in Toronto.
Speaker 2: But the Walrisks may have done, you know, have access
Speaker 2: to information. I don't. I don't know if I'm getting
Speaker 2: into the weeds too much on this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But if he gets started in the Apostolic Faith church
Speaker 2: in Toronto, that is kind of a separate thing. And
Speaker 2: the Apostolic Faith movement is a strict fundamentalist Pinecot sect
Speaker 2: that originates actually in Los Angeles, right It gets its
Speaker 2: start kind of in a Hollywood at the end of
Speaker 2: the like right at the start of the nineteen hundreds
Speaker 2: into the eighteen hundreds, start of the nineteen hundreds. And
Speaker 2: this is there's like a wave of different evangelical Christian
Speaker 2: revivals that sweep and they often do start in the
Speaker 2: West Coast for all of its sort of reputation is
Speaker 2: like a progressive haven. This is a thing that occurs
Speaker 2: at the start of the nineteen hundreds. It occurs like
Speaker 2: in the mid century, it occurs after the Hippie movement, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's it's this constant place where you get these
Speaker 2: sort of a static evangelical movements that like rise up
Speaker 2: and they often will kind of sweep north in then
Speaker 2: east from Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: OK, have you ever considered getting into it?
Speaker 2: I mean I kind of was as a kid, right
Speaker 2: a little bit. I guess like I was sort of
Speaker 2: I came out of the sect of the watch mc
Speaker 2: call it the fake Catholic to the watch McCall, yeah,
Speaker 2: what the fuck are we? What do we call this?
Speaker 2: Everyone's shouting. Who knows what I mean by fake Catholics.
Speaker 2: They're now the part of the African Anglican Church. But
Speaker 2: we started out as this like kind of sect that
Speaker 2: was sort of like Catholicism light. And then my church
Speaker 2: left because they made a gay guy in California a
Speaker 2: minister and that was or a bishop, and that was
Speaker 2: not cool with a lot of people.
Speaker 3: I thought you were just like, they made a gay
Speaker 3: guy and so the.
Speaker 2: No, no, no no, they let a gay guy be
Speaker 2: a bishop and that was a real problem for the
Speaker 2: guy who ran my church. So we had like news
Speaker 2: cameras and shit at our church in Plano. It was
Speaker 2: all deal. But this is a little bit of like
Speaker 2: a different thing. It's called the Azusa Street Revival that
Speaker 2: gives a start to the Apostolic faith movement that is
Speaker 2: going to wind up probably being the church that Kevin Smith,
Speaker 2: the other one gets involved in, was started by a
Speaker 2: lady called Florence Crawford, and it's part of this wave
Speaker 2: of evangelical revivals that sweeps la from nineteen oh sixty
Speaker 2: nights fifteen, and it's characterized, like all Pentecostal revivals, by
Speaker 2: these acts of like a parent mass mania. So you'll
Speaker 2: get these groups of people who attend a preaching session
Speaker 2: and they'll start babbling in tongues together and like having
Speaker 2: what look like seizures where they're like twitching around on
Speaker 2: the ground and shouting in fake languages. And this kind
Speaker 2: of mania that spreads contagiously is a big part of
Speaker 2: the movement, right. And so a mission comes out of
Speaker 2: this on Azuza Street, which is why it's called the
Speaker 2: Azuza Street Revival, and they start a newspaper called The
Speaker 2: Apostolic Faith that begins circulating, and this lady Crawford, Florence Crawford,
Speaker 2: is a part of it.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The guy who'd kind of founded the movement was named
Speaker 2: William Seymour, and he makes Crawford like the director of
Speaker 2: state level efforts to bring more churches into the fold,
Speaker 2: and they wind up having a power struggle, right because
Speaker 2: Crawford is kind of looking to steer the ministry in
Speaker 2: her own direction, and this leads to like a civil
Speaker 2: war within the movement, and she winds up splitting and
Speaker 2: forming the Apostolic Faith Church and none other than Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 2: Classic story. If you get kicked out of LA, move
Speaker 2: up to Portland. You know, many such cases, including several
Speaker 2: people on this podcast.
Speaker 5: I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we get rent out of town, you come up
Speaker 2: here to start your cult. Of course, whom's among us?
Speaker 2: Whom's to among us?
Speaker 3: Yeah, when your cult's too crazy for LA.
Speaker 2: Right, right, time to go to Portland.
Speaker 3: Time to Portland.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful in its own way. So shit
Speaker 2: spreads from there. Once you're in Portland, you're not all
Speaker 2: that far from Canada, and pretty soon the AFC is
Speaker 2: affiliating with Like I mean, I think there's like twenty
Speaker 2: four hundred affiliated churches around the world today, But they
Speaker 2: move up to Canada pretty quickly, and they wind up
Speaker 2: setting up shop in Toronto in like nineteen forty three,
Speaker 2: which is when a Canadian named Stanley Hancock founds an
Speaker 2: Apostolic Faith newsletter in the city. Here's how the organization
Speaker 2: he established, which Kevin is probably winds up joining, describes
Speaker 2: its founding. After reading an Apostolic Faith paper. Stanley Hancock
Speaker 2: received his baptism and was banned from church. In nineteen
Speaker 2: forty three, he and others started the first Apostolic Faith
Speaker 2: church in Canada. Now there are eleven and the Apostolic
Speaker 2: Faith Church. It falls under this whiter umbrella of charismatic Christianity, right,
Speaker 2: which is a chunk of Protestantism, who believes in brief
Speaker 2: Number one, the Holy Spirit can and does directly enter
Speaker 2: people to change them and thus change the world. And
Speaker 2: number two, through this method, by sending the Holy Spirit
Speaker 2: into people, God bestows gifts upon them like prophecy and healing.
Speaker 2: He can like spontaneously heal your injuries by sending the
Speaker 2: Holy Spirit into you. And number three, and this is
Speaker 2: the most important part of charismatic Christianity. It's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun to writhe around on the ground and pretend
Speaker 2: to speak in a fake language. People love it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You could just take acid, you know, at a py
Speaker 2: trance festival or whatever to get the same experience. But
Speaker 2: they didn't have sy trance back then. We just didn't
Speaker 2: have the technology, nor did they have acid. Really, I
Speaker 2: don't know if my side trans jokes are gonna land
Speaker 2: with anyone less than thirty seven years old. Kids, I'll
Speaker 2: probably listen to a hundred gets while you take your drugs.
Speaker 3: Now, no trans is.
Speaker 2: Oh, is it back? Did it come back? Thank God
Speaker 2: a Betha was really suffering. It'll be fine, Yeah, yeah, excellent.
Speaker 2: So Pentecostals are again part of this. And when I
Speaker 2: talk about the Pentecostal Church, like, these guys are part
Speaker 2: of the charismatic movement, but there's divisions within Charismatic Christianity
Speaker 2: based on like do you believe speaking in tongues is
Speaker 2: a necessary precursor to being baptized? Do you have to
Speaker 2: prove the Holy Spirit has entered you right or not?
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like a whiskey bourbon sort of deal.
Speaker 2: Pentecostals are all part of the Charismatic movement, but the
Speaker 2: Charismatic movement isn't just Pentecostals right now. One thing all
Speaker 2: these churches have in common is that they're always sort
Speaker 2: of scouting for young men with what the rest of
Speaker 2: us might call strong cult leaders vibes. You know, we
Speaker 2: didn't have TikTok or like streaming back then, so as
Speaker 2: someone with those vibes couldn't just start a media career
Speaker 2: like they had, they pretty much like getting involved in
Speaker 2: a church or like Dianetics was basically their best option,
Speaker 2: you know, in the mid century. And Kevin though, comes
Speaker 2: up in this period right before the Internet's gonna really
Speaker 2: take off, and he gets scouted at around age seventeen
Speaker 2: by this community. On the brief autobiography for one of
Speaker 2: his now scrubb social media accounts, he claims at the
Speaker 2: age of seventeen he was sent to thirty three countries
Speaker 2: within two years as a profit to the Nations. And
Speaker 2: this is probably true that like once they figure out
Speaker 2: this kid's got the gift of gab, and you can
Speaker 2: kind of set him up in front of any church
Speaker 2: you want, and he'll keep them entertained and giving money,
Speaker 2: donating money for a couple of hours. You fly him
Speaker 2: all around, right, you put him up, he's like crashing
Speaker 2: in churches and whatnot around the world. But you fly
Speaker 2: him around and he's both building his own kind of platform,
Speaker 2: but he's also raising money for the wider organization and
Speaker 2: for each of these individual churches, and this is a
Speaker 2: whole industry, right. This is like the charismatic pastor industrial
Speaker 2: complex pretty much, right, which is what like Marjo documents
Speaker 2: and why I recommend watching that documentary. So he's good
Speaker 2: at preaching to crowds and gathering followers, and it would
Speaker 2: have been a cinch for him to raise money for
Speaker 2: mission trips and even convince the leaders of his church
Speaker 2: to pay for him to go and preach the gospel.
Speaker 2: He claims that he was ordained at age eighteen by
Speaker 2: an organization called the National Evangelists for Canada, and I
Speaker 2: can't find any evidence that this group exists. People lie
Speaker 2: about this all the time. But also the reporting for
Speaker 2: this comes from a Jamaican news site, and it's based
Speaker 2: on claims made by Kevin and based on just the
Speaker 2: differences in dialects spoken. It's possible that this is a
Speaker 2: real organization. They just gave kind of a name based
Speaker 2: on sort of the differences in dialects that made sense
Speaker 2: to them. But that doesn't directly correspond with what the
Speaker 2: organization is called in Canada. Right, there's some organizations with
Speaker 2: similar names. I'm not sure. I don't doubt that he
Speaker 2: was ordained in some Pentecostal organization or another. It's not
Speaker 2: like being a priest in the Catholic Church, where you
Speaker 2: have to go through school. Somebody just decides to ordain you.
Speaker 2: When you're ordained and you get maybe a piece of
Speaker 2: paper or whatever, it's very easy. It's like my experience
Speaker 2: with becoming a judge. There you go, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: His denomination again, there's no seminary degree required, no qualifications.
Speaker 2: The Walris notes that Kevin himself claims, and I'm talking
Speaker 2: about a new site when I say that, claims that
Speaker 2: Kevin says that ministers are qualified as ministers when they
Speaker 2: feel the call of God on their life, and that's
Speaker 2: pretty consistent in this community. For his part, Kevin would
Speaker 2: claim that he was around eighteen or nineteen when his
Speaker 2: grandfather first saw some of the early preaching he'd done
Speaker 2: and during a phone call, informed Kevin that he was
Speaker 2: a prophet. And I'm gonna play you with video of
Speaker 2: his excellency, doctor Kevin Osmith discussing this conversation with his
Speaker 2: grand father. Because it's about time you get an idea
Speaker 2: of how this guy sounds and talks.
Speaker 6: I'm talking about I'm eighteen nineteen in terming the grandpa
Speaker 6: And he said, but you are a prophet. I said, Grandpa,
Speaker 6: how do you know I'm a prophet?
Speaker 2: Who told you?
Speaker 6: Ah, grandson? I said, Grandpa, and not coming after phone
Speaker 6: until you explain to me how you know I'm a prophet.
Speaker 6: He said, you're preaching your tapes I have and I
Speaker 6: listened to them. I know what a prophet is.
Speaker 4: And he said, you are an annanted man of God,
Speaker 4: my grandfather. Who I thought, there mother, He said, lod
Speaker 4: I have that sin, but God opens my understanding to
Speaker 4: know who come out of my generations.
Speaker 6: Your mona is to give your handless, and you are.
Speaker 4: Pont to get profet, and you shall go to it.
Speaker 4: He set no.
Speaker 3: Level of which.
Speaker 2: Ralph shall ever stop.
Speaker 5: What a fun guy, all right, just making some points?
Speaker 2: Yeah, make it some points. No level of witchcraft will
Speaker 2: stop you. This is something I tell our podcasters very regularly.
Speaker 3: He looks a little more like the other Kevin Smith
Speaker 3: than I expected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, finally I use for Ai cut him into all
Speaker 2: the Jay and Silent Bob movies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he looks a little like Silent Bob. Like I'm surprised.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not very silent, though distinctly loud, Bob speaking of
Speaker 2: things that are distinctly loud.
Speaker 7: But like sometimes that's super true because the volume of
Speaker 7: some of the auto ads are crazy loud for no
Speaker 7: reason and we have no control over it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, anyway, here's some ads and we're back.
Speaker 5: So back again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're back again. Let's keep talking about the other
Speaker 2: Kevin Smith. Legally, I have to really emphasize it's the
Speaker 2: other one. Now, that right up, and the Toronto Caribbean
Speaker 2: Newspaper continues. He boasts of the fact that he was
Speaker 2: the youngest Jamaican born bishop in Jamaica's church history. Kevin
Speaker 2: completed a Bachelor of Theology degree, a doctorate degree from
Speaker 2: Vision International University in Ramona, California, and a Doctor of
Speaker 2: Ministry from Mount Olive Bible Institute and Seminary in Toronto, Canada.
Speaker 2: He was a licensed counselor and certified psychotherapist. And that
Speaker 2: all sounds very impressive. I can verify some of this,
Speaker 2: but the stuff I can verify doesn't matter. I have
Speaker 2: no idea if he was the youngest Jamaican more born
Speaker 2: bishop in Jamaica's church history, because again, this is not
Speaker 2: like the Catholic Church, where like a bishop is a
Speaker 2: real position. You can just call yourself a bishop, or
Speaker 2: you can convince a friend to call you a bishop,
Speaker 2: and then you're a bishop, right, Like, it's not difficult,
Speaker 2: That is so true.
Speaker 7: Bishop Molly, m m yeah, come on, Bishop Sophie, Yes,
Speaker 7: Bishop Molly, Bishop Sophie.
Speaker 2: As Look, the pope is a Robert. I think that
Speaker 2: means I get splash over pope power. I'm making some
Speaker 2: fucking secret cardinals.
Speaker 5: Just a sprinkle of poping.
Speaker 2: I watched, I watched fucking conclave. I know that I
Speaker 2: have the power to make secret cardinals that can just
Speaker 2: pop out at any time. You might be a cardinal
Speaker 2: listening right now. You have no way of knowing until
Speaker 2: you like walk into a Catholic church and demand their
Speaker 2: secret hidden gold, which I assume every Catholic church has
Speaker 2: not an expert on the religion that I'm pope of.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna find out where the gold is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go find out. Get in there. Now. These institutes
Speaker 2: that he claims to have fancy degrees from are like
Speaker 2: real but also not right, because this is like whenever
Speaker 2: you hear a cult leader be like, I'm a doctorate
Speaker 2: in this. I'm a therapist in this. It's always some
Speaker 2: kind of fake and there's a whole industry in creating
Speaker 2: fake churches for like evangelical ministers to claim that they've
Speaker 2: got fancy and impressive degrees. Reporters from Jamaica Observer called
Speaker 2: Vision University to see if Kevin and had received a
Speaker 2: bachelor and a doctorate there and quote. We were told
Speaker 2: that such information could only be provided in response to
Speaker 2: a written request, and only students are allowed to make
Speaker 2: that request. Now these guys had led. Yeah, they can't
Speaker 2: even verify that, or they won't. But the news reaches
Speaker 2: out to these guys after he cuts a bunch of
Speaker 2: people's throats in a church service, right, So Vision International
Speaker 2: doesn't want to claim him. So I decided to just
Speaker 2: like look into the school to see, like is this
Speaker 2: even a real school? Like is there a chance anyone
Speaker 2: has ever earned a real degree from Vision International University? And,
Speaker 2: at the risk of getting sued, I think the answer
Speaker 2: is no. If you go to their website, they bragg
Speaker 2: that you can quote earn an affordable Christian ministry or
Speaker 2: business degree on your time, and their motto is taking
Speaker 2: the whole world to the whole world. Now, I'll let
Speaker 2: Sophie scroll through the website while we discussed this fine
Speaker 2: institution in more detail so you could get a look
Speaker 2: at Yeah, save time and money on your college degree.
Speaker 2: That always is the first a real college. Yeah, they've
Speaker 2: got like a lot of good stock photos. There's like
Speaker 2: a young black lady punching the sky defiantly with her
Speaker 2: diploma and the claim that Vision International holds prestigious international
Speaker 2: accreditation from ASIC. Right now, you're wondering what that is, right,
Speaker 2: prestigious international accredit. That must mean it's a real school. Right.
Speaker 2: It says it's prestigious, So that's got to be legitimately accredited, right. Well,
Speaker 2: I looked into it because I thought that was odd.
Speaker 2: People who are accredited from legitimate organizations never have to
Speaker 2: tell you that the accrediting organization is legitimate. That's the
Speaker 2: first sign that someone's not part of a legitimate accrediting organization.
Speaker 3: HARVARDOK, as a graduate of Podcast University, I don't know
Speaker 3: what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Great movie than you see you.
Speaker 5: I really enjoy the stock photo of this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the guy holding two degrees aren't two respected degrees
Speaker 2: in just.
Speaker 5: Two years and it looks like he's like floating on
Speaker 5: a cloud.
Speaker 2: If you go to like Harvard's website, Harvard number one
Speaker 2: will not give you two degrees in two years, but
Speaker 2: doesn't have to tell you the degrees respected because it's
Speaker 2: a real school. And even like you go to UTD,
Speaker 2: right where I briefly went before dropping out, they never
Speaker 2: had to brag on their website that they were accredited
Speaker 2: from a real organization because you just know it's a
Speaker 2: real school. So I googled Vision International University fake and
Speaker 2: the second search result was the Wikipedia page for list
Speaker 2: of unaccredited institutions of higher Learning, which seemed odd because
Speaker 2: they ensured us that they were accredited by someone real. Now,
Speaker 2: the first result when I looked into that was someone
Speaker 2: on the forum for degree info dot com back in
Speaker 2: two thousand and two asking is this a good school
Speaker 2: or a fraud? And someone pointed out that like, well,
Speaker 2: they offer a master's in creation science, which means they
Speaker 2: fall under a religious exemption in California, which is not
Speaker 2: accreditation right. It means California can't stop them from giving
Speaker 2: out religious degrees, but they're not approved by the state
Speaker 2: as like a real college, you just can't stop someone
Speaker 2: from giving out degrees with titles like Master of Theology
Speaker 2: or Doctor of Ministry. But they're not allowed to give
Speaker 2: out secular degrees like an MS a Master of Science.
Speaker 2: And they claim to right. And one reason I'm interested
Speaker 2: in this is because there's an attempt within sort of
Speaker 2: this chunk of the evangelical movement. One reason this is
Speaker 2: interesting is that there's an attempt within this chunk of
Speaker 2: the evangelical movement to create people who can get jobs
Speaker 2: as science teachers, right because they have MS degrees and
Speaker 2: then teach in Christian secondary schools about stuff like creationism. Right.
Speaker 2: So that's what Vision International is doing. But they're not
Speaker 2: accredited to give out an MS in the state of California.
Speaker 2: So then I looked into that ASIK accreditation, right, which
Speaker 2: is why they're how they claim to be a legitimate
Speaker 2: university ASIC. ASIK stands for the Accreditation Service for International Colleges.
Speaker 2: And this is a real organization. It's a private educational
Speaker 2: agency in the United Kingdom that is literally based out
Speaker 2: of a semi detached duplex residential property and stocked it
Speaker 2: on teas which doubles is the residential address for its creators.
Speaker 2: So great, very legitimate organization run out of the home
Speaker 2: of the people who run it, just like this podcast
Speaker 2: and ASEX whole business is accrediting private UK colleges for
Speaker 2: visa purposes, and they are recognized by the UK government
Speaker 2: and this capacity, but they've been repeatedly criticized for being
Speaker 2: what's called a run around accreditor. And another poster from
Speaker 2: a different threat and Degree Info explains the key difference
Speaker 2: is that accreditation in the UK appears vastly different from
Speaker 2: accreditation in the US. If your UK university has a
Speaker 2: royal charter, then that's all that really needs to operate.
Speaker 2: Accreditation is wholly voluntary and doesn't confer degree granting authority
Speaker 2: because that's not how degree granting authority is conferred in
Speaker 2: the UK. The issue with A six seems to be
Speaker 2: that some of the schools accredited by them lack institutional
Speaker 2: accreditation or authority to award degrees in their respective country.
Speaker 2: So Vision International is accredited through ASIK, but ASIK is
Speaker 2: not approved in the UK to accredit a school, it
Speaker 2: means a different thing than it does in the US.
Speaker 2: They have no ability to grant degrees in the US,
Speaker 2: and they also don't really have the ability to grant
Speaker 2: degrees that are recognized by the UK. It just means
Speaker 2: that if you go here, you can get an educational
Speaker 2: visa in the UK. They're kind of playing with the
Speaker 2: fact that the same word means different things in two countries.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: I fell down this wormhole for way too long trying
Speaker 2: to figure out how this fake college for Christian scam
Speaker 2: artist works. And so now you're all going to learn
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna enroll.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get your degree for sure. Yes, of course, get
Speaker 2: your Master of science.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get two degrees.
Speaker 2: This is double Fistingham.
Speaker 5: Is this very classic you? You're like, I suffered, you
Speaker 5: must suffer. That's you. That's very classic you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just doing with degrees what punk kids in the
Speaker 2: early two thousands did with tall boys.
Speaker 3: What you're doing with ZVS now.
Speaker 2: What I'm doing with ZV right now. Yeah. So the
Speaker 2: poster then goes on to discuss Warnborough College in Ireland,
Speaker 2: which is not a real college. It's not a recognized
Speaker 2: institute of learning in Ireland but pretends to be because
Speaker 2: it has an ASIK accreditation. The US Department of Education
Speaker 2: does not recognize ASIK accreditation, although they might in the future,
Speaker 2: given where we're headed.
Speaker 5: Every time you say ask I.
Speaker 2: Think of shoes, is that a shoebrand, Sophie, it certainly is. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a more legitimate company than the ASIK of the UK.
Speaker 7: They're like good shoes, like good quality, like for your
Speaker 7: feet and whatnot.
Speaker 2: Well, this is not a good quality accreditation organization. In
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine, extensive reporting showed that there's some
Speaker 2: very shady details about how ASIK got recognized in the UK.
Speaker 2: A journalist named Andrew Norfolk wrote an article on the
Speaker 2: matter with the title man given job of closing bogus
Speaker 2: colleges was sacked by university and the man who's the
Speaker 2: founder of ASIK is Maurice Dimmock, who, along with his wife,
Speaker 2: lives in the detached duplex that doubles his A six headquarters.
Speaker 2: He had been director of international operations for a real school,
Speaker 2: Northumbria University, until two thousand and three, when he was
Speaker 2: fired for reasons neither he or the school will ever discuss,
Speaker 2: which I'm sure means good things always not shady. When
Speaker 2: your school won't even tell anyone why they fired you,
Speaker 2: I'm sure no crimes were committed.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: Somehow, the UK Home Office ignored numerous concerns and complaints
Speaker 2: about this guy and gave his company the job of
Speaker 2: determining which private colleges were real for visa purposes, and
Speaker 2: ASIKA credited one hundred and eighty schools in its first
Speaker 2: two years, The Times reports. Among them is a Manchester
Speaker 2: college that The Times exposed last month as the front
Speaker 2: for an immigration scam, which helped one thousand fake students
Speaker 2: enter or stay in Britain. Another in London issued more
Speaker 2: than twenty five hundred bogus postgraduate diplomas in two months
Speaker 2: last year, earning its owners, who have fled the country
Speaker 2: and estimated five million pounds. So great organization, very real school.
Speaker 2: That's what we can say is that Kevin Smith gets
Speaker 2: his doctorate from an entirely real university. Again, it's important
Speaker 2: to discuss this, even though we're getting a little bit
Speaker 2: off topic from the other Kevin Smith, because every one
Speaker 2: of these abusive Christian cult leaders you come across today
Speaker 2: has some kind of PhD or other fancy sounding degree
Speaker 2: from one of these fake schools. There's a whole ton
Speaker 2: of them. One of the claims I found is that
Speaker 2: Vision International and around two this and two was show
Speaker 2: claiming to have four thousand campuses in more than one
Speaker 2: hundred countries, and to the best of my knowledge, Vision
Speaker 2: has thirty full in part time employees, which it's hard
Speaker 2: to keep four thousand campuses operative on thirty employees. And
Speaker 2: it kind of seems like they're just counting everyone who
Speaker 2: registered online as a campus, like you're a campus for
Speaker 2: Vision International University. If you log on with your laptop,
Speaker 2: whatever coffee shop you're in as a campus. I love that.
Speaker 2: I need to start a fake college, like Sophie, we
Speaker 2: got to get in on this fucking racket.
Speaker 5: We're not doing that. We're not.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of money.
Speaker 5: And I go in ful tate. I'm sorry, Mollie.
Speaker 2: Do you like the sound of Professor Lambert? You can
Speaker 2: be given outates in like forty five minutes, you.
Speaker 5: Know, sorry, that's Bishop, doctor Lambert.
Speaker 3: Come on, I'm a bishop.
Speaker 2: Doctor, Bishop Lambert. Yeah, you could give out what kind
Speaker 2: of degree would you want to hand out to people?
Speaker 2: What would you feel confident giving like in terms of doctorates?
Speaker 3: I mean whatever they'll give me money for, right, That's
Speaker 3: how we're going to do this scam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean college scam college. I'd like to
Speaker 2: make surgeons like that feels that feels satisfying to know
Speaker 2: I'd created a lot of surgeons are who are going
Speaker 2: out there cutting into people. You know, as long as
Speaker 2: I get to a non extradition country very quickly after
Speaker 2: handing out four thousand or so diplomas is crib. So
Speaker 2: I should also note that initially, Vision University was an
Speaker 2: offshoot of a Pentecostal school in Tasmania founded by an
Speaker 2: Australian pastor named kin Chant. And I just mentioned that
Speaker 2: because I found a photo of him that I have
Speaker 2: to show you guys.
Speaker 5: It's really kind of funny.
Speaker 2: Hey, I can that mustache. It's beautiful, all right, he
Speaker 2: looks cool. He does look cool. That's a sweet ass mustache.
Speaker 5: And Chant is a great name.
Speaker 2: Can Chant too solid name? I'm happy with him.
Speaker 3: I mean Chant, it's right in the name.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, Yeah, it's perfect name for an evangelical pastor,
Speaker 2: especially with a soup strainer like that. The acoustics had
Speaker 2: to be great, you know, it would act like having
Speaker 2: like baffling panels on your ceiling. I trust him, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he seems legitimate. So I said we'd get back to
Speaker 2: Kevin Smith the bad one, and I meant it, but
Speaker 2: I also kept running across funny stuff about this school
Speaker 2: that I didn't know where to stop. According to the
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four edition of Name It and Frame It
Speaker 2: by Stephen Levkoff, which is a book about fake colleges,
Speaker 2: Vision Quote also offers a special additional ten percent tuition
Speaker 2: reduction for students to enroll within the next thirty days,
Speaker 2: which is a real sign that someone's got an actual
Speaker 2: college going. Real colleges give you bonuses like that, right,
Speaker 2: sat up in thirty days and get ten percent off. Okay,
Speaker 2: Now back to Kevin for realsies. In addition to his
Speaker 2: definitely fake degree, he claimed to attend Tyndale University, which
Speaker 2: is a real and respected private Evangelical Christian university. He
Speaker 2: also claims to have a Doctorate of Ministry from Mount
Speaker 2: Olive Bible Institute in Toronto, which seems to be about
Speaker 2: as real as Vision but has a very similar name
Speaker 2: to an actual college that's in the United States, which
Speaker 2: I think is the point and laying out Kevin's educational history.
Speaker 2: The Walras, who is again a Canadian news site, noted
Speaker 2: while he has referred to himself as a registered clinical
Speaker 2: counselor and sought after holistic psychotherapist. He has never been
Speaker 2: registered with a College of Registered Psychotherapists in Ontario, so
Speaker 2: he's a Christian psychotherapist, which is different from being a
Speaker 2: psychotherapist in the way that any medical establishment recognizes. Now
Speaker 2: while he's getting all these fake degrees and maybe one
Speaker 2: real degree in addition to several other questionable certifications, Smith
Speaker 2: grew up and seems to have made his living operating
Speaker 2: a ministry in Toronto and traveling around the world to
Speaker 2: give speeches at different churches. Sometime around the turn of
Speaker 2: the millennium, he found his own ministry, which he calls
Speaker 2: CHOS Deliverance International, and the initials Chaos is just the
Speaker 2: initials of his name. On August twenty second, two thousand
Speaker 2: and six, he returns from one of his overseas preaching
Speaker 2: trips to the UK. The Walrus writes quote Smith was
Speaker 2: jet lagged and lonely, craving to spend time with someone
Speaker 2: besides his brother. I wanted, you know, emotional company. Smith
Speaker 2: would later recall as per court documents, so he perused
Speaker 2: online ads for escorts and reached out to a man
Speaker 2: for his services Matt, whose real name is under a
Speaker 2: court ordered publication ban, arrived at Smith's home around ten
Speaker 2: thirty one evening. I would need him to be as
Speaker 2: inconspicuous as possible because I lived straight and I'm a Christian.
Speaker 2: Smith would recall there was a conflict happening inside of
Speaker 2: me in essence to what I was going to do
Speaker 2: or not do. Now what he did, according to Matt's allegations,
Speaker 2: is sexually assault Matt, who goes to the police. The
Speaker 2: next day, Smith is arrested and charged. He would later
Speaker 2: claim that Canadian police tried to use his Jamaican ancestry
Speaker 2: in the local stigma against homosexuality in Jamaica again Saint him,
Speaker 2: and he claims he told them gays are just people
Speaker 2: who need redirection, which does do a great job of
Speaker 2: making me more sympathetic to his case. But he's been
Speaker 2: accused basically of calling this guy in and then sexually
Speaker 2: assaulting him. Right now, the case these allegations against him
Speaker 2: wind through the Canadian court system for the next several
Speaker 2: months and the next year. In early two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: he gets married and possibly as a way to kind
Speaker 2: of distract from the fact that this is really bad
Speaker 2: pr to his ministry. He's either eighteen or twenty five
Speaker 2: when he gets married. I found different things on different
Speaker 2: news sites. It kind of depends on whether or not
Speaker 2: he was actually born in nineteen eighty two or not.
Speaker 2: Whatever the case, this marriage does not seem to have
Speaker 2: really been like it certainly doesn't last. There's debate as
Speaker 2: to whether or not it was legitimate. They very quickly split.
Speaker 2: In the Walrus Rites, Smith's x's wife described him as
Speaker 2: verbally abusive in someone who led about his private life.
Speaker 2: He is not living an honest life, she would later recall.
Speaker 2: According to court records and the Toronto Caribbeans Report ADS,
Speaker 2: there have been allegations that his wife caught him having
Speaker 2: sexual relations with men. She reported to senior ministers in
Speaker 2: the church organizations, but they denied it and there were
Speaker 2: no reprimand or consequences. So, you know, not a story
Speaker 2: we've ever heard before anywhere else. Wow, powerful up and
Speaker 2: coming guy gets caught violating the tenets of his religion
Speaker 2: for personal reasons and also violating a sex worker, and
Speaker 2: it all gets smoothed over because hey, you know, he's
Speaker 2: he brings in money. Probably shouldn't segue to ads with that,
Speaker 2: but they also bring in money.
Speaker 5: Wow, use ads. Wow, we're back.
Speaker 2: So I know the timeline is kind of screwy here.
Speaker 2: When he gets married, how old he is? You know,
Speaker 2: this is a guy who gives multiple versions of different
Speaker 2: stories and different news reports. I see give different things.
Speaker 2: I don't actually know what's subjectively the truth. I haven't
Speaker 2: seen a birth certificate here. But you know, basically one
Speaker 2: of two things happens. Either he marries this lady to
Speaker 2: try to distract from the scandal, or they had been
Speaker 2: they'd get married and stay that way for years, but
Speaker 2: she had seen signs that he was kind of living
Speaker 2: a lie and eventually tries to report them. In either case,
Speaker 2: the two of them split up and he goes on
Speaker 2: trial later in two thousand and seven for sexual assault.
Speaker 2: And this trial we can confirm absolutely happened, right. There's
Speaker 2: plenty of court records in Canada over it. During the trial,
Speaker 2: Smith identifies himself as an international minister of religion who
Speaker 2: had preached in three hundred different cities. He says, we
Speaker 2: do crusades all around the world in churches and open
Speaker 2: fields and stadiums and things to that magnitude to preach
Speaker 2: the gospel Smith's lawyer denied that anything non consensual had happened,
Speaker 2: and under oath he claimed that Matt had tried to
Speaker 2: extort him for money during a private religious counseling session.
Speaker 2: Quote the prosecutor in her closing argument shredded Smith's testimony.
Speaker 2: His life in his platform is a facade. She said.
Speaker 2: Mister Smith's reputation and his public persona are his primary concern,
Speaker 2: and he will go to any extent to preserve that facade.
Speaker 2: In the end, this judge found Smith guilty of sexual assault,
Speaker 2: sentencing him to six months in jail, followed by two
Speaker 2: months of probation. Mister Smith, it seems to be the
Speaker 2: judge said to quote, a parable might be viewed as
Speaker 2: a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's got it right here. She has definitely
Speaker 2: like locked this guy's number down. Unfortunately, she's going to
Speaker 2: be the last person to clock him for a while.
Speaker 2: And he is going to basically as soon as he
Speaker 2: splits up with his wife, flee the country, right, So
Speaker 2: he leaves Canada for Jamaica. He breaches the terms of
Speaker 2: his probation. He's supposed to attend counseling, and he's like no,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to go back to Jamaica and start
Speaker 2: a church there, and he's going to remain in Jamaica
Speaker 2: for the next six years where he starts a local
Speaker 2: church and he burrows into the Pentecostal community and he
Speaker 2: starts accruing clout followers and eventually wealth. So that's where
Speaker 2: we are at the end of part one, and this
Speaker 2: is going to lead us to what I would describe
Speaker 2: as a shock bloody conclusion to come in part two
Speaker 2: where this one ends is pretty fucking intense. But Molly,
Speaker 2: that's what we got for the start of this episode.
Speaker 2: How you feeling as we sort of close out part one?
Speaker 3: Uh, I truly don't know where this is going.
Speaker 2: So a lot of people get in their throat slit.
Speaker 2: Oh no, yeah, yeah, I got weird number woild would
Speaker 2: be anything higher than one.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, I guess let's find out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess, let's find out. And that's the episode.
Speaker 5: We should plug. Jake Anerhan's new project.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Jake's got a new podcast, Away Days. Check
Speaker 2: it out on wherever our podcasts exist.
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