In the PressVisitor CommentsResponse to CriticismVideosSite Map

The Story behind the Story: Our Communication with Alex Hannaford

The following contains the entire email communication between Dan Lancaster and Alex Hannaford. We have redacted email addresses and phone numbers; otherwise, it is unedited. Portions quoted in the Observer article are highlighted.

   Several times during the months of December 2011 and January 2012, various members of our congregation heard bits and pieces secondhand from friends and relatives that a reporter named Alex Hannaford was purportedly writing a story about us and seeking interviews from hostile former members in order to hear their accusations against us. Unfortunately, this kind of “story” was nothing new. Back in 2007, there had been a three-part front-page series in our local paper that aired complaints from this same disgruntled group. We slogged through hours of interviews for that story, answering scores of accusations and allegations (many of which we’d never even heard of before), and were ultimately disappointed with the way we were represented in the resulting story. In addition, there’s been an almost ceaseless flood of vitriolic blog postings that a few of these embittered ex-members have been churning out on the Internet for several years now, seemingly seeking to outdo each other with anonymous atrocity stories and the like. So the appearance of another reporter on the scene looking to dredge up some sensational material about a unique religious group in Waco, Texas, was all too familiar.

   For many weeks, we didn’t hear anything from the reporter. Then on Tuesday morning, January 24, Alex Hannaford called our church offices and told the secretary that he was a journalist writing a story about our community for the Texas Observer news magazine and that he would like to speak to someone about setting up an interview. One of our ministers, Dan Lancaster, called him back around noon the same day. Alex explained who he was and said that he wanted to interview us “generally about the church and its founding, its way of life and also about criticisms from former members.”

   When Dan asked how he heard about us and what the source of the story was, Alex wouldn’t answer directly, but said that he’d always had an interest in religion and had “just been fascinated” by Homestead Heritage and “certainly wasn’t looking for any specific angle to begin with.” He said he’d been to our cafe a couple times, had a couple of our books and had been “reading and talking to people for the last couple of months” and was now “getting to the stage where he was writing a piece” and had “questions he needed to put to [us].” He said “there wasn’t one source at all”—he just had a personal interest and “fascination” with us.

   Alex also stressed, “As a journalist, I don’t come from any position at all. I deliberately come at it from a totally neutral point of view, and that certainly doesn’t mean necessarily a secular point of view—just no point of view at all, whether it be religious or secular. I have to come at it from a completely neutral angle.”

   Dan explained that we were quite familiar with the type of accusations that are typically leveled against us, and we’d already had quite a bit of experience with the people who make them. He said that in any story that involved this type of accusation, we had a general concern that we not lend credence to the accusations by participating in the story to an extent that seems to bolster it and give it factual support when the overall effect is nonetheless misleading to those who might read it.

   Alex hurried to explain that “all he would ever want as a journalist” was for anyone reading the article to say, “Well, that’s a balanced piece.” He said to publish an accusation and then not give the other side looked “wrong” in his opinion.

   Dan replied that since we were a community, he certainly wouldn’t want to agree to an interview under the circumstances without considering it and discussing it with some others and that he would get back to Alex hopefully within a couple days.

   Alex said that sounded “really good” and “very fair,” and then said he would be available to come interview us either Thursday or Friday, if we could just let him know.

   Though the conversation was very cordial, we were concerned from the beginning for several reasons. First of all, everything we’d heard from other sources before Alex called indicated that the direction of his story was anything but neutral. Though he had declined to mention any specific questions on the phone because “it would just take forever,” we’d seen strong indications on the Internet that he’d been courting our embittered blog posters online, and we were also told he was digging for information with which he could attempt to link us to inflammatory topics, such as the sexual abuse of children.

   Another warning sign was that Alex had admitted (perhaps unwittingly) to Dan on the phone that he had been working on a “wide-ranging feature story” on our community for at least two months without ever contacting us at all. If he was writing a piece about us just because he was personally “fascinated” with our way of life, why would he not have come to us first to see and hear firsthand what we are about? This was a very strong indicator that, figuratively speaking, we were on trial as the accused party. The prosecution had been amassing evidence, and we would now be headed up to the witness stand to be cross-examined. Though we knew we were innocent of the charges, we also knew this would be a trial that was impossible to win. For when someone is publicly accused of something sensational and emotionally charged, such as child molestation, even if he is ultimately exonerated in court, the association forever remains to taint the accused: “Oh, yes, wasn’t he once accused of . . . ?”

   We also had other evidence that a preconceived cult template was informing the reporter’s approach. Some friendly former members told us that he had boasted to them that he’d been the one to expose a religious cult in New Mexico a few years ago, and so he was “experienced with groups like this.” He’d also written a feature story on the David Koresh debacle here in Waco. All this hardly indicated a “totally neutral point of view” or that he “certainly wasn’t looking for any specific angle to begin with.” It also cast doubt on just what the nature of his “specific interest in religion” was.

   Furthermore, in one of his own articles he describes a time when he was trying to get permission to visit a religious group, and yet their leader was “reluctant,” so for weeks Alex just kept “promis[ing] him even-handed reporting,” exchanging emails, and making “more reassuring noises on the phone” until the man agreed. Now the man sits in jail, and his followers are scattered. This man truly had messianic delusions (he openly claimed to be God) and eventually admitted to criminal behavior to boot. Nonetheless, we could only wonder if we were being stereotyped as a similar “deviant religious group” that also warranted being lured by superficial friendliness and virtuous promises of fairness—all for the sake of springing the trap once the reporter gained access.

   After discussion and prayer over the matter, we felt it best to respond to Hannaford’s interview request by email, so as to have a documented record of our communication. Thus we sent him the following email that Friday (the highlighting marks the portion Hannaford later quoted in the Observer story):

   Alex emailed and left a voicemail the next day and said he’d like to talk, but we asked him to respond by email if possible:

That evening, he sent the following:

   There had been no indication whatsoever in Alex’s phone conversation with Dan that there was any “deadline” at all, much less that it was only a few days away. Was it just a bluff? And why would he be unwilling to simply meet with us face to face so we could discuss our concerns about his story? Dan wrote back the next morning:

Within the hour, Alex wrote back:

We answered the next day with the following:

   That evening, we heard from a friendly former member that Hannaford had called them and asked them to call one of our ministers and ask him certain questions while Hannaford listened in without their knowledge. They refused. He also mentioned that some of the “anonymous” stories he was planning to include in the article were actually compilations of stories that he just “put together because they were similar.” Referencing again the New Mexico cult, and how all the children from that group are forever grateful to him for exposing it, he reminded this former member that he was “good at this.” He urged them again to give him an interview, saying that “all your friends have found the bravery to come out and tell their stories.” Then when this former member still refused, he said they must still be under the “mind control” of Homestead leaders. Several other former members called us the same day, all having heard again from Hannaford, and all confirming again their concern about the nature of the story he was writing.

   When we had received no response from Hannaford after two days, we decided that it would be best to end the discussion and simply offer a statement for publication in the Observer article explaining why we never granted an interview (the highlighting marks the fragment actually quoted in the Observer article):

   This email apparently got Hannaford’s attention in a different way, for in spite of the fact that we had clearly said it would be our final communication, he was trying to call us within twenty minutes of our sending it. We did not answer his call, as we didn’t consider it prudent to be pulled into an unwanted telephone interview. About an hour and a half after we sent this email, we received the following:

   “As you know” in Hannaford’s first sentence is disingenuous, for we had heard nothing about it being just “the first draft” that was due on Tuesday. We had simply been told that the deadline was Monday afternoon. The fact that we still had until Friday to give an interview had never been mentioned. We replied:

   We heard nothing more from Hannaford. The Observer released his story eight days later. It included only one and a half sentences of our statement.

   From the nature of the story he published, we leave it to the reader to judge the honesty of Hannaford’s portrait that we were jumping to conclusions in our expression of concerns about the nature of the story he was writing.