December 9th, 2011
Scandal Convinces Bishop Eddie Long’s Wife to File for Divorce
After months of living apart, Vanessa Long has finally decided to file for divorce from her husband, Bishop Eddie Long, who recently settled several civil lawsuits that alleged he forced young men to have sex with him.
Several months ago, Eddie Long settled civil lawsuits with four young men who claimed that Long coerced them into having sex with him, according to a recent report from the International Business Times.
Long did not face criminal charges for the alleged sexual abuse because the age of sexual consent in his home state of Georgia is 16, and the boys who accused him of wrongful conduct were all 17 or 18 years old.
The scandal struck Long particularly hard because he has publicly held strongly anti-gay opinions for a number of years. Long is also an influential church leader, as his congregation has grown to roughly 20,000 people since he started New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia, in 1987.
After the scandal first struck, Vanessa Long stayed in the background, and sources were not sure whether she would eventually leave her straying husband.
Despite her silence on the matter, Vanessa and Eddie have apparently been living in a “bona fide state of separation,” according to court documents filed last week in DeKalb Superior Court.
The decision, though, does not seem to have been simple for Vanessa. On Thursday, Vanessa Long officially filed her divorce petition with the court. By the next day, however, she seemed to have changed her tune.
On the day after filing for divorce, Vanessa Long released a curious statement through Eddie Long’s church that she had decided not to get a divorce, after all.
However, later that same day, Vanessa Long released another statement saying she had decided that “the dismissal of her divorce petition is not appropriate at this time.” This tangled phrase, of course, means that Vanessa Long has decided to proceed with the divorce.
The divorce may be particularly difficult because the couple have been together for more than two decades. Eddie and Vanessa Long married in 1990, just three years after he started his church.
Vanessa was Eddie’s second wife, as he had previously been married to Dabara Houson, who accused him in her 1985 divorce petition of beating her while she was pregnant. Again, though, Eddie Long did not face a criminal conviction for these accusations.
If all the allegations are true—including the sexual abuse claims and the alleged spousal abuse—Eddie Long seems to have more lives than the average American church leader.
Of course, despite all the claims, Eddie Long must retain a certain charm. Even in the wake of recent events, Vanessa Long recently saw fit to say, “I love my husband. I believe in him and admire his strength, and courage.”
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