ACCUSERS
For men shall be … false accusers.
—II Tim. 3:2, 3
1 $35,000 Award For Slander
Evangelist Oliver B. (Jerry) Owen, 62, was awarded $35,000 in a $1.4 million slander suit filed against television station KCOP in Los Angeles. Owen is known as “the Walking Bible” for his ability to quote verbatim the 41,173 verses of the King James Bible.
KCOP executive John Hopkins was accused of making defamatory statements when explaining before viewers why the evangelist’s program was canceled. Hopkins had claimed that Owen was involved in the killing of Robert F. Kennedy and was a thief who burned down churches.
2 False Charge Leads To Death
The family of a man wrongly accused of shoplifting was awarded 107,000 dollars by a jury which was convinced that his death at age 53 was caused by a broken heart.
The episode leading to the 1975 judgment issued by Sacramento superior court began with a 63-cent can of Danish bacon.
Charged with shoplifting the bacon in a drug store was John F. Abercrombie, a retired Air Force colonel with a distinguished World War II combat record and postwar assignments that involved top security clearance. Abercrombie, also an assistant scoutmaster, was employed as a civilian analyst by the California highway patrol.
A municipal court jury found him innocent of shoplifting. But friends testified that after that he was a changed man. They said he lost his zest for life, became depressed, and finally ended in a fatal heart condition.
3 Sad Ending For Dakota Family
They were a happy little family, living in a small town in North Dakota, even though the young mother had not been entirely well since the birth of her second baby.
But each evening the neighbors were aware of a warmth in their hearts when they would see the husband and father being met at the gate by his wife and two small children. There was laughter in the evening too, and when the weather was nice Father and children would romp together on the back lawn while Mother looked on with happy smiles.
Then one day a village gossip started a story, saying that he was being unfaithful to his wife, a story entirely without foun dation. But it eventually came to the ears of the young wife, and it was more than she could bear. Reason left its throne, and that night when her husband came home there was no one to meet him at the gate, no laughter in the house, no fragrant aroma coming from the kitchen—only coldness and something that chilled his heart with fear.
And down in the basement he found the three of them hanging from a beam. Sick and in despair, the young mother had first taken the lives of her two children, and then her own.
In the days that followed, the truth of what had happened came out—a gossip’s tongue, an untrue story, a terrible tragedy.
—G. Franklin Allee
4 Poison Letters
Since 1928, hundreds of poison-pen letters have been written to the inhabitants of Robin Hood’s Bay, a village of 800 on the east coast of England. As each recipient thought he was the only person being attacked, few if any mentioned the letters until 1948 when it was learned that nearly every villager had received a num ber of them. All have been abusive and vulgar and, without justification, accused the persons addressed of offenses and crimes, including prostitution, infanticide and incest. For more than two decades, therefore, these notes have spread great unhappiness and have even caused three successive ministers of the town’s one church to resign and move away. Yet the identify of the writer of the malicious letters is still unknown.
—Freling Foster
5 Epigram On Accusers
• “Believe only half of what you hear.”
—Japanese Proverb
• I will speak ill of no man, not even in the matter of truth, but rather excuse the faults I hear, and, upon proper occasions, speak all the good I know of everybody.
—Benjamin Franklin
See also: Gossiping ; Rumors ; Matt. 5:11; I Peter 2:12.