TD Jakes has had an eventful year as have many major pastors in the Dallas Fort Worth area. 2023 ended with TD Jakes giving a nonchalant response to allegations of homosexuality that involved Sean “Diddy” Combs. With this cloud of allegations surrounding his ministry due to his well-documented ties with Diddy and coming out of a health scare, TD Jakes has filed a lawsuit against a man who alleges that Jakes abused him as a child. The lawsuit is in response to a different set of allegations Jakes has faced.
The lawsuit is filed in Pennsylvania against Duane Youngblood. Contrary to his namesake, Youngblood is 58 years old. He alleges TD Jakes sexually assaulted him over 40 years ago. In response, TD Jakes has filed a lawsuit against Youngblood and ten unnamed defendants.
The complaint establishes TD Jakes’s lofty resume to then juxtapose it with Youngblood’s:
In stark contrast, Duane Youngblood is registered as a lifetime sex offender in the State of Pennsylvania and is currently under supervision by the state’s Department of Parole with Parole number 590JF. Youngblood has repeatedly and uncontrollably sexually assaulted young children since at least 2002. On all occasions, Youngblood has pleaded guilty and admitted to his heinous crimes.
Youngblood, a repeat sex offender is looking to blame TD Jakes and others for grooming him into a cycle of abuse.
On October 28, 2024, Youngblood sat for an over-two-hour-long interview on Larry Reid Live (LRL), an online video podcast hosted by Larry Reid that boasts of having over 150,000 subscribers on YouTube alone. The October 28 episode of LRL was broadcast live to tens of thousands of online viewers on the Larry Reid Live YouTube and Facebook accounts. The episode was titled, “Larry Reid Live INTERVIEWS Duane Youngblood: ‘The Abused become the Abuser.’”
According to the interview, Youngblood said this of Jakes:
After sitting there and having this long discourse with him, I finally looked at my watch and I’m like, “oh my goodness, I got to go. I got to get this car back to my mother. She’s gonna kill me.” So I said to Bishop, “I got to get up.” And I got up from the table, he got up from the table, he walked around toward the, uh, way I had to exit quicker than I got over there, and when I started to walk past him, he pulled me to himself, wrapped his arms around me, and tried to kiss me. And in that moment I literally died.
Next, Youngblood would allege that Jakes wanted him to be his Pittsburgh paramour.
In the morning, I step into our bathroom and my home phone rings. My mother answers the phone and she says to me, “Duane, it’s Elder Jakes.” Jakes and I get on that phone and when I get on that telephone, I can hear water. He is sitting in a bathtub and in that thing he says to me, without any hesitation, “there’s three things I need you to do. The first one is, when I come to Pittsburgh you’re going to be the only person I sleep with. The second one is you can’t sleep with anybody else because I don’t want to give my wife anything. And thirdly, I will take care of you the rest of your life.
Youngblood would allege that this relationship led to Jakes kissing him on the lips. TD Jakes emphatically denies this.
From start to finish, Youngblood’s tale of grooming and attempted sexual assault at the hands of Bishop Jakes is patently false. Bishop Jakes never kissed or tried to kiss Youngblood, never cornered him or forced him into any situation (sexual or otherwise), and certainly never told him that he wanted to sleep with him or had any conversation of a sexual nature at all with him. The interactions described by Youngblood during his LRL interviews on October 28 and November 3 never happened—period.
But from the podcast, Youngblood would attempt to extort Jakes:
By letter dated November 15, 2024, a lawyer purporting to represent Youngblood demanded that Bishop Jakes pay Youngblood six million dollars in order to “resolve this matter quickly and privately”; otherwise, Youngblood would bring a lawsuit against Bishop Jakes for sexual assault and harassment. The motivation of the “demand” was clear: pay millions of dollars; otherwise, the podcast strategy and other similar tactics of attempting to publicly harass and shame Bishop Jakes would continue.
Jakes is suing for libel per se and conspiracy. It appears the Larry Reied Live podcast is the unnamed coconspirator.
On information and belief, this statement by co-conspirator #1 was done intentionally in order to give credence and a patina of credibility to Youngblood’s false statements, even though co-conspirator #1 was aware that efforts by Bishop Jakes to pay Youngblood to avoid him making such statements was knowingly false.
The first podcast occurred on October 28, 2024. While Youngblood and his coconspirators made false statements to harm Bishop Jakes in that broadcast, on information and belief, the Defendants aimed to maximize their efforts by launching a second broadcast on November 3, 2024 meant to sharpen and clarify the false statements for maximum impact. For example, Youngblood, in sum and substance, attempted to more clearly target his false claim of sexual assault against Bishop Jakes by stating, in sum and substance, that Bishop Jakes restrained him and forcibly kissed him, as opposed to the first podcast interview where Youngblood alleges that they embraced at the end of an hours long, wide ranging conversation about faith and life and parents.
TD Jakes has acted swiftly in this regard and has chosen to use reputation as a cudgel in court. It’s a bold and braggadocious strategy that has not been matched with regard to other allegations of homosexuality.
This is a developing story.
