Discerning Daystar, Julie Roys, And The Alleged Abuse Scandal

There are some scandals in Evanglicalism that greatly benefit from waiting to hear from both sides. No scandal exemplifies this as much as the Daystar alleged abuse scandal where key details were deliberately left out of initial reporting, thus creating an entirely skewed perspective on the facts of the case.

Daystar is a global 9-figure televangelism network

 founded by Marcus and Joni Lamb. Upon Marcus’s death in November 2021, there was discontent with the succession of the media empire and simmering discontent among the family. In 2023, Suzy Lamb was fired and in November 2024, Jonathan Lamb was fired from Daystar for bad performance and refusing to reconcile with the CEO. The termination letter contains a threat against disparaging the company.

Enter Julie Roys

Prior to the termination, Jonathan and Suzi Lamb coordinated with Julie Roys, a feminist blogger. The response she received from a lawyer references a letter received on November 15, the day before Lamb was fired. This then denotes a clear connection between the allegations and Jonathan Lamb’s termination.

So what do Jonathan and Suzy Lamb allege?

Jonathan Lamb, Joni Lamb’s son, and his wife Suzy have accused Joni of covering up the sexual abuse of their daughter by a male family member referred to as “Pete.” They claim that the incident occurred during a family retreat in August 2021, where Pete was allegedly found alone with their unclothed daughter in a room. Joni and her late husband Marcus reportedly chose not to involve the police, instead opting for an internal resolution which included prayer sessions for reconciliation rather than legal action.

Julie Roys refers to the accused abuser as “Pete” for fear of legal liability, stating that “he has not been charged with a crime.” Roys begins the article with a salacious hook.

On a hot August day in Florida in 2021, then-Daystar TV executive Jonathan Lamb was summoned by his frightened wife, Suzy. “Pete,” one of their male relatives, had followed their 5-year-old daughter upstairs as the girl was going to change to go swimming.

“It’s like (Pete’s) eyes—he went black, and he’s like in a zombie mode,” Suzy recounted to The Roys Report (TRR) in an exclusive interview.

The seminal event of the allegation is meant as a smoking gun evidence that “Pete” is a child molester, something Jonathan and Suzy Lamb reportedly suspected leading up to this event.

The saga involving the couple’s daughter started eight months before the incident at the beach house. That’s when the girl disclosed to Suzy she’d been molested.

Suzy said her daughter told her that a man had touched her, and used her own hands to indicate she’d been finger raped vaginally and anally. (TRR is not releasing the name of the daughter to protect her privacy.)

The girl did not identify her molester, other than to mention a couple physical characteristics, Suzy said. Initially, Suzy thought the perpetrator was someone at her daughter’s school. But she discovered the school didn’t employ any men.

As the months went by, both Jonathan and Suzy began to suspect Pete.

She recalled that after a summer vacation in 2020, Pete told her that her daughter had walked in on him in the bathroom completely naked.

They noticed their daughter became terrified to come to Daystar, where Pete worked, and once ran and hid in a corner when she saw Pete enter a room.

They said Pete was often with their children in Daystar’s green room while they were filming their show. And once, Rebecca and JW, Jonathan’s sister and brother-in-law, warned them about Pete. The couple reportedly told her they saw him putting his hands all over the child and kissing her.

So even though they suspected that Pete molested their daughter, the Lambs proceeded to go on an executive retreat with Pete, a detail pointed out by Pete’s lawyer. The last detail is hearsay.

The Lambs allowed their daughter to have a sleepover at Lamb’s house and he had a playdate at theirs.

The day their daughter disclosed the alleged abuse, Suzy said she immediately called Joni, who urged Suzy not to go to police but instead to bring the girl to her. After meeting one on one with Joni, the girl stopped talking about what had happened, Suzy and Jonathan said.

This is where Joni Lamb is alleged to have intervened to cover up abuse.

Material Misrepresentation

Jonathan and Suzy reported their suspicions to police but said they kept it secret from their family. Because their daughter wouldn’t talk about it, police closed the case. (Later, it was re-opened.)

Then, on Aug. 3, 2021, when Jonathan caught Pete in a room* with his naked daughter, the couple went to Marcus and Joni, hoping they’d do something. But almost immediately, the elder Lambs declared Pete innocent, Jonathan and Suzy said.

The article added the asterisk to denote a footnote pointing to a correction after publishing.

Suzy Lamb said in a subsequent interview that Pete was holding his child in his arms when he went into the room in the August 3 incident. The Lambs and Julie Roys made a deliberate decision not to publish this key detail.

The initial article depicted Pete as being a caught redhanded peeping tom. However, not only was he holding his infant, but the girl’s brother was also in the room. This is a clear misrepresentation initially reported. Julie Roys responded to the backlash by burying the correction at the end of the article instead of in either of the two references to the event.

*Correction: Our initial report said Pete was alone in the room with Jonathan and Suzy’s daughter. Pete was holding a baby in his arms and Jonathan and Suzy’s son was on a bunk on the opposite side of the room.

The neglect of mentioning Pete’s child (children) raises questions about how other events like sleepovers, playdates, and other interactions were framed. Rachel Lamb, Jonathan’s sister gives a different account of the incident.

One afternoon some of the family was in the kitchen talking. Pete was holding his baby, who happened to be super fussy. Whenever his baby got fussy he would walk around with the baby and change environments and most of the time the baby would calm down. So in an effort to do that, Pete said to Jonathan & Suzy’s son, in front of everyone that was there including Suzy, “Hey give me a tour of your room, I want to see this “city view” you keep telling us about.” Their son was really excited and happily took Pete upstairs to show him his space. Jonathan and Suzy’s daughter went along with them at the same time. As Pete is holding his child, their son showed Pete the “ocean view” and then of course over to see his “city view,” which he was so proud of!

While Pete was reaching over to open the blinds to see the “city view” Jonathan and Suzy’s daughter got undressed on the other side of the room behind them and was changing into her swimsuit for the day to go to the beach. At that exact time, Jonathan walked up and saw his daughter changing and exploded at Pete and accused him of doing something inappropriate even though his back was completely turned and he was holding his child. Totally taken off guard and confused at Jonathan’s over the top reaction towards him, Pete immediately apologized and said, “Sorry man I had no idea she was changing my back was turned. I’m sorry.”

A detail elsewhere elaborated is that this room was long enough to have a city and ocean side.

Conclusions

There is an industry related to “abuse” in the church, which we call Abuse Inc. Julie Roys is their go-to blogger for breaking allegations like these. Julie Roys will generally go after any powerful man in ministry regardless of the merit of the claims. This is despite her underlying hypocrisy of being an abuser by her own standards, in which she engaged in quasi-homosexual grooming relationship with a youth under her care in a church ministry. The Lambs going to Roys was intended to do maximum damage. But whether this was justified remains unknown.

Even though Julie Roys and the Lambs materially misrepresented their smoking gun moment, the allegations against Pete remain inconclusive. There is not enough evidence to determine guilt, and both sides have reasons to either lie or cover up sin. Are Jonathan and Suzy Lamb disgruntled nepo babies slighted at the succession of their family empire? Are they genuinely convinced but wrong that their daughter was molested by Pete? Is Daystar knowingly covering up abuse that Pete did commit? Or is Pete actually guilty and Daystar unconvinced because of the lack of evidence?

At the end of the day, we simply don’t know.