Mike Bickle contacted accuser for advice before she went public, former staffer claims

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Monday, February 19, 2024

Mere hours before Tammy Woods alleged in an interview with The Kansas City Star that International House of Prayer Kansas City founder Mike Bickle groomed and sexually abused her in the 1980s when she was just 14, her former pastor allegedly sought her advice amid mounting abuse allegations from multiple women.

In posts highlighted on both X and Facebook, former IHOPKC staffer Ben Anderson shared a copy of a script Bickle was reportedly planning to use for himself and his wife, Diane, to create a video on Jan. 30.

The video would have responded to allegations that he, for example, routinely told his alleged victims that his wife would die young, suggesting that he would be able to have a future with them at some point.

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Anderson said he was provided a copy of the script by either Woods or a member of her family and explained that Bickle eventually did not create the video because Woods, who is now a 57-year-old mother and grandmother, "advised him against it."

"Tammy advised him against it and in the moment, he agreed to not follow through. Time will tell if he has changed his mind or not since the interview was published," Anderson claimed on X.

Using her maiden name, Woods told The Kansas City Star that Bickle abused her in St. Louis, where he pastored a church before moving to Kansas City and starting IHOPKC in 1999.

Woods said Bickle abused her in his car, at her home, in the church and his office. She said the abuse, which began when she started babysitting his two sons, involved sexual contact but not intercourse. She revealed that the IHOPKC founder also told her several times that his wife would die young and suggested that she could be the mother to his sons.

"He would kiss my neck, he would kiss my cheeks, he would kiss my forehead," Woods was quoted as saying, recalling the first time Bickle kissed her like a lover at her house when she was just 14. "The first, like, 'kiss' kiss was in my house. He kind of pulled me into my bathroom. And he kissed me like a man kisses a woman."

In Bickle's alleged unused script, he denies ever telling any woman that God told him his wife would die young.

"I have never told any woman that 'God told me that Diane would die, and that God told me to marry them.' Diane is the one who told me that she believed that she would die young. In the earlier years of our marriage she had a foreboding sense that she would die young. We spoke about this several times," Bickle notes in the script.

In his analysis of the script, Anderson criticizes Bickle for refusing "contact with outside leaders but has no problem running his ideas by one of his victims."

"He makes it clear why he made this statement — 'because of the pain and burden that my family endures' — not to express any kind of sorrow for his actions or the pain he has directly caused to countless people. It's a textbook DARVO (deny, attack, and reverse victim & offender) example where he is now portrayed as the real victim here," Anderson argues.

"He continues to blame all this on 'Satan's agenda' to cause us to be 'offended at God's leadership.' This is not far off from a sentiment that is still held by some current leaders who are hanging onto the idea that this is the Black Horse and IHOP is under a demonic attack against the prayer movement."

Woods' story emerged after an independent report was released to the public on Jan. 31 and prepared by attorney Rosalee McNamara. In that report, Bickle confessed to engaging in "consensual sexual contact" with a woman connected to the 24/7 prayer ministry in addition to a previously confessed relationship with a primary Jane Doe, who alleged she was his kept woman for several years.

Another woman, identified as "TH," also added to Bickle's alleged pattern of abusing minor girls when she told TRR this month that Bickle began grooming and sexually abusing her when she was 15 and he was a 20-year-old church intern in the mid-1970s. TH said she is the ex-wife of self-styled "prophet" Bob Hartley of Hartley Hope Ministries, who was recently banned from IHOPKC's 24/7 prayer room after he was publicly accused of sexual assault and a pattern of predatory behavior impacting multiple alleged female victims.