Orlando Montoya: Abigail, I thank you for sharing your story. We’re also joined by Will Hubbard, vice president for veterans and military policy at the nonprofit Veterans Education Success. Will, does what happened to Abigail and others involved with the House of Prayer Christian Churches of America point out the need for any federal policy changes?
Will Hubbard: Thanks for having us, Orlando, and thank you for highlighting this story. And also thank you to Abigail for being so brave to share your story. I know it’s hard and it brings up a lot of memories, but it’s important to get that message out there. It is important to highlight the fact that policy changes are needed. The big question we need to think about at this point is why was this allowed to happen in the first place? Why were GI Bill benefits going to a school that was obviously a scam and arguably a cult, by the description of its own members? That’s the question we all need to look at. And the reality is right now GI Bill benefits are not as well overseen as they should be and the standards are not as strong as we believe they could be. And so that’s something that we’re fighting very hard to make sure changes in Congress so that stories like this don’t happen again.
Orlando Montoya: The allegation is that they were using the VA benefits and funneling them to the church so that they would benefit the church leaders. How would they do that in a way that would not be seen by — by the law enforcement and all the authorities involved?
Will Hubbard: The current system relies on a lot of trust to begin with, but also enforcement mechanisms that are, frankly, not as strong as they should be in some states, and in certain cases, hardly exist at all. And so just having minimum standards to make sure that any schools that get into the system to begin with are offering a quality education that veterans can use their hard-earned benefits at. At present, we are working hard with Congress to make sure that these veterans do get their GI Bill benefits back. They were essentially stolen from them by this church, and it’s something that we would like to see, at minimum, to make them whole.
Orlando Montoya: That was Will Hubbard, vice president for veterans and military policy at the nonprofit Veterans Education Success. And earlier we heard from Abigail Bradeen, a former member of the House of Prayer Christian Churches of America. Thank you both.
Read the full article at Georgia Public Broadcasting here.