Lighthouse chapel lawyer can testify to my credibility—Manasseh tells court

The former Editor-in-Chief of The Fourth Estate, Manasseh Azure Awuni, last Friday told the Accra High Court that the lawyer for Lighthouse Chapel International, Kweku Paintsil, was one individual who could vouch for his credibility.

Under cross-examination by Lighthouse lawyers in a defamation suit by the church, Mr Awuni explained that he and Mr. Paintsil became friends following an investigation involving one of the lawyer’s clients because of the thoroughness of his (Awuni’s) work.

Mr Awuni’s comment came on the heels of the lawyer’s claim that the investigative journalist failed to contact the church on allegations that its hierarchy was forcing pastors to divorce their wives.

He implied that The Fourth Estate could not use a single instance to generalize that it had become the church’s culture to compel some of its pastors to divorce their wives.

Mr. Awuni disagreed. Citing another instance when a former Lighthouse pastor said he had been told to divorce his wife for not supporting his ministry, Mr. Awuni said the former pastors, not the reporters of The Fourth Estate, had called the practice a “culture.” He said Mr. Paintsil was fully aware of the rigour of his work, adding that Lighthouse Chapel had been unwilling to cooperate or respond to interview requests during the investigations.

“It is normal for an investigative journalist to go to a source from whom he is seeking information several times before the publication is ready, that is, if the source is prepared to respond. If there is anybody in this courtroom who can testify to this, it is the counsel for the plaintiff,” he said.

“In 2013, his client was involved in an investigation I was conducting. I contacted his client not less than five times before the story was done. At a point, he referred me to his lawyer, counsel for the plaintiff [Lighthouse lawyer], to respond to some of my follow-up requests or questions. I remember visiting his office about twice or thrice in Osu.

“This included taking documents to photocopy and return them. That is how counsel for plaintiff became my friend till today, because he was satisfied with the thoroughness of my work,” he said.

However, Mr Paintsil protested Manasseh’s reference to his client, saying “he cannot prove by any evidence before this court and the privacy of the matter and so on.”

“If he decides to put that issue in public, I have a duty to stop it. Privileged information cannot be put in public,” he said.

But a smiling presiding judge, Rev. Fr. Joseph Adu Owusu Agyeman, intervened.

“He is not bound by legal ethics. You’re bound by legal ethics,” the judge pointed out.

“Are you not his friend?” the judge asked.

“My lord, I’m not going to deny that he is my good friend, but when what he is saying raises issues that cannot be proven, and you can’t leave it without cross-examining,” he said.

At this point, the lawyer for the Media Foundation for West and Mr Awuni, Samson Lardy Anyenini, weighed in, saying Mr Awuni’s response was justified because of the Lighthouse lawyer’s line of questioning, which sought to create doubt about Mr Awuni’s work.

At the judge’s urging, Mr Paintsil dropped the matter.

Mr Awuni, however, emphasized that the engagement with the lawyer’s client in 2013 was because “the subject of the investigation was prepared to engage. In the case of the plaintiff, there was no avenue for engagement, so any follow-up request could not be made, which is sometimes the case even on the eve of publication.”

Earlier, the investigative journalist told the Court that The Fourth Estate went as far as reaching out to Archbishop Charles Agyinasare to connect journalists of the news portal to Lighthouse Chapel for an interview to address allegations of economic exploitation, including the non-payment of their Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) contribution and emotional abuse levelled against the church.

But the church turned down the request for an interview and also refused to respond to a letter from The Fourth Estate about the allegations.

Meanwhile, a bishop of the Lighthouse Chapel International, Bishop Marcel Aboagye, admitted to the court on January 10, 2023, that the church “refused” to respond to a letter The Fourth Estate wrote for a response before publishing the “Darkness in the Lighthouse” series

“We suspected there was collusion between the former pastors, Kofi Bentil, and the defendants [The Fourth Estate]. We thought a response to the letter would mean giving away the potential defense to an imminent suit,” he told the court.

Below are excerpts from the cross-examination:

Kwaku Paintsil: At page three of your first publication, which is also page seven of our witness statement, you stated, “There’s a culture of abuse, exploitation, and pressure on pastors to divorce their wives all in the name of advancing the work of God.’

Manasseh Azure Awuni: I don’t recall the exact words. If I may have it to refresh my memory. [He’s given the document]. Contrary to what the counsel said, it reads: “The Fourth Estate delves into the lives of these six ministers of God, and what they say is a culture of abuse, exploitation, and pressure on some pastors to divorce their wives, all in the name of advancing the work of God.” Counsel took out what “they say” and inserted “there is” to sound as though it is a declaration by the publishers.

Q: Are you suggesting to this court that, as a publisher, you don’t owe any obligation to the public to verify the truth or otherwise of allegations you publish?

A.: My lord, we owe it to the public to verify, as much as possible, the allegation made by our sources. That is why we took various steps to get the side of the plaintiffs, even when our information was that they would not respond. I went with my colleague in court today, Seth Bokpe, in order to get the Plaintiff’s church to respond. Even when they told the revered man of God [Archbishop Agyinasare] that they would not respond, we wrote to the church. Again, they refused to respond. We asked some of the pastors if they have evidence to support what they said. On the claim of divorce, for instance, Bishop Oko Mensah said the meeting was not recorded, the meeting at which he was asked to divorce his wife was not recorded. But he remembered sending a WhatsApp message to his wife. Immediately after the meeting, he called and hinted her the meeting was about her. But he did not have the phone with him. He promised to look for that phone and produce the message. He did, and we attached it to the story and published it. We also had documents and correspondence from plaintiff’s church.

Q: Is it the one instance of Bishop Oko Mensah’ case which you characterized as a culture?

A. No, my Lord, we stated the cases of all six pastors and what they endured within the period. We, for instance, stated the case of Seth Duncan and what he went through. Contrary to the claim by counsel for the plaintiff that Seth Duncan’s marriage is intact, he filed for divorce as far back as 2022, three to four years after their separation. On those filings, Seth Duncan’s wife actually said, “He was suicide prone, the very issues he narrated in The Fourth Estate article.” My Lord, we also had to delete the account of one pastor, who said he was a former Lighthouse pastor. But because of his wife, who was terminally ill with cancer, he didn’t want the family to be drawn into the issue. This and others, as we narrated in the story, was what the pastors said constituted a culture of abuse, exploitation, and pressure on pastors to divorce their wives.

The case has been adjourned to October 31, 2025.

Background

Six former ministers of Lighthouse Church International sued the church in April 2021 for non-payment of their pension contributions, economic exploitation, and emotional abuse.

The church counter-sued the pastors and accused them of causing The Fourth Estate to publish “sensational” allegations, even before and after they came to court to sue the church.

The church also sued The Fourth Estate for defamation, claiming, among things, that the publications sought to suggest that the church was “not only intolerant but extremely callous, insensitive, inconsiderate, and cold-hearted in its treatment of and abandonment of its volunteers and employees with exacting demands calculated to house them out of their posts.”

The Lighthouse stories also contained the former pastors’ accounts of the sacrifices they made in establishing churches they were allegedly forced to abandon because of a church policy.

The LCI and The Fourth Estate have been in court since December 2021.