latest

Daystar's broadcast complex and corporate jet — together valued at $9.5 million — would be subject to property taxes in Texas if the ministry were a for-profit business. But it's exempt because of its status as a church.

According to court records, Daystar's primary revenue comes from selling airtime to other religious programmers. Its secondary income is donations. The documents show that between 2005 and 2011, Daystar took in $208 million in tax-deductible contributions from viewers through on-air pitches.

Daystar has built a public image as a generous giver to charitable causes. Indeed, the network has contributed millions of dollars to a trauma center and a home for Holocaust survivors in Israel, a hospital in Calcutta, and to ministries that support women in Moldova and children in Uganda.

Lamb trumpeted those donations in a 2009 sermon in Australia: "In the last five years, Daystar has written checks of donations to others, to ministries, to churches, to missions, to hurricane relief, to tsunami relief, to hospitals, etc., to the tune of $30 million cash!"

NPR analyzed six years of Daystar balance sheets. They show the network gave away $9.7 million dollars in direct grants to outside recipients. Not $30 million. That works out to charitable giving of about 5 percent of donor revenue.

"My concern is the disconnect between what Daystar asks that the money be used for and how they actually use it," says Daniel Borochoff, president of CharityWatch.org, a nonprofit charity evaluator based in Chicago. Borochoff estimates he's examined more than 100,000 nonprofits in his 25 years doing this kind of work. NPR sent him Daystar documents and asked him to assess the network's charitable giving.

"Daystar needs to tell people that only about 5 percent of their contributions are going toward hospitals, churches, needy individuals," he says.

In its letter, Daystar explains the discrepancy by saying the majority of viewer contributions actually pays for the costs of foreign satellite transmissions, which the network considers its "international mission work."

To see where the actual cash donations go, NPR examined six years of network giving and found that some of the money goes to family interests and ministry expenses.

According to court records, Daystar gave:
*$433,000 of tax-deductible viewer donations to Oral Roberts University, mostly during years when the three Lamb children were enrolled there.
*$53,683 to Lake Country Christian School, the high school the Lamb children attended.
*$296,091 to Gateway Church, the Lambs' family church.
*$32,200 to Family Restoration Network, Christian marriage counselors who Marcus and Joni claim saved their marriage.
*$24,026 to Lamb's alma mater, Lee University in Cleveland, Tenn.
*$21,879 to Lynn Haven Nursing Home in Gray, Ga., where Marcus' father lived before he died.`

Other donations of tax-deductible viewer contributions include $60,000 to Israeli lawyers who helped Daystar get a cable television contract, according to the publisher of Teva Ha'Dvarim Magazine, who acted as an intermediary; $23,674 for a ministry trip to Asia; $60,000 in payments to "Daystar and Daystar Remotes"; and $30,000 to the First Baptist Church of Orlando at a time when the pastor was helping Daystar buy a local educational TV station, according to Daystar documents filed with the 193rd Judicial District Court in Dallas County.

Moreover, evangelists who bought airtime on Daystar or appeared as guests on the network received more than $500,000. Of that sum, $92,000 went to the Rev. T.L. Lowery and his foundation, on whose board of directors Lamb sits.

Daystar spent nondonation ministry income on expenses that included $572,154 in sponsorship and expenses for a Christian NASCAR driver named Blake Koch; a $2.3 million loan to the Rev. Frank Harber, Lamb's former special assistant and golfing buddy, to start a church that defaulted on the loan; and $97,320 spent at retail bookstores to buy up copies of Joni Lamb's autobiography, Surrender All, helping to drive it onto a best-sellers list. Daystar says the books were given away as premiums to donors.

A Southern California couple are in custody after one of their daughters called 911 and led authorities to their home on Sunday. There, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department says it found 12 of the teen's siblings inside, including "several children shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in dark and foul-smelling surroundings."

Of the 13 siblings living at the home in Perris, Calif., officials say six were under the age of 18. The siblings ranged in age from 2 years old to 29, and the daughter who sought help was 17 — though when law enforcement officers met with her, "she appeared to be only 10 years old and slightly emaciated."

"Deputies, when they arrived inside the house, noticed that the children were malnourished," Capt. Greg Fellows, commander of the Perris Sheriff's Station, said at a news conference Tuesday. "It was very dirty, and the conditions were horrific."

Law enforcement officers arrested their biological parents, David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise Anna Turpin, 49. Each of the parents has been charged with nine counts of torture and 10 counts of child endangerment. Each is being held on $9 million bail.

"If you can imagine being 17 years old and appearing to be a 10-year-old, being chained to a bed, being malnourished and [having] injuries associated with that — I would call that torture," Fellows told reporters.

All 13 victims were hospitalized for examinations and treatment. Although the Riverside University Health System declined to describe the minors' condition, Corona Regional Medical Center CEO Mark Uffer said the seven adults are "stable and they're being fed."

"It's hard to think of them as adults when you first see them because they're small, and it's clear they're malnutritioned," Uffer said at Tuesday's news conference.

Fellows explained Tuesday that the parents, who have lived in Perris since approximately 2014, had been home-schooling their children. When confronted by the police Sunday — according to the statement released Monday — "the parents were unable to immediately provide a logical reason why their children were restrained in that manner."

"It seemed that the mother was perplexed as to why we were at that residence," Fellows said. He added that law enforcement "had no prior contacts at that residence regarding any allegations of child abuse or neglect."

David Turpin's parents, James and Betty Turpin of West Virginia, told ABC News that they were "surprised and shocked" at the allegations because their son and daughter-in-law were "a good Christian family." They said they had not seen the family since visiting California four or five years ago.

The Los Angeles Times, citing public records, reports that the couple had moved to California from Texas several years ago and that they had declared bankruptcy twice.

Ivan Trahan, a lawyer who had represented the couple in their most recent bankruptcy filing, in 2011, was quoted by the Times as saying that the Turpins seemed like "very nice people who spoke highly of their children" but who had fallen into financial problems.

Trahan said David Turpin had worked as an engineer for Northrop Grumman. A spokesman for the defense contractor confirmed to the Times that he was employed there until 2010.

However, Kimberly Milligan, 50, who lives across the street, was quoted by the newspaper as saying that when she first moved in she saw a woman outside the house with an infant, but eventually stopped seeing the child. Over the years, Milligan said, she would occasionally see three children who looked like preteens.

"I thought the kids were home-schooled," she said. "You know something is off, but you don't want to think bad of people."

Considering the proximity of the houses, Milligan questioned aloud: "How did no one see anything?"

Milligan was quoted by Reuters as saying that two years ago around Christmas she saw three of the older Turpin children outside and complimented them on a Nativity scene outside their house. She said they "froze [as] if by doing so they could become invisible."

"Twenty-year-olds never act like that," she told the news agency. "They didn't want to have a social conversation."

Still, authorities lauded the bravery displayed by the 17-year-old daughter in calling attention to the situation Sunday.

"I appreciate the courage that this juvenile had," Fellows said Tuesday, "to escape that house and get out there and report this to law enforcement."