Trial accusing Evangel World Prayer Center and another ministry of wrongdoing is settled

A massive three-week trial in which two local ministries – one of them the well-known Evangel World Prayer Center – were accused of squandering a trust of an elderly multimillionaire with no family was settled Thursday.

The terms were confidential and not disclosed, said Homer Parrent, an attorney for the court-appointed trustee, Kevin Ford.

Parrent would not say if the settlement was triggered by testimony that favored one side or the other, or if the settlement was nominal or substantial.

The Rev. Bob Rodgers, pastor for Evangel, which claims 9,000 members, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Chris Roslan, a spokesman for the Rev. Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, which brought the suit, applauded the court trustee for pursuing it and said: "We pray that Ms. Hugh’s final wishes can now be honored.”

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The Courier Journal reported Aug. 29 that when Ruth H. Hugh, a Kentucky native, was near death in 2017 in the affluent San Diego community of La Jolla, two Louisville ministries, Evangel and High Adventure Ministries Inc., persuaded her to change the terms of her trust and misspent some of herfortune.

The trustee alleged in the lawsuit that Rodgers flew to California to pray with Hugh on her death bed and persuaded her to be interred in an elaborate eight-person mausoleum worth about $250,000 that Evangel eventually built for her at its Crosswater Gardens Cemetery.

The trustee alleged that defied the wishes she expressed in writing seven months earlier, when she said she wanted to be buried in nearby San Diego without even a funeral or service.

CBN, which was to get 40% of Hugh’s trust, alleged in the lawsuit that the leader of High Adventure, Jacqeline Yockey, persuaded Hugh to change the terms of her estate to give less to CBN and 33% to the charity Yockey ran out of her Lake Forest home.

CBN also alleged she took hundreds of thousands of dollars from Hugh’s trust and spent it on herself, including$3,190 for plastic surgery in Nashville, $4,935 at a Las Vegas beauty parlor and $1,079 for Broadway tickets to the Lion King, according to records filed in the suit. She also secretly transferred $400,300 to her son.

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Yockey had been trustee of Hugh's trust, but Jefferson Circuit Judge Charles Cunningham removed her at CBN’s request for misconduct. She is no longer president of High Adventure, according to testimony in the lawsuit.

Attorneys for Rodgers and other defendants affiliated with its cemetery denied wrongdoing or liability.

CBN also sought to recover money spent from the Hugh trust to provide first-class air fare and luxury hotels for the trip Rodgers and his son-in-law, Rex Nichols, took to visit her. Both were named as defendants.

Attorneys for the church said in court papers that “it is not uncommon for people to feel a connection with pastors they watch on television, and that it is not unusual for such ministers to travel to pray with someone they have not personally met before.”

Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; awolfson@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @adwolfson.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Trial accusing Evangel World Prayer Center of wrongdoing is settled