Daystar’s Joni Lamb says 'Pete' did not abuse granddaughter, says child accused boy in preschool
Daystar Television Network's co-founder and President Joni Lamb pointedly shot down in more detail allegations by her son, Jonathan Lamb, and his wife Suzy that she covered up the sexual abuse of his daughter by a family member, claiming that her granddaughter accused a boy at her preschool of touching her.
"I will just say absolutely a lie," Joni Lamb said during an episode of her "Joni Table Talk" Tuesday when asked if she and her late husband, Marcus Lamb, who died in November 2021, covered up the alleged abuse of their granddaughter in 2020.
"I never covered up anything. I wouldn't cover up anything. Marcus didn't cover up anything. … This is a narrative that was written by some low-level blogger who knows nothing, never heard the other side of the story, and is doing nothing but trying to destroy my family," she insisted, referring to a series of allegations made by her son and his wife in a recent interview with veteran investigative journalist Julie Roys of The Roys Report.
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Roys shared a letter on X Tuesday night in which Daystar attorney Michael D. Anderson, of the law firm Kelly Hart, insisted for the second time that Roys retract or correct her reports by this Friday or face litigation.
"The Roys Report published a series of statements (as identified in my November 24, 2024, letter) that are false and have zero basis in truth or fact. The statements were fabricated as part of the smear campaign that Jonathan and Suzy Lamb launched against my clients. The Roys Report does not have any evidence to support the statements set forth in the Articles other than the unsubstantiated claims made by Jonathan and Suzy Lamb," Anderson wrote.
"The Roys Report cannot escape liability for the false statements it published. ... In the event that The Roys Report does not retract or correct the Articles, Daystar and Ms. Lamb are fully prepared to initiate litigation against The Roys Report for its tortious conduct."
Responding on Tuesday, an attorney for The Roys Report wrote a letter to Anderson stating that they disagree with his citation of case law and would leave arguments to another day if Daystar pursues litigation. Further, the letter reiterates that The Roys Report will not make any changes to the articles.
"TRR has now afforded your client ample opportunities to provide substantive responses to the allegations reported in the Articles," attorney Christine Jones wrote.
"And, as you know, TRR did publish Daystar's singular, perfunctory response to TRR's detailed request for comment (in the form of an email sent on 19 November 2024) in Article I. It cannot be said that TRR has published any statements with knowledge that such statements are false, or with reckless disregard as to their potential falsity. Rather, at all times, TRR has operated with the utmost journalistic integrity, both in investigating and reporting all discernable perspectives on these matters of grave public import."
When asked about Joni Lamb's response to her reporting on Thursday, Roys told The Christian Post that the Daystar president's response is incomplete.
"Beyond the apparent contradiction we reported in our article today, I think the video discussion is most notable for the questions the women don't ask and Joni doesn't answer. For example, no one asks Joni about her alleged one-on-one meeting with Jonathan and Suzy's daughter the morning after the girl reportedly told her mother she'd been abused. Why did Joni want to meet with the girl one-on-one?" Roys asked.
"And can Joni explain why the girl reportedly won't talk about the alleged abuse since meeting with Joni? Also, Joni claims the incident at the beach house with 'Pete' was resolved soon after it occurred. If that's true, why was there an internal investigation? Also, the forensic counselor who conducted that investigation claims Joni and Marcus shut down the investigation before the counselor was able to conduct a decent interview with 'Pete,'" she insisted.
"Does Joni deny she did that? If not, why did she and Marcus shut it down? I asked Daystar many specific questions about the allegations, but so far, they've responded only to the questions they wish to discuss. There are many more questions that beg to be answered."
In explaining what she recalls of the events that were used to suggest Pete's abuse of her granddaughter, Joni Lamb claims the events have been twisted into a smear campaign against her and Daystar, which claims to reach 6.85 billion people worldwide and is in 2.3 billion homes.
"My first knowledge of any [allegation of] abuse was in November of 2020, and Suzy called me and said there had been an incident at my granddaughter's preschool. And she told me that something had happened where a little boy touched her and her friend. And so she called me and asked me would I go to the school with her," Joni Lamb recalled.
"I said 'absolutely.' So I went with her to the school. We reported it to the school, and of course, you know, I was there to encourage and as I would for any child, but especially my granddaughter," she said. "That was the incident that happened, and yet you know, what's being written is just taken out of context. … I was there and Suzy actually called me to go there. So this ... word about you covering up, there's no truth to that."
After that 2020 episode, Jonathan and Suzy Lamb told The Roys Report that in the summer of 2021, they caught Pete alone with their unclothed daughter in a room at a beach house Daystar rented for its annual executive retreat in Miramar Beach, Florida, and confronted him about it.
They allege that their daughter later revealed that she was sexually abused. When Suzy Lamb reported this to Joni Lamb, she claimed she was told not to report it to the police.
Joni Lamb reportedly asked that her granddaughter be brought to her in a meeting alone, and after that meeting, the child stopped discussing the alleged abuse.
"I don't know what happened there," Suzy Lamb told TRR, but she was like a "lock box."
"She doesn't remember one thing," Jonathan Lamb said. "She doesn't even remember having that conversation. It's like it never happened."
The couple said they secretly reported their suspicions of the abuse to police, but the case was closed because their daughter wouldn't talk.
Jonathan Lamb told Roys that they took their daughter to a counselor in 2023 who reported the suspected abuse to Texas Child Protective Services. The couple says the police investigation was reopened, but no formal charges have been filed.
Joni Lamb said on Tuesday, however, that her son and daughter-in-law have conflated two separate incidents to feed a false narrative. She took particular aim at the claim that Pete was alone in a room with her granddaughter as she changed her clothes at a family retreat in 2021.
"We were all staying in this house together, and again, we do that once a year, and my two older grandchildren were staying in an upstairs bedroom and it was a long room. There was a bunk bed on one side, and there was another bunk bed on the other side, and so my grandson was talking about that. He had the city view, and he was saying his sister had the beach view.
"One afternoon he was talking about that, and who they call Pete was in the room holding a 1-year-old baby boy. So Pete says, 'Oh, so you've got the city view.' And everybody was talking about, 'Well, I'd rather have the beach view.' And my grandson said, 'No, I like the city view.' And Pete said, 'Well, I like the city view too,' and so he said, 'I want to see your city view.'"
Joni Lamb said her grandson and Pete, along with the baby, all went to the room he shared with her granddaughter to look at the city view.
"I was there. I heard this whole conversation, and around the same time or maybe just a few minutes after, I don't know exactly when, but my granddaughter went up to the room and went over to her side while Pete and the baby and my grandson were looking out the window at the city view, and she proceeded to put her bathing suit on," Joni Lamb said.
"About the time she started to put it on, Jonathan comes running up the stairs and says, 'What are you doing in here while she's changing? … and Pete was like, 'Well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.' I don't even know if he actually saw anything cause he had his back to her. He was holding the baby, and the 8-year-old was there, so he said you know 'I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry and left," she added.
The Christian Post reached out to Jonathan Lamb for comment. This piece will be updated if a response is received.
In her segment Tuesday, Joni Lamb suggested that Suzy Lamb may have been very paranoid that day because of "some very peculiar things" that happened during the trip.
"I remember when we were at a grocery store, all the family was there, ... I remember Suzy was standing in line, and she began to murmur under her breath and start talking about a man that was behind her, and she was getting angrier and angrier, and we were like … what's going on?" Joni Lamb said.
"She said, you know, 'he was looking at me in the store.' And the man is like on his phone, not knowing what in the world she's saying or doing," she added. "We were just trying to calm her down so there was just, it was just a weird dynamic that was going on."
In a response to Joni Lamb's apparent shot at her mental health, Suzy Lamb noted on X in a since-deleted tweet: "God keeps having the last laugh. Joni may sit there trying to paint me as 'mentally ill mumbling to myself ... but you can watch Denise Boggs interviewed by @LauraLynnTT tell all. Thank God for TRUTH TELLERS. Real strong women of God."
Contact: leonardo.blair@christianpost.com Follow Leonardo Blair on Twitter: @leoblair Follow Leonardo Blair on Facebook: LeoBlairChristianPost
