The day after Tom Randall’s arrest, his friend and senior pastor Joe Coffey posted on his blog defending Randall and blaming “Joe M”. The Akron Beacon Journal reported on Jan 26, 2014:
In the days immediately following Randall’s arrest, the Rev. Joe Coffey described Mauk as a “rival missionary” who made accusations against Randall and “a single man with a vendetta.”
…
Coffey, who has since removed the negative descriptors of Mauk, said he has been operating on information that he received from Randall, who is a close personal friend. He said he understands that there are two sides to every story but that he trusts Randall.
Coffey’s response raises questions.
- Why does he blame “Joe’s accusations”, when the allegations both in November and in January were made by the victims?
- Why does he mention only one girl and one kiss, when there were at the very least allegations from two girls, both describing multiple incidents?
- Both girls who made the original allegations repeated their allegations to anti-trafficking investigators when they were interviewed in January. Why would they do that if they had made up allegations because they were angry and recanted already?
- Tom Randall is on record saying that at the time he left for the basketball trip, he was waiting for a report from the DSWD with the results of the December investigation. Why then does Coffey claim the staff were fully exonerated?
The following is part of the original post which was screen captured before Coffey modified it.
My Friend Tom, published Jan 14, 2014 [screencap] [current post]
Tom Randall is my friend. I’ve been proud of that for the last 18 years. He’s a remarkable person in a number of ways. He has made my life richer and my relationship with God deeper. He challenges me in ways no one else does.
He went to the Philippines a month ago to spend time with the children of his orphanage and take some men from the States on a basketball trip they will be talking about for the rest of their lives.
Before Tom left he started to receive calls from the Philippines about a missionary he has known for 30 years. I think everyone reading this knows that a friend gone bad makes the very worst enemy. Joe M has become that for Tom. It started small and when Joe did not get what he wanted he began to move from one version of a story to another until any truth was completely unrecognizable. Joe’s accusations resulted in a full blow investigation from the Philippine version of Child Services and the FBI. After 2 weeks of exhausting interviews Tom and the staff of the orphanage were completely exonerated. Tom called me to rejoice and then left on the basketball trip.
Joe M was not pleased. He refused to meet with Tom to discuss the Child Services and the FBI report. He went quiet. We hoped he would realize the damage false accusations can do. Instead Joe M went to the U.S. Embassy and Homeland Security. Joe’s original charge was that a worker at the orphanage had kissed one of the girls. That ended up to be untrue. The girl recanted the story and said she made it up because she was angry that privileges had been taken away as discipline. By the time Joe decided to go to the Embassy he had