Repent Amarillo: Group takes a swing at lifestyle

This is the second of a multi-part series on Repent Amarillo
and Raven Ministries. This week’s installment reports on some of the tactics of Repent Amarillo’s spiritual warfare. For the first part of this series, visit our Web site at amarilloindy.com.

By George Schwarz

The Amarillo Independent

Several members of the Route 66 Swingers Club said they lost jobs after employers learned of their lifestyle, only two couples would come forward to speak openly and one other couple came forward agreeing to an on-camera interview only if their faces were hidden and voices disguised.

While the reporter interviewed one couple at the swingers club, another member told the reporter that she had lost her job but couldn’t talk about it for fear of losing another job.

David Grisham denies calling family members or employers of swinger club members, although he concedes one instance when he called a cab company. The other claims by swingers about him are lies, he said.

“Swingers lie all the time about different things,” he said. “I assure you there is no proof. There is no proof because we haven’t been doing it.”

Grisham said he isn’t out to cost people their jobs or shame them.

But some of the swingers see it differently.

Phillip and Debbie Roark, who own a Yellow Cab, said Repent Amarillo tried to interfere with their employment with the firm.

“One night when we were at the club, they decided to take the number off of our vehicle, called the owner of Yellow Cab and tried to cost us our jobs,” Phillip Roark said. “The owner is fully aware of our lifestyle choices and supports us being able to do what we want to do.”

Roark said he knows it was Repent Amarillo because they stated who they were to his boss.

Further, a copy of a telephone bill the Amarillo Independent obtained of the cab company owner’s mobile number shows the incoming call from the same phone number David Grisham uses to sign his e-mails.

Grisham said he saw a swinger, whom Grisham didn’t name, go into the club with two large bottles of whiskey and was concerned that many leave the club drunk.

“But we were concerned because here was a licensed cab driver in our city who is about to go get drunk and he was going to drive a cab,” Grisham said.

He called the cab company and the owner told him to mind his own business, he added.

There isn’t anything Repent Amarillo can do to hurt the Roarks’ income, but they have jeopardized other club members’ livelihoods, Debbie Roark said. “There’s other members who have lost their jobs because they have turned around and called their businesses.”

Another member of the club, who said he needed anonymity for fear of retribution, said Repent Amarillo tried to cost him his job.

“It’s been several months ago, but evidently, when I parked my vehicle out there, they saw one of my business cards or something laying on my dash, and it’s got my cell phone number on it,” he said. “I own my own business so they started calling me on my cell phone. And they would not identify themselves; they would just want to inform me that one of my employees was going to the Route 66 Swingers Club.”

When he did not respond to their questions, they asked to speak to his boss. He gave them his office number and eventually they called his office when he was there and told him that one of his employees was attending the swingers club, he said. “I told him that it was fine by me and he’s a good employee. He did his job and what he did on his own time was not any of my business. They didn’t realize they were actually talking to me about me.”

Then, they threatened to “out him” to his customers, he added.

But Repent Amarillo isn’t restricting its contacts to businesses.

“I know they’ve contacted other families – at least three that I know of,” Debbie Roark said.

One of those who lost his job because his family found out about his lifestyle is Randall Sammons.

The mother of one of the people where he used to work is part of Repent Amarillo and she preaches with them, Randall Sammons said. “He (his employer) found out that I was in the lifestyle and he started telling me I was going to go to hell. Not long after that, I lost my job.”

Sammons said his former employer didn’t mention the swinging lifestyle directly when he fired him.

But Randall Sammons’ wife, Robin, said that, after struggling to get unemployment, they called and were read a document that indicated being a swinger was a factor in his dismissal.

The Sammonses’ attorney has worked several months to obtain a copy of that document from the Texas Workforce Commission.

“They read him this long report about what his boss had said and all these lies … and then said that one of the reasons was that he was in the lifestyle,” Robin Sammons said.

“They said I was planning swinger parties at work,” Randall Sammons added.

He was with the firm for 13 years and had never gotten an evaluation, he said.

But Chris Bandy, owner of Carter Engine & Machine, denied the swinging had anything to do with Sammons’ firing.

Randall Sammons said he’s been out of work since August and has filed five applications a week, but has gotten only a few interviews. He said he wondered if his former boss is blackballing him.

The situation has cut their income by two-thirds and has forced them to delay Robin’s college education. They have had to apply for food stamps to feed their family and lost the ability to get a rent subsidy, although their landlord has given them a break. He has also lost his health insurance, they said. “If our kids get sick, we’re in a world of hurt because we can’t afford to take them to the doctor.”

David Grisham said in an interview Nov. 30 no one from Repent Amarillo got Sammons fired.

“As far as I know, none of my members has called anybody’s employers and I’ve given strict instructions not to do that,” he said. “And all of them have assured me that they have not.”

How Repent Amarillo learns swingers’ names is open to debate.

Swinger club members say Repent Amarillo members collect and run license plate numbers of cars parked by the club during parties. Grisham acknowledged the group writes down license plate numbers of the swingers’ cars. The group makes a list and when there’s a party going on at the event center on Sixth Avenue, they check against the list to make sure it’s not a swinger event.

“Now, we have found out the names of some of the swingers and we do use that to witness to them personally,” he said. “I can’t reveal to you all the techniques we use for investigations, but I assure you our investigations are legal.”

However, an Oct. 24 recording of an encounter between members of Repent Amarillo and the Route 66 Club’s attorney documents that the religious group is taking license plate numbers from cars parked in the lot to the east of the club building.

On the tape, one Repent Amarillo member called taking down license plate numbers “a deterrent.”

“They can hide their faces, but they can’t hide everything else,” he said. And, in that recording, they also deny “running” the license plate numbers and one of the voices on the recording says people just think they are.

And, in a video recorded Nov. 7, Russell Grisham, David Grisham’s son, said on camera that they run the license plates to get “names,” because “they are swingers and we are Christians.” An Oct. 31 video shows Russell Grisham looking for more than a minute into a club member’s car through the front window where the VIN is located.

In Monday’s interview, David Grisham disputed Russell Grisham’s assertion.

“If he’s saying that, he’s teasing somebody,” David Grisham said, adding they had no inside sources in law enforcement to run plates.

When pressed abut getting plate information, he said “I am not running plates and everything we do is legal.”

The swingers post identifying information on the Web so it’s easy to find out who they are, he said.

Repent Amarillo also has other sources of information, two of whom are associated with the swingers club. One is Mac Mead, the owner of the Route 66 Party & Event Center and another is a member of the club whom Grisham declined to identify.

“I originally went through a phone interview with him to find out the location of the club and he originally spilled his guts,” Grisham said. “Before he realized we were a Christian group, he told me everything about the club.”

Mead told him the club was an on-premise club with bedrooms and that Grisham could come once before filling out an application and joining the club, Grisham said. “He asked me if I was a law enforcement officer and I told him ‘no.’ As a security police officer at Pantex, I was not lying. Also he asked me if I was a member of the news media. I said ‘no’ and that was the truth.”

“He never asked me if I was a Christian,” Grisham chuckled.

When a reporter asked if he had posed as a swinger, Grisham said he told Mead he had been on an adult Web site and was “looking at the swingers’ lifestyle.” That was also true, just not from Mead’s perspective. Grisham said he phrased it so he wouldn’t lie, but also so he wouldn’t raise suspicions.

On Dec. 1, Mead said Grisham had fooled him, but he didn’t believe Grisham had a second source inside the club. Mead declined to elaborate further.

Next week: Giving Amarillo the Business, a Checkered Past and a Continued Fight