Chain of Command part 6

Speaker: ACT ONE AM NOT RONY DENIS rony denis (3): I am not Ronnie Dennis. My name is, uh, Billy the dog. I say my name is Billy the dog. I am Mister Nothing. I say what? Hallelujah. I said hallelujah. rony denis (3): Don't let that sermon fool you. When Rony Denis calls himself Billy the Dog or Mister Nothing, it's not humility. It's a performance. Because to his followers, Rony Denis is everything.

Rony Denis: If I teach you guys, if I let these miracles, I, I can do more miracles, and I will do more in the church.

Speaker: Rony Denis:

Javier: you will see miracles that you've never seen before. Former members say Denis would shout these things over the church PA system. "Do you know the voice that is speaking to you? It is the voice of God ALMIGHTY." "I am Deity." "I am the savior of the world." It's hard to listen to these recordings now and remember that this is the same charismatic man who inspired a revolt within NTCC. People followed him to start something special. Something good. Instead, all they got was a man who forced them into submission.

Speaker: rony denis (3): Tell him how that's what you did. Tell him you're proud. Tell him what happened. Tell him, tell him. That's what you need to tell him. rony denis (3): All the perverts in The Testament, okay? All the perverts, Honestly, he sounds terrifying. rony denis (3): You brought the black haters and the white haters and Dominican haters. You brought the pervert. I am still praying. I am still praying.

Javier: But it's hard to imagine how anyone could believe Reverend Rony Denis is a man of God. Which makes me wonder what he was like behind closed doors. Away from the pulpit. Away from the congregation. What was he like as a father? As a husband? A 911 call from his first wife may shed some light.

Speaker: (insert 911 call. "9111, what is your emergency? ) (Marjorie: my husband is very violent)

Javier: This 911 recording is hard to understand. But after that call to police in 2024, his wife Marjorie filed a restraining order against her husband. In her handwritten court petition, she described a terrifying incident on January 16, 2024. When she tried to leave the house, Denis refused to let her go. He called in a group of his most loyal church ministers to physically hold her down. The struggle got so desperate that when one of the ministers grabbed Marjorie, she punched him. Those familiar with the incident say that their teenage daughter Mariah had to bite her Rony Denis just to get him to let go of her mother. A daughter biting her father to save her mother. That's what we're dealing with here. And it wasn't out of nowhere. It was the culmination of years of abuse. It turns out Rony Denis weaponized his religious authority to dominate his own daughter too. In 2016, when Mariah was 15, she and three friends traveled to Florida with Rony Denis. Her friend Lynette Rosario described a night when she was woken in the middle of the night.

Lynette Rosario.: He woke us up. I heard screaming and crying while he was walking to our room,

Javier: The girl screaming and crying was Rony's daughter Mariah. In this interview conducted by Patty Leon, with the Coastal Courier, Lynette describes the night Rony Denis beat his daughter.

Lynette Rosario.: She got it the worst, because he had been doing her way before he had woke us up.

Second Incident Introducedvo: She said after he was done beating Mariah, Rony Denis entered the room where the other three girls were staying.

Javier: And he lifted the, my blanket off of me, and my nightgown had risen up while I was sleeping.

Belt Beating Detailsvo: So I tried to hurry and put it back down, but he lifted it back up and he started beating me with the belt. Oh.

Javier: Then, according to Lynette, he turned around and beat the other girls. When he was done he said, , "Okay, follow me."

Lynette Rosario.: So they got up, after being dead asleep, and followed Rony Denis to his bedroom bathroom. There was a rug on the floor. First he said, "I want all of you guys to lay on the rug." So we were just getting down. He said, "No, you know, never mind. Just stand right there and turn your back to me."

Line Up Punishmentlynette Rosario.: So we stood in a row and he took turns beating all of us.

Arms Out Beatinglynette Rosario.: First from behind, and then he told us to turn around and put our arms out, like, uh, stretch them fully out with our hands upward. And he had the belt and he was beating our arms He was doing that for, I would say, maybe about 10 minutes-

Others Beaten Toovo: And why did he do this?

Javier: He wanted to know if his daughter Mariah told the girls that he had secret cameras around the house. And

Lynette Rosario.: we said yes, and he got angry. So she says he beat them.

Introlynette Rosario.: That's just one of many horror stories we've collected about how Rony Denis treated the people closest to him. But these stories tell us something else. Nobody was stopping him. He could do whatever he wanted, to whoever he wanted, and nobody could touch him. Today, we're going to reveal a scam so audacious it triggered coordinated FBI raids at the House of Prayer. We're going to follow the money to see how Rony Denis allegedly drained the bank accounts and the benefits of his own congregation. But every man who builds an empire on lies has weak spots. For Rony Denis, his weak spots were the people in his inner circle. The ones who knew where all the money was hidden. The ones who knew where all the bodies were buried, so to speak. In today's episode, Two of those people are going to make their move.

Lynette Rosario.: I'm Javier Leiva and this is PRETEND... Stories about real people pretending to be someone else.

Speaker: ///AD BREAK///That incident back in Florida, where Rony Denis beat a group of girls in the middle of the nigth, wasn't an isolated incident. According to Lynette, Rony once forced the girls, including his daughter, to live in the attic.

Lynette Rosario.: he had me, Marjorie, and Sydney, we had to stay in a attic room.

Speaker: No AC and Filthy BathroomLynette Rosario.: And we weren't allowed to have any AC on, and we had air mattresses on the floor, and we had to use the bathroom on the floor

Weeklong Restrictionlynette Rosario.: And we weren't allowed to clean it up or anything, and it stood like that for a whole week. and we weren't allowed to open the windows,

Lynette Rosario.: Rony Denis allegedly kept them trapped in the attic for a whole week. Here's Gladys Jordan.

Gladys Jordan: He had the three girls sleep in a attic room with no AC, had them defecate and urinate on the floor for the whole six days that w- they were up there. And Dennis He said, " "Hey, is the window open?" "Yeah." So Dennis went up there and closed the window. 'cause he wanted the smell to be in there.

Lynette Rosario.: And then after the week was up, he told us we had to clean it up, and we had to use our bare hands. So we were picking up literally all the napkins with pee and poop, with our bare hands and putting it into a trash bag

Gladys Jordan: One of the girls asked Sister Dennis, said, "Sister Dennis, can we please, um, have some gloves?" Sister Denis is Marjorie Denis. And she said, "Let me ask." Are you serious? You asking these girls... These girls are being abused, and all you're saying, "Let me ask if you could use gloves"?

Speaker: Reason for PunishmentLynette Rosario.: And what was the reason for this punishment? Talking to BoysLynette Rosario.: It was because we were talking to boys, we weren't allowed to.

Claimed It Was Lovelynette Rosario.: He also said that he was doing it because he loved us, and it was a lesson.

Lynette Rosario.: You might be wondering. How does any of this happen and nobody calls the police? How does a man beat children, lock them in an attic, force them to defecate on the floor for a week, and just walk away? Because Rony Denis didn't run a regular church. He ran a system. A system where the people closest to him were either too afraid to speak up, too invested to walk away, or too involved themselves to risk it. At House of Prayer, going to the cops wasn't just discouraged. It was treason. Reaching outside the church meant betraying God... Betraying Rony Denis himself.. And in Rony's world, that kind of disloyalty was not tolerated. But somebody did go to the police. His name is Arlen Bradeen. You've heard from Bradeen throughout this series. Other than Rony, Bradeen was one of the high-ranking figure in House of Prayer. On paper, he served as CEO from 2008 to 2017. He lived in what he describes as a mansion. He drove a luxury SUV. And unlike other House of Prayer members who were barely getting by, he was doing alright. But despite all that, Bradeen says he was just another one of Rony Denis's pawns.

Arlen Bradeen: you were just describing, living in a really, really nice house, driving a really nice car, So we got this house. Dennis said, "You need this house. the face of, of the organization here. you need this house." We, we had another house that was fine. I loved it. I didn't want anymore, but he said we needed this one, you know, because we're the, the local pastor, and he was trying to appease me 'cause he knew that I was fed up.

Javier: did you own your house?

Arlen Bradeen: Yeah.

More About The Housejavier Leiva: Like, that was your house? You had the mortgage, it was name?

Arlen Bradeen: you're a, you're a good, uh, a good reporter. Whatever you do, you're good at it. You know what question to ask next. It turns out that owning a house as a house of prayer member is more of a concept. It wasn't technically Alren Bradeen's house. The house was actually under his wife's name. She was an awesome mother, awesome pastor's wife. She never worked a job for 30 years, and it was always a mystery to me how she got it in her name, okay? But she had nothing to do with it. Dennis and the loans did all the paperwork. All she had to do was sign. on the the original loan application, it said that she was a minister, she was a business owner, and she brought Her income, her personal income was $12,000 a month.

Javier: Diana. And she didn't even work.

Arlen Bradeen: She didn't even have a job

Javier: what you're saying is that it was almost like she was like a shell company right?

Arlen Bradeen: Yes. Yes. According to Bradeen, Rony Denis and his assistant secretly took out a massive new loan on the house, behind Bradeen's back. The property was worth so much that the bank handed over a ton of cash. Denis walked away with nearly $400,000 of that money. Slipped it right into his pocket. And left Bradeen's wife on the hook for almost half a million dollars in debt under her name. Now picture this happening 50 times. 75 times. Even more. That's what was going on at House of Prayer. Here's the playbook. The church would find a loyal member. Someone who trusted them completely. They'd put a house in that person's name. Use them like a strawman. Sometimes that person didn't even know they owned a house. Other times they knew, but had no idea what the church was doing with it behind the scenes. Once the property was in the member's name, the church could borrow against it. Refinance it. Drain every dollar of equity out of it. And when the bills came due, the member was the one stuck holding the bag. We're talking foreclosures. Bankruptcies. People who had given their lives to this church walking away with nothing but debt. And Bradeen wasn't just watching this happen. He was part of it.

House Title And Fake Incomearlen Bradeen: I was actually involved with getting a lot of the

Arlen Bradeen: loans for the churches The way Bradeen describes it, Rony Denis viewed his congregation as walking, talking piggy banks. The church wasn't just taking out loans on these properties. They were also renting them out and collecting that money. And when things went south and the loans went into foreclosure, the church kept right on collecting the rent And while they were in foreclosure, they could do this for like six months, not pay the mortgage, they're still collecting, from the renters,

Speaker: Here's Gladys Jordan talking about her son CJ.

Gladys Jordan: This is the thing, a lot of those people, Javier, they are so deep in debt. Like my son, before I left, my son was $50,000 in debt. He never had a job in his life, always work, worked for the church. So I'm like, "How is he so much in debt?"

Javier: But juggling dozens of properties and loans was hard to manage and it was bringing unwanted attention. I have obtained a hidden recording audio of Rony Denis trying to wrangle the web of properties and loans.

Speaker: You need to stop these foreclosures. You're gonna end up freezing. They'll come knocking your door. Remember you were warned about the practice, right? Yes, sir. He's warning his subordinates to be careful. You make your decision, you don't even check with anyone. Check With Me FirstSpeaker 38: From now on, tell you stuff, before you make decision, you need to check with me Yes, sir. But you're dealing with military, right? Yes, sir. He's military also. Yes, sir. Okay. Civilians, we can say what we wanna say. The military, you can't do that. Okay, sir? See how stupid you are again? sir. So what do I do? I got stuck in this. I'm not buying any places anymore. But now I need refinance, I need this, I need that, I need this. We need to stop this, please. you guys go to jail, not me.

Javier: You guys going to jail, not me. The real estate scheme was just one of the rackets Rony Denis was running. But the biggest one. The one that would eventually bring federal investigators to his door. That one had nothing to do with houses.

Speaker: Eight people connected to the House of Prayer Christian Churches of America have been indicted. Open the door. Open the door. FBI search warrant. Come out with your hands up. Hands. right. All Come out with your hands up. Hands. Come out with your hands up. In 2004, House of Prayer opened a Bible seminary in Hinesville, Georgia. It was supposed to be a place to deepen their faith, learn the Bible, and earn an official theology degree. How wholesome, right? Wrong. The House of Prayer Bible school turned out to be just another one of Rony Denis's schemes. And this one would ultimately bring him down. Veterans like Vanessa were drawn to the Bible seminary because they were promised a certificate or degree to prepare them for ministry work.

Vanessa: I was in that Bible college for nine and a half years, and I was promised a degree, a theology degree, and nine and a half years later, I'd never got one.

Speaker: Gregory Ward enlisted in the U.S. Army. He deployed to Iraq. And today, he's traumatized. But not by his time serving overseas. He's traumatized by what happened to him inside the House of Prayer. Here he is speaking with WTOC News.

Gregory Ward: It tore me up mentally. I deployed for a year, and then I came back. That's when I was pretty much sucked in. So I'm still trying to recover from that. They closed us off from the world. Like, we didn't know anything that was going on.

Javier: His trauma isn't just about being trapped in a high-control group. He says House of Prayer destroyed his shot at a real career. Because according to Ward and other former members, Rony Denis was running a massive fraud scheme targeting military veterans' GI Bill education benefits.

Gi Bill Historical Video: The government pays all of your school bills up to $500 a year, and living expenses of $50 a month, or $75 a month if you have dependents.

Javier: 82 years ago this month... June 1944.... President Franklin Roosevelt signed the GI Bill of Rights. the GI Bill promised World War II vets benefits such as help with finding a job, money for college, a type of reassurance for the men and women in uniform.

Gi Bill Historical Video: All right, wait a second. What about the beautiful blonde? Don't tell me the GI Bill of Rights guarantees every returning serviceman one of those, too. No, that's still up to the veteran, just as it's up to him to take advantage of the GI Bill of Rights.

Javier: The GI Bill is one of the best perks about being a veteran. The Post-9/11 GI Bill covers 100 percent of in-state tuition at public colleges and up to $30,000 a year at private schools. Veterans can use it for almost any degree, including a theology degree or pastoral training. But here's the catch. The VA only pays out if the school is officially accredited and approved by the State Approving Agency. According to whistleblower complaints, House of Prayer worked the system. They charged veterans on the Montgomery GI Bill $500 to $600 a month to attend the seminary. The money came straight out of those veterans' VA benefits. The longer a veteran stayed enrolled, the more the church collected.

Gi Bill Questionsarlen Bradeen: Well, we dealt with so many, soldiers from the beginning,

Arlen Bradeen: we wanted them to be able to come to the Bible school and use their GI Bill. the GI Bill pays for their college, you have to be an accredited school to qualify for the VA to pay you. And so we s- we tried to go the legal route early on. we came in contact with different people. I even went down to Jacksonville, Florida with a couple others and met, with a guy that was running a school, and he told us how to do it the legal way. Well, basically it would cost, like, about $200,000 to get, to do everything we needed to do."

Speaker: So I guess they decided to do it the illegal way?

Arlen Bradeen: But Dennis kept working at it, and he would have the people who were coming, he would have them do, like, college classes that would never really amount to anything, just to get their GI Bill.

Speaker: The house of prayer bible seminary wasn't really a school. Former members say it was all a scam designed to keep them enrolled as long as possible, because the longer they stayed, the more the church collected. The credits weren't worth anything outside of House of Prayer. The curriculum didn't actually teach you anything. And when VA inspectors showed up to check on the school, church leaders allegedly falsified records, lied about how many students were enrolled, and even pretended students were in class when they were really out washing cars or doing construction work for the church. It wasn't just the GI Bill. Former members say Denis was also draining their disability benefits.

Javier: Former members say the church saw injured veterans as prime recruiting targets. They were a steady source of income and free labor.

Gregory Ward: Honestly, they took all of my benefits. I have nothing to show for it, and I'm actually having like a hard time finding a job and maintaining myself financially.

Arlen Bradeen: Uh, he was using soldiers from the beginning. He, he knew how to direct them to get their disability, ' cause a lot of them were coming back from war. Bradeen says Rony coached these veterans on how to game the VA disability system to get the highest possible payouts. So he knew how to get them, direct them to get their disability. He would tell many of them, "Take the medication. Just take it one time," you know, for PTSD and stuff like that and And it would help him qualify. a lot of the soldiers coming, got out of the army. They had some disability from the VA, so they had a, a minor income. Uh, some of them had 100%,

Kept In The Darkjavier Leiva: Did you know at the time that this a big fraud?

Arlen Bradeen: No. No, because uh, there were a couple people that left the church before I did, and they were kinda working in the inner circle of Dennis with, with the housing and different, different things. people told me that Dennis would say, "Don't tell Bradine this stuff. He can't handle it." So he was making people believe everything he's doing is, is for God and God's allowing it. But he-- there there are people that, that have even told the investigators that, "No, Dennis told, told us to never tell Bradine this stuff."

Javier: Bradeen says he had no idea what was actually going on with that Bible school. He says Denis kept him in the dark. That's a hard claim to swallow for the man who was officially CEO of the entire organization.

Arlen Bradeen: the day I left, I went and talked to the, uh, Hinesville police chief. I talked to the chief and, and one of his lieutenants for about an hour, and they stopped me and they said, "Listen, this is enough. I gotta, I gotta get you in touch with someone else." The police chief realized that, um, I had information that was over his head. And, so then the district attorney set up a meeting with me, So I contacted the FBI office in, um, in Savannah, Georgia, and I went there and had a meeting with an agent,

Speaker: It's hard to believe that all of this was going on while Bradeen was in charge of the school and he was in the dark. But what we do know is this. Bradeen left the church. He went to the police. He went to the FBI. He's been on the record ever since. And Arlen Bradeen wasn't alone. The veterans advocacy group Veterans Education Success sent a letter to the Department of Veterans Affairs detailing an 11-page list of complaints from former members, alleging the church was acting like a cult and defrauding veterans of their GI Bill and disability benefits So you've got Bradeen going to the FBI. You've got a veterans advocacy group filing complaints with the VA. You've got former members lining up to talk. The walls are starting to close in on Rony Denis. But the most dangerous threat to him isn't coming from the outside. It's coming from inside his own house. We started this episode with a 911 call from Marjorie Denis. So let's go back to her story for a moment, because the divorce she filed in early 2024 has been working its way through the Georgia court system. And the details that have come out are some of the most revealing in this entire investigation. In February 2024, a process server arrived at the Denis mansion to deliver the divorce papers. A tall man dressed in black answered the door. He mumbled, refused to take the documents, and told the server to serve the lawyer. The server dropped the papers inside the doorway and walked back to his car. The man marched across the yard, found the server in his vehicle, and shoved the entire stack of legal papers through the open car window. The server tossed them back onto the ground and drove away. Legally, Denis had been served. When he finally responded in court, he didn't just deny Marjorie's allegations of abuse and adultery. He went on the attack. He demanded a court-ordered paternity test for their 18-year-old daughter Mariah. He asked the judge to award him primary physical custody of his own teenage daughter. And he asked the court to make Marjorie pay him child support. The man who notarized that sworn statement? Jeffrey Derby. One of the same loyal church ministers Marjorie said had helped physically hold her down just weeks earlier. As the divorce moved forward, Marjorie's legal team started asking the right questions. Where is the money? They issued subpoenas to dig into the bank accounts of the House of Prayer Christian Church. And that's where things got really interesting. The church stepped in. House of Prayer hired an outside attorney, who filed a formal objection arguing that the church's finances had nothing to do with Marjorie and Rony's marriage. They called Marjorie's investigation an outrageous invasion of the church's privacy. They submitted a sworn statement from a local pastor swearing that the Denises had no control over the church's bank accounts. Think about that for a second. The church's official position is that the man who founded the organization, the man who calls himself Deity, the man who walks around saying "I am the savior of the world," has no control over any of the church's money. According to House of Prayer's own attorneys, those accounts are completely separate from him. Um, yeah, all the properties are under his follower's names. Convenient. You know what else is convenient? You know what's missing from these divorce records? I'll give you one guess. Any mention of the other woman. Marjorie cited adultery as one of the grounds for divorce. According to multiple former members, Rony Denis had been involved with another woman in the congregation for years. A woman they describe as his second wife. The kind of person you'd want to quietly move assets to if you knew a divorce was coming. The kind of person who doesn't show up on the court paperwork your first wife has been digging through. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. But I do want to walk you through a timeline. A man who keeps Marjorie financially dependent for 37 years suddenly has to share assets with her. Marjorie files for divorce and starts subpoenaing the church's bank accounts. The church fights back hard, saying Denis has no control over those accounts. And then a rumor starts circulating that Marjorie has died of untreated breast cancer. I reached out to Marjorie's attorney to confirm. I haven't heard back. But the court docket in her divorce is still active. Filings going back and forth. How could she be dead if her case is still in progress? VISITING HOUSE OF PRAYERTEASENext time on PRETEND. In June 2022, the FBI conducted coordinated raids at five House of Prayer locations across the country. Agents seized computers, records, cash. And then they left. No arrests. Rony Denis was still a free man. But he was also scrambling. Watching. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. That's next time on Chain of Command. Draw the spear, and stop the way against them that persecute me. And then he said right here, "