Jimmy Swaggart dies: How a photo with a prostitute triggered the preacher's downfall amid the 80s sex scandals

Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart has died at the age of 90, and he will be remembered as much for his controversies as for the massive following he had till the 1980s. Swaggart was a Pentecostal preacher who built a multi-million-dollar ministry. However, everything crumbled to dust after he was caught with a prostitute on camera in 1988. It was a planned capture from one of his rivals, who was also caught in a sex scandal at the time. The sexual saga led to his downfall and his earnings. He cried at a sermon, seeking an apology from the parishioners. Swaggart continued to deliver sermons in the following years, although with a much smaller following.

Swaggart was the son of a preacher and says he received a calling from God at the age of 8. He said in an interview with the Jacksonville Journal-Courier in Illinois in 1985, "I felt better inside. Almost like taking a bath." He worked part-time in oil fields and preached until he was 23, before shifting full-time to playing the piano and singing gospel songs. His sermons moved people. Swaggart once said that Roman Catholicism was “a false religion." At one of the sermons, he stood up as if possessed by the Holy Spirit. Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, built by his contributors, was turned into a business and made an estimated $142 million in 1986.

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The sex scandal that broke Jimmy Swaggart

It all came crashing down when, in the late 1980s, several sex scandals involving preachers were revealed. One of his rivals, televangelist Jim Bakker, also found himself embroiled in a sex scandal in 1987, and Swaggart said that it hit his earnings. However, the next year, Swaggart was caught with a prostitute, Debra Murphree, who claimed that she posed nude for him and the two did not have sex. The photograph was not a coincidence, but was allegedly plotted by his rival preacher, Marvin Gorman.

Swaggart had accused Gorman of sexual misconduct and having several affairs. To avenge the accusation, Gorman had his son Randy and son-in-law Garland Bilbo keep a watch on the Travel Inn in a suburb of New Orleans. Here they photographed Swaggart outside Room 7 with Debra, the local prostitute. Gorman also reached the inn and confronted Swaggart. He settled a lawsuit over the sexual allegations against Gorman after paying $1.8 million. Swaggart resigned from the Assemblies of God, and the Church defrocked him. His love for prostitutes did not end with this tale.

Jimmy Swaggart and the 1991 prostitute scandal

In 1991, he was caught with another prostitute in California. He was driving on the wrong side of the road, and when the police pulled him over, a woman named Rosemary Garcia was seated next to him. Garcia told the police that Swaggart had stopped her and asked her to have sex with him. "He asked me for sex. I mean, that's why he stopped me. That's what I do. I'm a prostitute." Swaggart did not apologise this time, but stepped down as head of his ministry again.