Hahn first came to public attention following Jim Bakker's announcement on March 19, 1987, that he was stepping down as head of
PTL Satellite Network and
Heritage USA, pending the imminent disclosure of a sexual encounter between the two of them. According to Hahn, on the afternoon of December 6, 1980, when she was a 21-year-old church secretary, she was drugged and
raped by Bakker and another
preacher,
John Wesley Fletcher, for "about 15 minutes".
[2] Hahn was given a $279,000 pay-off for her silence, which was paid with PTL's funds to Hahn through Bakker associate
Roe Messner.
[2] Bakker, who made all of the financial decisions for the PTL organization, allegedly kept
two sets of books to conceal the accounting irregularities. Reporters from
The Charlotte Observer, led by Charles Shepard, investigated and published a series of articles regarding the PTL organization's finances.
[3] This precipitated Bakker's resignation and the publication of Hahn's claims. In his 1997 book,
I Was Wrong, Bakker disputed Hahn's account, claiming that he was "set up" and that the sex was consensual.
[4]