Susan Bohannon

What follows is my personal experience and opinion on the Academy of GOD in Old Hickory, Tennessee.

In 2015, a friend of mine told me about the Academy (she has since moved into Hopewell and is now a part of the G.O.D. community). I started looking into the Academy for the following school year for my son. But when I took the tour of the school and saw their brilliant marketing efforts, I was convinced we needed to send all three of our children there. I don’t believe this was an emotional decision. We had been praying for the next step in our children’s education, and fully believed this was what God had laid out for us. I still do believe that, but for far greater reasons than I originally thought.

I wanted to be as involved as possible, so when the principal sent out a request for parents to help with PTO, I immediately responded. My eagerness to serve landed me the position of PTO president. While things were chaotic, I did this joyfully, chalking up the first year of serving as a learning opportunity so that I could better prepare and plan for the following year. It was my learning curve year in PTO.

After completing the 2016-17 school year, I started preparing for the second year during the summer months. About two weeks before school started, Gregg unexpectedly rolled out a brand new uniform dress code. Students were required to wear a specific uniform, purchased from one specific company. As the PTO lead, it was my responsibility to represent the parents to the school leadership, and I didn't take this role lightly. I told Gregg and the principal that it was ridiculous to expect the parents to purchase uniforms right before school starts after they had planned and budgeted for the school year. They seemed to listen to me, but they didn’t change their new policy. In fact, when school started, they changed the dress code again and made it even stricter. Suddenly students weren’t allowed to wear any sweaters or sweatshirts, only the very expensive navy blue sweater embroidered with the school’s logo.

As the second year began, we were planning events, activities, and fundraisers. Parents were utilizing their connections and spending time to make these things happen. They started coming to me and complaining that no one at the Academy would respond to their emails, questions, or requests. And then, Gregg would change the dates of the events last minute. I now realize this was an effort to control people and let them know that he is in charge. However, I don’t do well with people committing and backing out—especially when it affects so many others who have sacrificed their time and connections. I confronted Gregg and the principal and told them it wasn’t okay to treat the parents this way and that we could not change these dates. Their response was to email me scripture and to tell me that I needed to basically keep my mouth shut and do what I’m told (my paraphrasing of course.) I spoke with my husband and told him that it just didn’t feel right in my spirit. I now realize that they regularly use scripture to manipulate people into doing what they want. It’s a very sick manipulation tactic.

Another item of interest that took me a while to see was that Gregg always told me to let him know about whatever I heard parents saying about the school. At the time, I thought it was an honest way to make sure they were doing things right. I thought he wanted to know what the parents were really thinking so that he could adjust things on the inside. Of course, I found out later that he essentially wanted me to be his spy for the commuter/outsider parents. (Commuter parents are/were parents that do not live inside the community and are not a ‘member’ of the G.O.D. community, but send their children to school at the Academy.)

After multiple instances of Gregg going back and forth on things and changing things last minute, I “resigned” from my position as PTO lead. I just couldn’t serve under that leadership. Because I have worked and served in many different businesses and organizations, I knew that the way they were doing things was way off. I just couldn’t completely put my finger on it at that time.

The organization has no respect for rights to media and arts. At one point, I noticed that my son often came home with photocopies of the books they were reading in class. Obviously, this is seriously illegal and a federal crime, and so I verbally questioned his teacher inquiring as to why this was happening. After that day, I never saw another photocopy of a book. In addition to that, I recall the principal asking an administrative assistant to make copies of a stack of books they obtained from the public library.

My students and their friends told me about movies they watched in class. They would tell me the name of the movie and I would say, “Are you sure it was that movie? That’s still in the theater and hasn’t been released yet.” This was a regular occurrence. I later found out that one of the teachers had pirated copies of many movies they all shared on a Google drive. One of my child’s friends was at our house and told me how one of his teachers can “hack” into an online gaming system and download all the games they want for free.

During the spring semester of 2018, which would become our final semester at the Academy I started struggling with the junior high class. My child was not happy about some things and I began to be concerned about some of the educational content. I was speaking with another mom who lived in the community. I was frustrated and said, “If Gregg would just admit that it was a mistake to 'x,y,z' and say that we won’t do it that way again, I can move on.” The response from my friend was very telling. “Ha. He will NEVER admit a mistake.” This shot up a HUGE red flag to me. I started asking about his accountability. I was under the impression there were multiple levels of accountability (board of directors, etc.) that kept everyone and everything in check like all nonprofit organizations and churches have. I was told that he reports to no one and has no accountability. He makes all the decisions and you do not question him. Period. That was my most eye-opening moment. I had watched and read enough about the dangers of any organization having a leader with no accountability.

Each month, they would present a student with “student of the month” from each class. It didn’t take long to realize it was a completely political game. If a parent was upset with something that had happened, or they were trying to reel in a specific family, they would present the award to their child.

In the middle of the spring semester, I pulled my first grader out of the school and only had her attend two days a week—the homeschool program. She was having some health issues—which I now understand were related to the stress in that place. Gregg emailed me, very concerned about her, and offered for us not to pay tuition for her two-day-a-week program because he knows “how hard it can be with medical bills.” I knew that he wanted to have something to hold over my head and there was no way I was going to give that to him. I replied to his email and told him, “No thanks. I would never want to take that offer when we can afford to pay her tuition.” He never spoke to me again. Before this email, we had been invited to a birthday party for a friend which was being hosted at Gregg’s house. Of course, we had to go and see how they would treat us and to let them know that we are not one bit afraid of them (him).

Originally when I toured the campus, I was shown different businesses that rented space from the school. It was presented as a creative idea to utilize the space so it could provide income while it wasn’t needed by the school. I later learned that Gregg OWNED all the businesses and that everyone worked for him. In addition, I was never told that most of the students lived in the neighborhood where the school resided. The first few days I dropped my kids off, I noticed many children walking to school. I thought it was unusual but dismissed it. Of course, later I realized that this was a large organization, with businesses and schools, also functioning as a “church” run by one man, that is self-sufficient (except for all the help from the government food stamps and low-income health care).

As I was figuring out what was really happening there and not what it was presented to be, I was talking to other moms to find out their observations. There were many “outside” moms that were concerned as well. Gregg would always want anyone with concerns to come directly to him to ask questions. I now see that he wanted to make sure they didn’t talk to each other and corroborate stories. He wanted to be the one to share whatever truth he felt like they needed to hear, that would keep them in his control. Because when others talk, the truth comes out and he wants to ward that off. He started to smear my name within the community telling people that I was a "gossip" and just angry—a typical narcissistic response to get people to quit talking.

We tried to push to the end of the school year, but one week before school was out, one of my children was having such issues with his peers and his teachers and there was no way I was sending him back. I went to pick my child up that day. He was hyperventilating from being so upset at the way he was being treated. The kids in his class were mocking him for having to take medication…and the teachers allowed this!

My husband and I went to speak with them the following day and tell them we were not coming back. Robert Munoz was who we ended up meeting with. He completely interrogated us. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. He kept putting words in our mouths about why we were leaving. He was trying to get me to reveal the names of people/parents I had spoken to. He wanted to know who gave me information. I flat out told him that I would not tell him any of that. Before this day, he had always seemed fairly kind. This was like a split personality I saw with him. It was very dark and evil. Eventually, I stood up and told him that we don’t have to sit here and listen or talk to him, and we left.

After we left the school/organization, a friend texted me an image of their medical record from Hopewell Family Care. It listed all the providers on it. Gregg was listed as a Medical Doctor on this receipt: “Gregg Garner, MD.” I was stunned. I pulled up my child’s medical account with them, as my child had been a patient there. Sure enough, Gregg was listed as an MD, and another staff member was listed as a Colorectal Surgeon.

After we withdrew our kids and completely left, each business and the individuals associated with the organization began to remove me from their social media and block me. I have a problem with the leadership there, but I never had anything but compassion for the people inside the community. I was completely shunned by nearly everyone once I decided to leave.

I have since educated myself on what cults look like. I have been amazed that regardless of the size of the cult—internationally or locally—all the leaders function the same and go through the same process. Everyone inside of a cult vehemently declares they are not in a cult, while people outside say they would never be deceived into something so crazy. Neither is true. Cult leaders are very intelligent and manipulative leaders, and always charismatic. They choose people specifically and look to fill a deep need. Very smart and hard-working people end up in a cult because deep down, we all want to be part of a community and feel loved. It is so sad and such a destructive lifestyle. Any children who are inside—if they eventually get out—will need intensive therapy to be able to live an emotionally healthy life.