Local News in Brief : PTL Cash Will Be Repaid

Jessica Hahn says she will not appeal a South Carolina judge’s ruling that she must repay $200,000 of the PTL money she was given to keep quiet about her sexual liaison with Jim Bakker, the television ministry’s founder.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Rufus Reynolds issued his decision Tuesday in Columbia, saying that Hahn, a former church secretary now living in a motel in Los Angeles, and her attorney, Scott Furstman, must give back nearly $200,000 of the $373,500 paid to Hahn.

PTL, strapped for cash and up for sale, filed suit in April, alleging that Hahn breached an agreement by telling her story in Playboy magazine and appearing in a semi-nude photo layout for a reported $1 million.

Hahn has said she did not know the money came from the coffers of the bankrupt ministry.

“I believe that the court came to a proper decision,” Hahn said in a statement issued in Los Angeles. “Until the details of the story came out, I never knew the money came from the prayer partners.”

The return of the Hahn money will be welcomed by PTL, trustee M.C. (Red) Benton said. He told the court that donations have fallen off to a point that the ministry is “barely hanging on by a thread.”