A married pastor from Limpopo, South Africa took his own life after he accidentally sent photos of his genital to some members of the church.
Apparently, Pastor Letsego of Christ Embassy church was hoping to send the message to his mistress, but sent it to his church’s WhatsApp group instead.
The photo was captioned, “Wife is away, it’s all yours tonight.”
Upon realizing his mistake, the pastor immediately left the church’s group chat, Live Monitor reported.
Some shocked church members tried to contact him after they saw the sent photos, but their calls went unanswered.
The following day, the pastor was found dead in his home, a church house he was renting. Pastor Letsego had hanged himself.
A member of the church who didn’t want to be identified said there had been talk going around that the pastor could be in an extramarital relationship with one of the female deacons. People had observed a closeness between the two, and it had become a “cause for concern.”
“Pastor’s antics have always been a cause for concern, he was always seen in the company of one of the deacons named Miriam and we suspected there was more to their friendship than meets the eye,” the church member said.
When his wife and church members asked him about it, Pastor Letsego denied any accusation linking him to the woman.
“Quizzed by his wife and congregants,he would shrug off the allegations and say as a pastor he was a father to everyone and Miriam was his favourite daughter,” the church member said.
Pastor Letsego is not the first pastor who committed suicide after his extramarital affair was exposed.
In August last year, Pastor John Gibson, a professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, took his own life after his name surfaced as one of the users of the extramarital dating site Ashley Madison. The site had been hacked and the hackers released the users’ names online.
Before committing suicide, Gibson left a suicide note saying he was ashamed of what he had done and that he was sorry.
His wife, Christi, did not know about the affair until she read the suicide note. However, she admitted in an interview with the Washington Post that they had struggled with Gibson’s sex addiction, from which he had suffered relapse many times.
“The shame of this really was just more than what he could take,” Christi said.
She said there’s hope for people who struggled with sexual sins.
“We believe that there’s freedom in the truth,” she said. “If we can speak out and say ‘find a safe person and talk to them, get help with what you’re going through,’ then it doesn’t make our pain go away, but it redeems it.”
