Reporting the Truth.
Restoring the Church.
By Jessica Morris
Michael Tait, pictured performing in 2008; and inset, mugshot after his May 11, 2009 arrest on a DUI charge in Nashville, Tennessee. (TRR Graphic/Nashville MPD)
Disgraced former Newsboys frontman Michael Tait, accused by several men for alleged rapes and sexual abuse over a 16-year period, is trying to make amends.
In a call Tait made to one of his victims, which was recorded and released to The Roys Report (TRR), the rock star begged for forgiveness.
“When I first made advances on you, touched you inappropriately, and it just, it just bloomed out of control, and . . . it got the best of me,” Tait told the victim this past July. “All I can say is, from my heart and I’m truly sorry, man . . . “
The victim, “Lucas,” a pseudonym, was a former session and touring musician for Tait. He told TRR that he was 19 when he met Tait at a music festival in Birmingham, Alabama in 2000.
He said that Tait, who is 15 years his senior, groomed, manipulated, and sexually assaulted him sporadically between 2002-2010.In 2005, Michael Tait (right) poses with an alleged sex abuse victim at a bar in Nashville, Tennessee. (Courtesy Photo / For illustration purposes only)
The two men drifted apart for more than a decade until July 10, 2025, when Tait made an overseas call to apologize. Lucas, realizing that the laws where he lived allowed him to record the call legally, did so.
“There’s no handbook on how to do this, except for the Bible,” Tait confessed on the phone, his voice tinged with sadness. “(You’re) the first of how many people, but (I’m calling ) just to ask forgiveness.”
“I’ve cried, I’ve prayed, I’ve dealt with addictions on every level. I’ve lied, I’ve cheated, I’ve deceived, I’ve destroyed my world around me, set on fire everything around me, and one thing led to another, and the domino effect took over it. But it all started, you know, it all started somewhere.”
That “somewhere” went unidentified in the rambling 45-minute call that followed.
The impetus for the call seemed to be several stories published by TRR and The Guardian, detailing multiple allegations of sexual assault, grooming, and substance abuse by Tait.
And so, the singer, whom Lucas once compared to Beatles legend Paul McCartney, said he wanted to make amends.
“I pray you can see that apology, and know it’s more than just that, but that’s a start,” Tait said.
Going places
Lucas was a doe-eyed homeschooler when he was introduced to Tait by mutual friends at a music festival in Birmingham in 2000. At 19, he was an avid drummer and DC Talk fan and grew up in a conservative Pentecostal family.
“(Tait) had a way of making me feel, at least like, you’ve been one of (his) entourage forever,” said Lucas. “There was no sense of, ‘I’m up here, you’re down there.’ (It was) immediate belonging.”
On that first day, Tait didn’t just give Lucas his phone number. Instead, he slung his arm around the teenager’s shoulder and told him he was going places.
“He was just like, ‘You’re gonna do it. This won’t be the last time I see you,’” Lucas said.
That night, his friends told him Tait was gay. Lucas dismissed this as speculation.
“For whatever reason, it wasn’t terribly stigmatized in my brain,” Lucas told TRR. “So I was like, ‘Maybe? Surely not.’ And they just kind of joked about it anyway.”
Two years later, Lucas joined the Christian tour circuit, opening for artists like Rachael Lampa, Stacey Orrico, The Benjamin Gate, and the band Tait, which Tait founded shortly before DC Talk went on hiatus in 2000.On March 22, 2013, Michael Tait and the Newsboys performed at Miami-Dade County Fair and Exposition in Miami, Florida. (Photo: Facebook)
Lucas found Tait on the side stage and re-introduced himself. The singer remembered him and showed Lucas around his expensive tour bus before insisting he see Lucas’ dwellings. And he left a mark on Lucas—literally.
“We go back on (my band’s old) tour bus, and (Tait) gets a Sharpie, and he writes his phone number on my arm, like a girlfriend, and he was like, ‘Now you’re never gonna forget it’,” Lucas recalled.
The next day, Lucas woke up to a voicemail from Tait. The singer had called him late at night, crooning to Nat King Cole.
For the rest of the tour, Tait would stand side stage and watch Lucas play. He made fun of his band mates, but told Lucas he was the best drummer he had ever seen, aside from his housemate Chad Chapin. The two would smoke cigarettes together, almost resulting in Lucas being fired from his more straight-laced band.
One night during a tour stop in Miami after partying with Tait, Lucas woke up with a message from Tait written on his chest. Lucas had only had two drinks and had no reason to remove his shirt. To this day, he can’t remember what happened or what Tait wrote, only that he had run around the streets celebrating Miami’s 2003 World Series victory. He wonders if this was the first time Tait assaulted him.
Michael Tait is asked if he is gay
Tait became Lucas’ door to the Christian music industry. They would talk on the phone every three days and text continually. When Tait joined the touring rock opera Hero in 2003, he got Lucas tickets when the show came to town. He also drove 40 minutes out of his way to Chili’s, the restaurant where Lucas worked, and purchased food for everyone there.
“He knew the weight of his importance in my life, and he came to my restaurant,” said Lucas.
“He picks me up in his Defender 90 Range Rover that’s like, the coolest car you’ve ever ridden in as a 20-year-old. We get to Chili’s and . . . and he sits there, and he does the Michael thing; he wines and dines everybody there.”
According to Lucas, only a couple of people there knew who Michael Tait was. But the singer didn’t care.Michael Tait performs at a small venue with the Newsboys. (Photo: Flickr / Creative commons)
“(Tait) walks in and he owns the room,” Lucas recalled.
“He is the like, the most charismatic, opportunistic, charming individual that you’ll just about ever meet. . . He can own a room full of strangers. He’s better at that than he is at singing. He’s better at that than he is at writing. He knows he can own people.”
In retrospect, he believes that Tait was orchestrating this moment for self-gratifying reasons.
“He collects people, and I was a trophy that he collected,” Lucas said. “What makes you not shiny as a trophy anymore is when you are in a relationship, or especially when you get married. When you get married, he (stonewalls) people.”
This sentiment has been shared by multiple alleged victims in Tait’s inner circle. But there was a point of difference with Lucas. During the Chili’s incident, he was already engaged. Tait didn’t seem to care until Lucas tied the knot a couple of years later.
In the meantime, he kept pushing the boundaries with Lucas, such as the weekend Tait invited his protégé to his home in December 2003. Now 22, Lucas was starstruck when he pulled up at Tait’s Brentwood mansion.
“He (said), ‘Man, I got tons of room (for you to stay over). . . (but) every room in his house was filled with guys who lived there with him, and he had no room,” said Lucas. “It’s the house I’ve seen on the behind-the-scenes DVD, and I can’t believe this. I’m in Michael Tait’s house. It’s decorated to the hilt, you know, everything about the guy is just built to impress you.”
The mammoth two-story house was filled with Gothic art and eclectic touches, similar to a medieval castle. Lucas remembers a suit of armor and expensive furniture from Morocco and Indonesia. Tait’s room was a palatial room with a massive walk-in closet and bathroom. His house mates lived in guest rooms down the hall. A balcony overlooked a luxurious backyard, complete with a hot tub. Michael Tait (right) is pictured at his residence in Brentwood, Tennessee, in 1995. (Courtesy Photo / For illustration purposes)
After going out to eat and play darts at a club, Tait and his buddies returned home and stripped naked to enter the hot tub. Lucas, who hadn’t grown up around locker rooms, chose to keep some underclothes on, and exited the hot tub relatively unscathed.
But things went south later that night. After Tait insisted that Lucas share his California King bed, Lucas dropped off, only to wake up at 2:30 a.m. with his pants down. Tait was groping and fondling his genitals.
Lucas immediately froze.
“The handful of little rumors, question marks I’ve heard all of a sudden, comes rushing into my mind,” said Lucas. “I (think), ‘Oh my God, Michael Tait’s gay, and I don’t know! What? What? Wait a second, what’s going on?’”
Lucas sprang to his feet and declared he had to drive home.
“(Tait says), ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’ And I just beelined, and I just got in my little Dodge Colt and took off down the road,” Lucas said.
He woke up the next morning to a voicemail from Tait, apologizing for the incident and saying it would never happen again. Lucas believed him. Later, he buttonholed the singer.
“I was like, ‘Dude, are you gay?’ And he’s like, ‘No, man, of course not, of course not. Man, I’ve had these girlfriends I love.’”
“I was like, ‘Man, I don’t get like, what the heck?” (Tait says), ‘I’m just sorry, man, I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of got into me.’ And he just quickly changed the subject.”Michael Tait performs with the Newsboys. (Photo: Mary Nikkel)
Choosing to give Tait the benefit of the doubt, Lucas dropped the subject. He used Tait’s industry contacts to help him move to Nashville, which in turn got him more invites at Tait’s house. He recalls Tait and his housemates Chad Chapin and Scott Bullard having pissing contests off the balcony, trips to strip clubs, and poker nights.
But there was a price for all that access. Over the next 12 months, Tait sexually assaulted him between six and 10 times, Lucas told TRR. Each time, Tait would corner Lucas in the bathroom or as they were smoking and insist that the young man fondle him. The first four times, Lucas reluctantly gave in. But as his wedding drew closer, he refused, so they compromised. While the singer masturbated, Lucas says he lay by his side.
“Michael used his power and position in the industry to coerce me into situations that I always tried to get out of,” said Lucas.
“There was never an encounter where I didn’t try to put my foot down and say ‘That’s enough. I don’t want to do this.’ But he almost always found a way to get what he wanted anyway; at least some degree of what he wanted.”
Years later, Lucas says this level of coercion was only possible because Tait held so much influence over his life. “That created such a complexity in the relationship that I feel utterly powerless to stand up for myself,” he said.
“To walk away from those situations meant turning my back on so many things that held weight in my life. (Tait) knew he had this power over me and so many others. So, he used that influence to pressure, coerce, manipulate—to take what he wanted without concern for what he left behind.”
That was the era when Tait’s level of fame in Nashville seemed unstoppable.Michael Tait, promotional image from early 2000s (Photo: Facebook)
“(He) had a way of letting you know he could make you or break you,” said Lucas. “At that time, he really seemed to have that kind of pull in Nashville.”
Once Lucas got married, the assaults stopped, along with the proximity. But Lucas would still attend the occasional poker night. And when his marriage began to break down, Tait was one of the first people to find out.
Lucas told TRR the sexual assault wasn’t the main reason he got divorced several years into the marriage, but it was a contributing factor. He told Tait as much in their phone call in July.
“I had no sexual past. I had no debaucherous past. I didn’t even drink. . . you broke me sexually,” Lucas said to Tait.
Around the time of the divorce, Tait took Lucas under his wing and wooed him with a weekend away in Chattanooga. Lucas says Tait tried to coerce him into sexual behavior multiple times there, but Lucas refused.
Still, Lucas believed they were friends, as he knew Tait was going through a difficult time in his career during the decade between his gigs with DC Talk and the Newsboys.
While seeking new creative opportunities, the singer was considering becoming the front man for Santana, and was working on a mainstream break-out record called Loveology. Tait promised Lucas that when Loveology made it big, Lucas would be his touring drummer.
But that promise died the day in 2008 when Tait received a call from artist manager Wes Campbell, asking Tait to front for the Newsboys.
The Loveology record was never released and Tait and Lucas’ relationship dimmed. Still, that sense of genuine friendship was powerful, such as when Tait cancelled a Newsboys studio session so he could attend the 2010 funeral of Lucas’ mother.
“There was genuine care; he loved me as a friend,” Lucas said. “But I think his love for himself was just stronger than anything else in his life.”
The phone call
When Tait reconnected with Lucas in July, now 15 years later, he told him that cocaine and sex were how he escaped trauma. This included figuring out if he was gay or bi-sexual—neither of which would have been accepted in the Christian music industry. Tait never told Lucas what his conclusion was.
Instead, he focused on his cocaine addiction, calling it an “apex predator.” Tait added that Lucas was the collateral damage of his choices, but that he had been clean and sober since January. What’s more, he admitted that Lucas wasn’t the only victim.
“At this point, no one has pressed any charges,” he said. “There’ve been, like, many young men, who could come. I don’t know; it could happen.”
Despite this, Tait adamantly told Lucas that some of the reports published by TRR and The Guardian were incorrect.Recent news headlines concerning Michael Tait. (TRR Graphic)
“There’s this journalistic sensationalism and that’s just going to go on,” Tait said. “The Roys Report is loving it online, because they got a juicy story. But the reason I can’t just tell the public every single thing. . . (is) because there’s too much information.”
TRR has consistently asked Tait for a response to the allegations in our story, including this one, but he has not responded.
Tait denied drugging a 23-year-old woman in Fargo, North Dakota, in December 2014, who claimed a Newsboys crew member then sexually assaulted her. He also denied showing his genitals to alleged survivor Israel Anthem when he was 13.
Tait also insisted that his Newsboys band mates and management had no idea about his drug habit but were paying the price for his behavior.
“I’m glad consequences came,” he said to Lucas. “I’m glad, as hard as it is on everybody in the band, we’ve lost everything. The band’s done. Management’s done. We don’t know exactly their articles, but it’s bad. But that said, it took that to get me to my knees, and it sucks.”
Tait told Lucas that the phone call was against the better judgment of his friends.
“My mentor group, which is an amazing men’s group, they said, ‘No matter what you need to do, at first, just to pause to ask if these guys want to take you to court,’” he said.
However, Tait insisted that he felt convicted to follow biblical teaching and make amends with Lucas, no matter what the consequences were.
Then, he begged for mercy.
“You can hang me at the gallows, or you can say . . . ‘You know, hey, I forgive you,’” said Tait.
Lucas agreed to forgive Tait, but added more was required if Tait wanted to make amends for “fundamentally altering my life.” After assuring Lucas he was speaking to a friend for legal advice, Tait agreed.
“In the meantime, this is the start,” he said.Newsboys lead singer Michael Tait performs in Fargo, North Dakota, in December 2014. (Photo: Facebook)
Lucas hasn’t heard back from Tait since. He told TRR he chose to share the phone call publicly because he wants to make sure Tait no longer holds a place of influence in evangelical culture. Given that Tait apparently hasn’t spoken to other survivors, he is unsure how genuine the apology actually was.
“I don’t want him to be able to make a comeback tour,” said Lucas.
“I don’t want him to publish a book. I don’t want him to come out as a solo artist and do his big forgiveness and repentance (tour). I want his life in the limelight to be over. I want all the joys and luxuries of that (over) too. He’s lived off of the souls of other people for long enough.”
In 2016, when Lucas told a therapist that Tait had groomed, coerced, manipulated, and abused him, the therapist offered to help him press charges. He declined, not wanting his life defined as the “man who brought down Michael Tait.”
He still doesn’t want that title, which is why he remains anonymous. But he believes Tait needs to reap some consequences.
“I’d like to see (Tait) in jail, to be honest,” he told TRR, “not because I get anything out of it. But I think that’s what’s deserved . . . I think that’s what’s owed to him.”
Jessica Morris is a music journalist, podcaster and author based in Melbourne, Australia.
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