Dawn Marie Grice said she fled an abusive home in Southern California when she heard about a place that offered her salvation in Montana, Potter’s Field Ministry.
The evangelical Christian ranch on 80 acres in picturesque Whitefish boasted an internship to work and learn alongside the ministry’s co-founders, Michael and Pam Rozell. Grice, who was 20, signed up immediately.
In 2000, after three months of performing administrative tasks for the ministry, she was promoted to being Michael’s personal assistant—a job she held for 11 years that she equated with “being another form of Michael Rozell.”
Soon into her new role though, Michael started to scream over the smallest inconveniences, usually for hours. The alleged abuse would sometimes even take a sexual turn, according to Grice.
“He would just repeat whatever you said and make a masturbating gesture with his hands near his crotch,” Grice said.
“I’ve heard he also asked several girls if they ever struggled with sexual sin,” she added. “According to Michael, sexual sin was masturbating or watching porn and he apparently would force girls to talk about it in detail for hours.”
Like Grice, several former members said they heard and were personally asked by Michael Rozell frequently if they had “struggled with sexual sin.” One former member, who joined Potter’s Field in 2017, said Rozell once asked her if she “ever let a dog lick [her] down there.”
“He completely disregarded the relationship between a pastor and his church members,” the member said. “He shared with me about another girl’s sexual sin and then asked me if her sin was normal for little girls.”
Grice is among a dozen former interns, staff members, and missionaries who spoke to The Daily Beast about the alleged abuse by the Rozells. They also said the Rozells built their multimillion-dollar business empire—including a hamburger chain—off the backs of young people who were practically forced to work for free.
Their ministry was abruptly shut down by its sponsor church last month following a slew of allegations of verbal and emotional abuse against young people, inhumane working conditions, sexual harassment, and misappropriation of funds.
The allegations have spurred two law firms to consider suing Potter’s Field Ministry or the Rozells, and have prompted the Montana Attorney General’s Office to investigate.
The Rozells declined to comment on the allegations. Ministry representatives said the pair are remaining silent “out of respect to those who have been hurt.”
“Michael would repeatedly say if you leave Potter’s Field you are in sin,” Grice said. “That brainwashing, the constant repeating and hitting at your religiousness. How could you leave if you thought leaving Potter’s Field was leaving your faith?”
The Rozells were well-known in the evangelical community in the Pacific Northwest, former members say.
Over three decades, the pair built up Potter’s Field Ministry, with sponsorship by one of the nation’s biggest evangelical groups, Calvary Chapel Association, based in California. Several young men and women said they specifically moved to Whitefish to learn from the Rozells and participate in their missionary program established in six foreign countries.
Supporting it all financially was a mini-business empire called Potter’s Field Ranch. The Rozells made money from their ministry, a missionary program where people paid thousands of dollars to participate, as well as a fast-food chain they started called MudMan. Between the ministry and the ranch, the Rozells made $5 million in 2016 alone, according to the most recent tax records available.
But before they were rich, the pair were just a struggling couple who devoted their lives to spreading the gospel through community outreach and entertainment.
Pam was a former Miss Georgia, pursuing a career in singing and theater, including acts on Broadway and cruise ships, before transitioning to record Christian music. (She currently has 10 Christian records.) Michael, originally from Southern California, was a former regional marketing director at a Wall Street firm and dabbled in pottery. They met in 1987 on a blind date and married three weeks later, according to Pam’s autobiography, Stones of Remembrance.
After several years of touring with a traveling missionary, the Rozells in 1992 moved to Montana, where they established Potter’s Field Ministries, a church dedicated to sharing the gospel “through the medium of pottery and song.”
During on-stage performances, Pam would sing hymns while her husband would create various clay vases and bowls on a pottery wheel in front of hundreds of people. The pair stopped what they were doing numerous times throughout their act, allowing Michael to preach the gospel and equate the day’s lesson with clay.
“If you brought a Bible this morning, keep it shut. The reason is you’re going to walk into your Bible,” Michael said at the start of every performance before launching into the section of the Bible he was going to teach.
The Rozells made more than 200 appearances across the country until this year, hawking personal testimonies and a stand to sell pottery, CDs, and other merchandise.
As their enterprise started to grow, the Rozells brought in outside help: young interns who would live on their ranch.
Alissa Militello, a lifelong member of the evangelical Calvary Chapel, was finishing up another church internship in 2001 when the Rozells invited her to join their internship program and live for free at Potter’s Field Ranch.
“In retrospect, saying yes to the Rozells was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made,” Militello said.
Interns were expected to go to the Rozells’ house to complete various administrative tasks, such as collating and making packets to send to prospective churches. Militello, 19 at the time, lived on the ranch the Rozells advertised as a “sanctuary for pastors and performance ministry works that needed to get away.” In reality, Grice said, they were made to stay in an old farm house that had very little heat, no furniture other than a few mattresses on the floor, and a severe rat problem.
“You had to be super quiet when you were home,” she said. “You basically had to be invisible.”
In the office, Militello said Michael was often yelling on the phone, which made her uncomfortable, although she never spoke up out of fear.
And then one day, Rozell’s anger turned on her.
“I made a clerical error on a letter that was printed for a prospective packet, and Mike took the letter and started yelling and walked towards me to the point I was against the wall,” Militello said. “He had the letter in one hand and a finger close to my face and I just couldn’t stop crying.”
“I have never, and will never, be as scared as I was pushed against that wall while Mike screamed in my face,” she added.
Grice, who was an intern with Militello, equated Michael’s hours-long rants with psychological torture.
“He knew I had a difficult relationship with my mom. So whenever he could, he would throw it in my face that I was like my mother,” she said. “He went into every screaming rant knowing he was going to yell at me until he was going to make me cry.”
Despite the constant yelling and belittlement, Grice said she first stayed because she lived on the property and was being paid about $50 a week. But being from an abusive home, she said, she “thought that’s just how people communicated.”
“I spent my childhood watching people yell at each other,” she said. “So when I came to Potter’s Field and got yelled at every day, I didn’t blink an eye.”
By 2009, the Rozells had expanded their empire in Potter’s Field Ranch to establish the IGNITE internship. The one-year leadership-training program allowed interns to train for three months in Montana before serving for six months abroad. Once they returned to Montana, interns spent their final three months in a “re-entry” period to “reflect on their lessons and experiences.”
The nonprofit “school of discipleship, making disciples for the Lord Jesus Christ” required interns to pay $6,000 for the training and missionary work abroad. They were sent to Costa Rica, Guatemala, Uganda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cambodia.
One of the IGNITE interns, Sonesta Josephsen, was 21 when she flew to Guatemala to serve a mission in July 2016.
Josephsen said she first heard about the program through other interns and joining one of the Bible study groups, but did not make enough money at her entry-level bank job to make the $7,000 deposit—not counting airfare. She said she had to host a fundraiser to meet her goal and was eventually enrolled in IGNITE’s 11th internship class.
The Rozells were ecstatic to have her, she said.
“Mike gave me the nickname ‘Sunny’ and I felt like he instantly latched on,” Josephsen said.
Once she landed in Guatemala, Josephsen said she and several other women were transported to a “compound” where a supervisor from Potter’s Field Ministries limited everyone’s internet and phone access so the women could not contact their family back at home.
After Guatemala, Josephsen traveled to Cambodia for six months to complete the second leg of her mission trip. Inside the house devoted to Potter’s Field Ranch, nine women lived with no air conditioning, no hot water, and no furniture. Josephsen said throughout the program, she only saw the children they were brought in to mentor about 10 times.
“People donated thousands of dollars, as interns we paid thousands of dollars, but I still have no idea where any of that money went. It certainly didn’t go to the kids we were dedicating our time to helping,” she said.
While Josephsen thought her mission experience abroad was a “nightmare,” she said the true horror story didn’t occur until her “re-entry” period in April 2017.
Back in Montana, Josephsen said she was grabbed from the girl’s boarding house around 10 p.m. one night while everyone else was participating in a game night. The woman who took her said that Michael needed to “see her immediately,” and escorted her to the house of one of the ministry’s leaders.
When she walked into her house, she said, Michael and two other leaders immediately started to berate her about her best friend, who had just left the ministry.
“They called her a drug addict, a whore, a liar, and thief, and a manipulator that just used me,” Josephsen said. “They told me she never loved me and I had to sever ties with her immediately.”
Distracted by the yelling, Josephsen said she did not notice when one of the ministry leaders took her phone and typed out a message to her friend. The message, which she said was typed out as if it was in her “own voice,” said the friend was not qualified to speak to Josephsen anymore and needed to “answer for her wrongdoings.”
“None of the things they accused of her were true,” Josephsen said. “They were just using me to hurt her because she left the ministry and they were upset. They ruined my friendship forever because they were offended.”
Josephsen said after the leaders showed her the message, they asked her permission to send it—saying she wouldn’t be a “true Jesus follower” if she refused. Fearing the repercussions of saying no, she nodded yes.
“I will forever regret that nod,” she said, adding that she left the ministry soon after.
Some former members said they left the ministry penniless—sometimes even in the middle of the night—fearing the Rozells would tarnish their reputation to their friends, like what Josephsen experienced. At least four former members said they have been seeking professional counseling since, and one said they have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder from the abuse.
“If somebody left Potter’s Field, we were forced to cut off all contact and pretend they never existed,” one former member, adding “those who left were betrayers who lived in sin and no longer safe.”
Interns who participated in the “re-entry” process were immediately put to work at one of the Rozell’s several businesses.
One of the businesses was MudMan, a chain of four fast-food joints in Montana serving monstrously sized burgers—with the logo of a man in sunglasses who resembled Michael.
“The high-school students around town called MudMan ‘Cult Burger,’” Militello said.
All proceeds were intended to go toward funding for the international missionary program.
Former interns said they were paid less than minimum wage and forced to work 60- to 80-hour weeks. In addition to the grueling work hours, former interns say, the ministry would often schedule ministry commitments late at night or early in the morning.
Before they began work, interns were required to sign a contract mandating “starting upon receipt of first paycheck” they work at least 25 hours per week at MudMan while paying $200 per month rent to Potter’s Field Ministries.
Kenzie Kinney, a former IGNITE intern who worked at MudMan, said the burger chain’s employees worked as much as 60 hours a week and earned as little as $2 an hour.
“The pay was garbage and the hours were ridiculous,” Kinney said.
Kinney said most of their paycheck was filtered back into the ministry between rent, sponsoring the ministry (which was about $20 a month), and giving 10 percent of their paycheck back in tithe.
“In addition to that, we would be rebuked for only sponsoring the ministry the bare minimum. So most of us were guilted into giving more money to the ministry than just the standard $20 a month,” she said.
Despite the grueling schedule, Grice explained, interns felt spiritually pressured to subject themselves to the Rozells’ demands to avoid their wrath.
“Michael would repeatedly say if you leave Potter’s Field you are in sin,” Grice said. “That brainwashing, the constant repeating and hitting at your religiousness. How could you leave if you thought leaving Potter’s Field was leaving your faith?”
By 2019, according to several members, word of the allegations against the Rozells finally got back to Calvary Chapel Association. In July, the Calvary Chapel removed Potter’s Field Ministry from their official list of affiliated pastors and churches.
“We find that the Potter’s Field form of discipleship training and methods of ministry are not compatible with the Calvary Chapel form of ministry,” Calvary Chapel said in a statement.
Although the Rozells have stepped down from their day-to-day leadership roles, both are still listed as board members of the ministry, a spokesperson said. Calvary Chapel, however, named Pastor Rob McCoy the ministry’s new CEO.
McCoy assembled a group of independent pastors to look into the allegations against Potter’s Field. He said they discovered that about half of the $100,000 in monthly donations intended to sponsor children abroad were actually used to keep the IGNITE internship program afloat.
The discovery prompted Calvary Chapel and McCoy—who is also the mayor of Thousand Oaks, California—to hire a third-party auditor to look into all of the Potter’s Field finances.
“This is my first experience with this type of situation,” McCoy said in the statement. “In the rapid decline of these ministries, the bulk of my time has been spent attempting to pull students back from foreign missions, returning students to their families, paying the debts and monthly expenses of the ministries, and the resignation of some 40 staff people who today may be hurting due to their sudden loss of employment and loss of community.”
Meanwhile, the Montana Attorney General’s Office told The Daily Beast that while they are “aware of the issue,” they declined to comment further.
In August, two Montana law firms sent a letter to former members asking those who were allegedly abused by the Rozells to come forward to possibly take legal action. The two firms also hope to stop the Rozells from liquidating the Potter’s Field Ministry before alleged victims have a chance to sue.
Attorney Tanis Holm of Edminston & Colton told The Daily Beast that the firms have already heard from more than 100 individuals who have alleged various forms of abuse, ranging from “violations in work laws to sexual harassment and sexual assault.”
Militello said while the process toward justice against the Rozells is just beginning, former members are already finding solace knowing the truth is starting to come out.
“Michael and Pam Rozell made us feel so small, so worthless for so many years,” she said. “Now we all know we are not alone and know that we went through wasn’t right. The Rozells weren’t right.”
