Tri­als and tribu­la­tions may come in the way but on­ly God’s right­eous will stand. This is the be­lief of ded­i­cat­ed fol­low­ers of Trans­formed Life Min­istry, East­ern Main Road, Arou­ca as they called on Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith to apol­o­gise to their spir­i­tu­al leader for mis­lead­ing the pub­lic of his ar­rest on Wednes­day dur­ing the res­cue op­er­a­tion of 69 res­i­dents from the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre.

How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed about the re­quest for an apol­o­gy, Grif­fith said he is not go­ing to apol­o­gise.

“I do not apol­o­gise for stat­ing facts. If the truth hurts, that is their prob­lem, not mine. If they be­lieve that be­ing a child of God, is to have per­sons placed in cages and treat­ed in a man­ner that I would not treat my dogs, then I would in­deed pray for them”.

He added: “I should apol­o­gise for res­cu­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens from im­pris­on­ment? Good one. The 69 cit­i­zens are thank­ful for what I have done. Their view is what mat­ters.”

He told Guardian Me­dia: “Al­most 200 years ago, there were some who owned plan­ta­tions, and protest­ed over the de­mand by right-think­ing per­sons to end slav­ery, sim­ply be­cause they did not know bet­ter. In­ter­est­ing.”

Speak­ing ear­li­er on con­di­tion of strict anonymi­ty, a ded­i­cat­ed fol­low­er of the church told Guardian Me­dia that the pas­tor was not an evil per­son but “some­one who has a heart of gold for the help­less and re­ject­ed be­cause he was a re­ject as well but was able to over­come in Je­sus.”

The fol­low­er said a se­lect­ed few of them were made abreast of the sit­u­a­tion on Wednes­day and al­leged­ly told that it was a bla­tant at­tack on him as he had a pend­ing court mat­ter in which he is be­ing owed over $1 mil­lion as he worked in the street dwellers pro­gramme un­der the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment.

The fol­low­er said they were told by the pas­tor of his back­ground sev­er­al times as he would of­ten share his tes­ti­mo­ny.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the pas­tor was born and grew up in Pep­per Vil­lage in Gran Cou­va.

“He used to do con­struc­tion work for a liv­ing and then he opened a se­cu­ri­ty firm and al­so a pri­vate in­ves­ti­ga­tion firm which was very suc­cess­ful he would say but then an in­ci­dent hap­pened where he had to go to prison for sev­en years.

“It was while in there he start­ed to work on pris­on­ers to re­deem and re­store their lives and is from there he said his min­istry be­gan,” the fol­low­er said.