A Word From the Founder

Why I Started R13 Tribune

By Pastor Rufus Hampton, Jr.

For much of my life, when I believed something was wrong, my instinct was to fight it.

My professional background taught me to follow records and ask questions.

I spent more than ten years with the Internal Revenue Service as a Field Auditor and manager, including work in an investigative environment connected with the I-30 Savings and Loan scandal.

I have also spent more than thirty years working around lawyers, court proceedings, legal documents, investigations, and legal-support matters.

But the strongest influence on what I do today is pastoral.

I believe a shepherd has a responsibility to help God’s sheep when they are confused, vulnerable, overwhelmed, or being harmed.

For many years, that belief placed me directly in the middle of other people’s legal problems.

It also repeatedly placed me in conflict with lawyers and judges.

For more than fourteen years, I have been accused or warned on multiple occasions that activities I considered pastoral assistance, advocacy, education, investigation, or legal support could constitute the unauthorized practice of law.

I disagreed with many of those characterizations.

I believed there were serious religious-liberty questions surrounding the ability of a pastor to assist people facing legal crises, particularly when the people seeking help could not afford lawyers or did not understand what was happening to them.

I even expected that those questions might eventually be formally tested.

To my knowledge, despite years of accusations and warnings, I was never referred to the Texas Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee for a proceeding in which those questions could actually be addressed.

For a long time, I wanted that fight.

I wanted the issue resolved.

I wanted someone to test the boundaries between pastoral ministry, religious duty, legal assistance, and the unauthorized practice of law.

Eventually, I reached a different conclusion.

I decided that my personal fight could not become more important than the people I was trying to help.

I did not have to personally fight every legal battle in order to help God’s sheep.

I could investigate.

I could organize records.

I could ask questions.

I could explain complicated systems.

I could bring matters to the attention of journalists, government officials, regulators, law-enforcement agencies, oversight bodies, and licensed attorneys.

I could help develop lawyers who understand that the people appearing in legal systems are human beings, not merely file numbers.

And I could use journalism to place documented questions before the public without pretending that journalism itself is a courtroom.

That realization became an important part of the foundation for R13 Tribune.

From Personal Battles to Public Accountability

Over time, I began to see that many individual legal disputes were symptoms of larger institutional problems.

A foreclosure is not merely a foreclosure when no one can clearly explain who owns the debt.

A guardianship is not merely a guardianship when the evidence concerning a person’s capacity is disputed.

A bankruptcy dismissal is not merely a docket entry when an elderly person may have lacked the ability to protect herself.

An eviction is not simply an eviction when title, contracts, probate rights, authority, or other underlying issues remain unresolved.

And a statement made in one legal proceeding can have consequences far beyond that case.

Information can move from courtroom to courtroom.

Allegations can gradually begin to be repeated as facts.

A finding made for one purpose can later be used for another.

Those consequences can affect homes, reputations, families, ministries, businesses, finances, and lives.

That is why R13 Tribune asks a recurring question:

Before something irreversible happens, did the system get the facts right?

And when the answer is unclear:

Who has the responsibility to look again?

What Minister Patrick Helped Me See

One of the most meaningful recent experiences in my life came through an intensive conversation with my son, Minister Patrick, using what he calls the Extractor process.

The questions caused me to examine experiences I had carried for decades.

I thought about ambitions I had when I was younger.

I thought about my years with the IRS.

I thought about money, success, ministry, injustice, and the people I have tried to help.

And I confronted something important about myself.

I have spent a great deal of my life fighting what I believed was wrongdoing, but I have never been able to sustain hatred for the people I believed had wronged me.

For many years, I interpreted that simply as forgiveness.

The Extractor experience helped me recognize that forgiveness, love, accountability, and justice are related, but they are not identical.

That realization matters to what I am building now.

R13 Tribune should not be built on hatred.

The R13 Legal Incubator should not be built on revenge.

The podcast should not become a place where we humiliate people we disagree with.

Accountability does not require hatred.

Justice does not require vengeance.

And faith does not require silence.

We can investigate a judge without hating the judge.

We can question a lawyer without hating the lawyer.

We can investigate a bank without hating the people who work there.

We can question government officials without treating them as enemies.

We can challenge wrongdoing while still recognizing the humanity of the person whose conduct we are examining.

That is the standard I want these organizations to pursue.

Why the Podcast

Some investigations cannot be understood in a few paragraphs.

Mortgage histories may stretch across decades.

Court files can contain hundreds or thousands of pages.

Bankruptcy, probate, foreclosure, guardianship, eviction, appellate proceedings, and government investigations can overlap in ways that are difficult even for experienced professionals to follow.

That is why we created:

Law, Disorder, and Faith, Texas Size: You Be The Judge

The podcast allows us to slow the story down.

We can examine the documents.

We can explain the law.

We can hear from the people involved.

We can invite institutions to respond.

We can distinguish what a court actually decided from what someone merely alleged.

We can examine whether a finding made in one proceeding has been repeated in another without the underlying facts being independently tested.

And after the record has been presented, we can say to the audience:

You be the judge.

Not because public opinion replaces a court of law.

It does not.

But public understanding and public accountability matter in institutions that ultimately operate in service to the people.

Why the R13 Legal Incubator

Journalism can expose a problem.

A podcast can explain it.

But a person facing a foreclosure, bankruptcy, eviction, tax problem, appeal, attorney dispute, or other serious legal problem may still need a lawyer.

That is why the R13 Legal Incubator is an essential part of the broader vision.

I do not want the answer to problems in the legal system to be untrained people pretending to be lawyers.

I want to help create and support more competent, ethical, compassionate lawyers and legal professionals, while helping ordinary people become knowledgeable enough to participate intelligently in their own cases.

The Incubator is intended to help bridge that gap through education, investigation, document organization, attorney development, professional referrals, and other lawful access-to-justice services.

Where legal representation is required, our objective should be to get the matter into the hands of a qualified lawyer.

Where misconduct is alleged, our objective should be to gather the evidence and send it to the proper authority.

Where a systemic problem deserves public examination, R13 Tribune should investigate and report responsibly.

Giving Up My Personal Fight

There was a time when I wanted the legal system to finally decide whether the accusations made against me over the years were right or wrong.

That issue once mattered greatly to me.

Today, something else matters more.

There are people who need help.

There are elderly people who do not understand the documents being filed against them.

There are families losing homes without understanding how the debt reached the amount being demanded.

There are people who cannot afford the lawyer necessary to get through the courthouse door.

There are people who believe that because a lawyer alleged something, a trustee repeated something, or a judge wrote something, there is no longer any reason to examine the underlying record.

And there are also honest lawyers, judges, journalists, public servants, pastors, investigators, and professionals who genuinely want the system to work correctly.

I want to work with them.

My remaining work cannot be centered on proving what happened to Rufus Hampton.

It must be about building institutions that can help the next person.

That is why I started R13 Tribune.

That is why we created Law, Disorder, and Faith, Texas Size: You Be The Judge.

That is why I am building the R13 Legal Incubator.

It all returns to the same calling:

Provide God’s sheep with the knowledge they need so that they will not perish for lack of it.

That is why I am still asking questions.

And that is why the work is only beginning.

Pastor Rufus Hampton, Jr.
Founder, R13 Tribune
Senior Investigative Reporter
Host, Law, Disorder, and Faith, Texas Size: You Be The Judge