John Gibson, a US pastor committed suicide six days after his name was exposed by
hackers of the Ashley Madison adultery website, his wife, Christi Gibson told CNN.
Canadian police have said that at least two suicides were linked to the
leak of 32 million customer profiles from the Canada-based site last
month. Christi Gibson discovered her husband’s body and a suicide note which
chronicled his demons & his shame at being exposed - in their New
Orleans home on August 24.
"He talked about depression. He talked about having his name on there,
and he said he was just very, very sorry,” Gibson said as their adult
son and daughter sat next to her in a New Orleans studio.
"Nothing is worth the loss of a father and a husband and a friend. It just didn’t merit it. It didn’t merit it at all."
In addition to his work as a pastor, Gibson, 56, taught at New Orleans
Baptist Theological Seminary. Gibson said her husband, who had struggled
with depression and addiction in the past, was worried that he would
lose his job.
"It wasn’t so bad that we wouldn’t have forgiven it, and so many people
have said that to us, but for John, it carried such a shame," she told
CNN.
"What we know about him is that he poured his life into other people,
and he offered grace and mercy and forgiveness to everyone else, but
somehow he couldn’t extend that to himself."
Ashley Madison, launched in 2001, is known for its slogan: “Life is
short. Have an affair.” It helps connect people seeking to have
extramarital relationships and is owned by Avid Life Media.
According to
authorities, the company became aware of the hack on July
12 when staff were greeted in the morning with a message on their
computers threatening to leak client information unless the Ashley
Madison website was “shut down immediately, permanently.” The message
was accompanied by rockers AC/DC’s song “Thunderstruck.”
Ashley Madison ran into more trouble when tech news site Gizmodo looked
at the leaked data and concluded that it showed little if any activity
from the site’s purported female members, suggesting many accounts were
in fact fake.
Avid Life Media rejected the analysis and said the site has registered
hundreds of thousands of new members including real women, in the
wake of the hack, which has garnered massive media attention.
Tributes to Gibson poured in from students and faculty who remembered
him as a kind, generous man who would repair student’s vehicles in his
spare time. He was pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Pearlington,
Mississippi. He obtained a doctorate of theology from the seminary and was elected to the faculty in 1998, the obituary said.
Source: AFP
