Catherine Rohr, founder of Prison Entrepreneurship Program, has resigned as chief executive.
Rohr, 32, is credited with building a statewide prison organization that has graduated more then 500 felons from a five-month program about how to start businesses and be gainfully employed.
Rohr was featured in a Cheryl Hall column in Oct. The organization has an office in Dallas.
In a letter e-mailed Tuesday night to 7,500 supporters, Rohr said she decided to publicly disclose her actions so PEP could move forward.
“Although these mistakes were not illegal, I was recently banned by the Texas prison system from re-entering prison and volunteering with released men on parole supervision,” she wrote.
Phi Tran, the organization’s chief operating officer, has been named acting CEO while the board conducts a nationwide search for Rohr’s replacement.
Jim Yadgir, a commodities trader in Chicago and a major contributor to PEP, said that he has pledged $200,000 to the organization but that it is contingent on Rohr’s continued involvement in some capacity. “My pledge stays if Catherine Rohr stays. My pledge goes if Catherine Rohr goes. That’s as simply as I can put it.
“The fact is there are 500 or more guys out there who are now willing to carry your groceries to the car rather than steal them, thanks to her.” Please watch the video on the front page.
I only just heard about her and I already miss her….
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If Rohr is really repentant of her actions and is just not sad and embarrassed about getting “caught”, she would come clean and admit the WHOLE TRUTH about what has been going on for a long time. The facts are that this inappropriate behavior happened with more than just 4 men. There are men who were PEP grads who had inappropriate relations with her several years before her divorce. She hasn’t been honest in her Resign letter about the ex-inmates that she didn’t get caught with years prior to her divorce. So it wasn’t just during her divorce that she made some bad decisions (which I understand if that was the case and would be way more prone to show her a lot more grace, but she is still lying about it, even in her resign letter). She also hasn’t been honest about PEP money that she used to stay in hotel rooms with some of these guys during PEP trips to do testimonies in other cities and states. Expensive designer clothes and accessories she bought them using ministry money. She hasn’t been honest about persuading these men to fabricate their testimonies in order to gain more sympathy with donors. She hasn’t been honest about shunning some of these guys when they refused to go along with it anymore. After all, who would PEP believe? Her or them. That’s why some of them didn’t come out before the 4 that did.