Bynum: Property won't be auctioned after back taxes paid

<p>Televangelist Juanita Bynum said Friday she's paid the back taxes on a Ware County property owned by her ministry and will not be forced to have it auctioned off.</p><p>Bynum, 40, made headlines in August when she accused her husband of beating her in the parking lot of an Atlanta hotel.</p><p>Ware County Tax Commissioner Steve Barnard had said this week the building would be auctioned off next month if Bynum didn't pay more than $33,000 in property taxes.</p><p>Bynum said Friday that all those taxes have been paid. She said she wants to turn the property into a spa for women and that her lawyers told her it could be considered a tax-exempt religious building.</p><p>"It didn't work out that way," she said at the office's of Atlanta's WPZE-FM, a gospel station where she was filling in for an absent DJ. "So be it."</p><p>Bynum would not say whether she planned to charge women to visit the spa, whether it would be an overnight facility or the size of the building where the spa would be housed.</p><p>According to tax records, the 6,748-square-foot house sits on more than 23 acres. Bynum's Waycross-based ministry bought the house Aug. 18, 2006.</p><p>The county tax commissioner said Friday he had received a check earlier for $33,904.15 from New Light Church World Outreach in Houston. He added, however, that the property technically remained set for auction on Nov. 6.</p><p>"It's not paid off until the check clears the bank," he said. He said he expects to know next week whether the check clears.</p><p>On Aug. 22, Bynum told police her husband, fellow evangelist Thomas W. Weeks III, "choked her, pushed her down, kicked and stomped her ... until a bellman pulled him off of her."</p><p>Weeks has pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated assault and making terroristic threats. He is free on $40,000 bond and is not allowed to have contact with Bynum.</p><p>Bynum's divorce petitions cited "cruel treatment" and said the marriage is "irretrievably broken."</p>