Creflo Dollar, US televangelist arrested in alleged choking attack on daughter

Creflo Dollar, founder and pastor of World Changers Church International, was arrested early Friday on charges involving the choking of his 15-year-old daughter.

Dollar was taken into custody at his Fayetteville home and charged with simple battery and cruelty to children, NBC station WXIA of Atlanta reported.

According to the report from the Fayette County Sheriff's Office, Dollar's daughter called police to say that her father attacked her after they argued about whether the daughter could attend a party.

The report says the daughter alleged that Dollar choked her, then threw her to the ground, punched her and hit her with his shoe. The responding officer noticed a scratch on the daughter's neck near her throat; the daughter said her father gave her the scratch during the fight.

When police interviewed Dollar, he said he tried to restrain his daughter when she "became very disrespectful" after he told her she couldn't go to the party, according to the report. Dollar admitted to spanking his daughter and wrestling her to the floor, but said it was because she hit him.

Dollar was taken to the Fayette County Jail after his arrest. Fayette County Police spokesman Brent Rowan said Dollar had his first appearance in magistrate court Friday and posted $5,000 bond, WXIA reported.

Dollar was among six televangelists investigated in 2011 by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and the Senate Finance Committee. Their report raised questions about the personal use of church-owned airplanes, luxury homes and credit cards by pastors and their families, and about the lack of oversight of finances by boards often packed with the televangelists' relatives and friends.

Dollar and his World Changers Church International and Creflo Dollar Ministries were among four televangelism organizations that the committee said did not cooperate with the investigation.

Dollar was a favorite of Rudy Eugene, the naked man shot dead by a Miami officer May 26 when, police say, he would not stop eating the face of a homeless man, Ronald Poppo.

“We watched Creflo Dollar Ministries every morning,” Yovonka Bryant, Eugene’s girlfriend, told a news conference covered by NBCMiami.com on Wednesday.