New York- A charismatic Queens preacher went on trial yesterday accused of seducing an underaged church member he allegedly sweet-talked into a bed full of stuffed animals.
“He would say that the priest should sleep with the virgin and that’s okay to do this because he loved me,” the alleged victim, now 21, told jurors in a hushed courtroom yesterday.
Bishop William Waynes, founder and pastor of the New Beginning Outreach Love Center, is charged with statutory rape, a crime that carries a prison term of up to four years.
Prosecutors say Waynes, 47, who holds a second job as a staffer at Fox Channel 5, began molesting the girl when she was 15 – and bedded her just after her Sweet 16 party in 2000.
“This is a case about seduction, the loss of innocence and the abuse of authority,” Assistant District Attorney Frank DeGaetano said in State Supreme Court in Kew Gardens.
Testifying in a steady voice, the woman said Waynes had heard her speak at the party and told her she had the makings of a fine evangelist.
But, he said, for her to be the preacher “he wanted me to be, he would have to enter inside me so that his spirit would come inside me so that I can become a great evangelist.”
The woman said she had worshiped with her family at the storefront church on Northern Blvd. in East Elmhurst since she was 6 years old. She sang in the choir and often stayed to clean Waynes’ second-story office.
“I idolized him,” she said. “He was like a father to me and I was at the church all the time. Always it was school, church and back home.”
A tall, heavyset man with a handsome face, Waynes sat with a frown as his accuser testified the two had sex for four years on an office bed covered with pink and blue teddy bears.
“I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t think anyone would believe me,” she said. “I didn’t think that anyone would listen.”
Waynes declined comment outside court. But his lawyer, Ronna Gordon-Galshus, called the charges “a complete fabrication.”
But authorities say Waynes broke down in tears when cops first confronted him with the allegations in February 2004.
He admitted going to a hotel with the girl and having sex in his office after she turned 17, the age of legal consent, Detective Daniel Howard testified.
Authorities say they have received at least two other complaints that Waynes abused minors and one remains under investigation, sources said.
Waynes, who is free on bail, will conduct Easter services Sunday and then return to court Monday when the trial resumes.