Alleged Underage Pastor Rape Victim says she was forced to Apologize to congregation for getting pregnant out of Wedlock
The case against a man charged with assaulting and impregnating a 15-year-old from his congregation is about force, fear, and her faith in a church that shamed her and banished her to Colorado, a New Hampshire prosecutor said yesterday.
The trial of Ernest Willis of Gilford opened on a dramatic note, when the woman who says he raped her twice in 1997 testified about how “brutal’’ it was to face hundreds of churchgoers at Concord’s Trinity Baptist Church and apologize for getting pregnant out of wedlock.
Tina Anderson, now 29, said that she felt “completely humiliated; I felt like my life was over.’’
She said the Rev. Chuck Phelps, then the church’s pastor, arranged for her to move in with a Baptist family in Colorado and put her baby up for adoption.
She said she believed for years what church leaders told her: The rapes were her fault, and she must learn to forgive and forget.