NEW YORK
New York Newsday
BY HERBERT LOWE
STAFF WRITER
March 24, 2005, 8:04 PM EST
A young woman testified in Queens Thursday that she and her former minister had a sexual relationship for nearly four years after he initially said that's what God wanted.
"He would say that the priest should sleep with the virgin," the woman said about Bishop William Waynes, "and that it's OK to do this because he loved me -- and in order for me to become an evangelist, and to become powerful ... he would have to enter inside me so that his spirit can come from him inside me so that I can become a great evangelist."
The woman, now 21 and a local college student, was the first witness against Waynes, who is on trial in State Supreme Court in Kew Gardens.
Waynes, 47, is pastor of a storefront Pentecostal church, New Beginning Outreach Love Center, in East Elmhurst. He is charged with third-degree rape, or statutory rape, and endangering the welfare of a child.
If convicted, he faces up to four years in prison.
Waynes' attorney, Ronna Gordon-Galchus, did not offer an opening statement but said afterward "the charges are a complete fabrication."