NEW YORK
New York Daily News
BY SCOTT SHIFREL
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
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.