PORTLAND (OR)
The Oregonian
Thursday, June 16, 2005
ANNE SAKER
When the woman returned to court Wednesday, her lawyer gave her news: The church had at last offered a settlement, rather than allow a Multnomah County jury consider her claim that her North Portland pastor raped her as a teenager, and he went unpunished.
The woman said she asked her lawyer, Randall J. Wolfe, for advice. The Church of God in Christ Inc. offered a fraction of the millions she had asked of the jury, he told her. But any verdict in her favor would be tied up in years of appeals.
"It was not an easy decision," said the woman, 32. "But I was told that if I won, the church would fight this. That helped me say, I'm tired. I want to go home."
So an hour later, she sat at a table in courtroom 716 as the lawyers polished a one-page agreement that sealed the dollar amount she would receive. Then they turned the paper around on the table and pushed it to her.
She read every word. Then she signed it.
The stroke of the pen completed a six-day trial that revealed not only one woman's torment over sexual abuse but also the Church of God in Christ's inability to discipline errant clergy.