By Rocco LaDuca
Utica Observer-Dispatch
January 18, 2008
http://www.uticaod.com/homepage/x469077850
UTICA – A former Clinton pastor told jurors in Oneida County Court Thursday that there was nothing sexual about the way he massaged a 7-year-old girl who was spending the night at his home last March.
But in a phone conversation recorded by Oneida County sheriff's investigators, the Rev. William Procanick is overheard telling the girl's mother he was wrong to have "caressed" the girl's body that night.
Procanick, the 53-year-old former pastor of Resurrection Assembly of God church on Kirkland Avenue, is facing trial this week on felony sexual-abuse allegations he inappropriately touched the young daughter of a family friend while they both lay on his bedroom floor.
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| The Rev. William Procanick, former pastor of Resurrection Assembly of God church in Clinton, testifies at his trial Thursday, Jan. 17, in Oneida County Court in Utica. Procanick is on trial on charges of first-degree sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child. Photo by Michael Doherty |
The Observer-Dispatch does not reveal names of alleged abuse victims or their families.
After Procanick insisted he never touched the girl's private parts and that he received no sexual arousal, the girl's mother asked Procanick to then explain his actions, according to the phone conversation.
"The only reason I can say is that she has a muscular body and that's something that, perhaps, I'm interested in," Procanick said. After the mother reacted, Procanick added, "I know it sounds sick. It's really sick. When I think about this, I agree it's totally sick."
When Procanick was questioned Thursday afternoon by his attorney,
George Aney, Procanick testified he only said those things to the girl's mother because she was acting "crazy" and hounding him regarding the nightmares that began haunting her daughter after the alleged incident.
"She said 'you scared her. I want to know what you did to my child,'" he recalled the girl's mother telling him.
"I didn't do anything to her that I didn't do to my own child," Procanick explained to jurors as he described how he would rub his daughters' muscles down their legs and up their backs. "This is something I've done with my children as they were growing up, especially if they were fidgeting, sore, or overly tired."
The girl was having trouble falling asleep that night, Procanick said, and it wasn't out of the ordinary for her to ask for a back rub.
Still, Procanick said he was concerned about the girl's nightmares at the time, as well as the troubling circumstances the girl and her older sister faced while living with their mother. The mother testified Thursday that she was a recovering drug addict.
Prosecutors are expected to cross-examine Procanick this morning, followed by closing arguments and a possible verdict.
Earlier on Thursday, sheriff's Sgt. Denise Luker said Procanick admitted he "crossed the line" in touching the girl when he was questioned a month after the incident. Still, Procanick seemed shocked when he realized how serious the charge was that he faced, she said.
Neither the girl nor investigators ever accused Procanick of touching the girl's private parts, yet the girl insisted in court Thursday that he did.
"How did you feel at that time, honey?" Assistant District Attorney Doug DeMarche Jr. asked the girl, now 8.
"Scared that he would hurt me," the girl answered as she squirmed on the witness stand alongside Judge Michael L. Dwyer.
The girl said she didn't give Procanick a hug the next day when he was at her Kirkland Avenue home. The girl's mother then asked her if something had happened the previous night at Procanick's house, the girl said.
"I told her that he massaged me, and then the next day I told her the truth because I knew she was worried," the girl testified.
When the girl's mother testified, the woman said she initially did not want to believe what her daughter was saying about Procanick.
"I felt betrayed, I felt sick," the mother said. "He was like a father to me. I loved him. I believed him. I trusted him."
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