Pastor Will Plead Not Guilty, Katie Fretland, World-Herald, June 25, 2009

Pastor Will Plead Not Guilty

By Katie Fretland
World-Herald
June 25, 2009

http://www.omaha.com/article/20090625/NEWS01/706259845

Efrain Umana Sr.

Efrain Umana Sr., a pastor who served congregations in Council Bluffs and Lincoln, will plead not guilty to sex abuse charges, his attorney said Wednesday.

Umana, 53, was charged earlier this month in Pottawattamie County with having sex with a 10- or 11-year-old girl parishioner in 2003, forcing an adult woman parishioner to have sex with him in 2007 and assaulting two other women with the intent to commit sexual abuse in 2008.

He is accused of assaulting them while serving as pastor at Templo Monte Horeb in Council Bluffs, which he left about nine months ago amid allegations of misconduct.

“He is adamantly denying the claims,” said his attorney, Andrew Wilson.

Female parishioners at another church also had accused Umana of impropriety.

Umana had been pastor at an Assemblies of God church in Lincoln called Efesios 2:20 until the church’s Midwest Latin American District Council dismissed him.

According to a letter obtained by The World-Herald, his dismissal resulted in part from a report by a 17-year-old parishioner that she’d had a physical relationship with him. She later sued and said the case was settled out of court for $18,000.

A 14-year-old girl also reported that he had made advances.

Those reports, a letter from the 17-year-old’s psychiatrist and a note showing she had missed a semester of school contributed to the district council’s decision to dismiss him, according to the dismissal letter.

After Umana left, he opened a church called Iglesia Templo Pentecostal El Nuevo Nacimiento in Lincoln. That year, the presbyter of his former church’s East Nebraska Section, Saul Garcia, signed a letter sent to Attorney General Jon Bruning. The letter, sent in 2003 and confirmed as received by the office, reported that Umana and his congregation had separated from the Midwest Latin American District of the Assemblies of God of their own accord.

“It was a lie,” said the woman, now 25, who reported Umana had abused her at age 17. “To cover up what he did.”

Garcia, pastor at Centro Cristiano La Roca in south Omaha, said that he did not believe the allegations against Umana at that time and that there had been no proof against him.

Umana continues to attend Iglesia Templo Pentecostal El Nuevo Nacimiento in Lincoln while free on bail from the Pottawattamie County Jail.