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	It’s His Word against Theirs The World-Herald January 28, 2011 http://www.omaha.com/article/20110128/NEWS97/701289880/1007 Pastor Efrain Umana testified Thursday that he never took an 11-year-old girl to his church to look for lost keys, let alone sexually abused her. Umana, 55, is charged with second-degree sexual abuse, third-degree sexual abuse and two counts of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse. He is accused of forcibly having sex with the girl in 2003. He also is alleged to have forced sexual intercourse with another woman who was a member of his Council Bluffs church, Templo Monte Horeb, as well as allegedly to have made unwanted sexual advances toward two other parishioners. The jury began deliberations in the case Thursday evening and was to resume Friday. During court testimony, Umana and his daughter — who the girl said had gone with them to look for the keys — both denied ever picking her up and bringing her to Council Bluffs from Omaha. Bill McGinn, Umana’s attorney, asked Umana if he ever took the girl and his daughter to the church to look for keys, and he replied no. “Do you remember misplacing any keys?” McGinn said. “No, I keep all my keys together,” Umana replied. The girl, now 18, testified in the trial Tuesday. Umana also denied forcing intercourse on another parishioner at her home. He said he had never been to her home when her husband was not present. He also denied kissing one parishioner on the mouth and another on the neck. Shelly Sedlak, assistant county attorney for Pottawattamie County, asked Umana if he preached about the sanctity of marriage, and he said he did. She asked if he upheld his own teachings, and he said, “Yes.” “Have you always?” Sedlak asked. “Yes,” he said. “You understand you are under oath?” Sedlak pressed. After a brief court recess, Sedlak asked Umana if he had had an affair with a Lincoln woman. He said that he had. Dan McGinn, also an assistant county attorney, said the case was about trust. “These people had huge, powerful trust in their pastor. It made it difficult (for them) to tell people,” Dan McGinn said. “He was a pastor people trusted in every way. He was the pastor they trusted and, in the end, he breached that trust.” Attorney Bill McGinn told the jury no evidence was presented against his client other than the testimony of four women. “All their words combined together are merely accusations — with lack of evidence to back them up,” he said. “They may be enough to get this case to a jury, but they are not enough to convict.”
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