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	Two Girls Add Their Testimony of Alleged Abuse by Rio Linda Preacher By Andy Furillo Sacramento Bee November 16, 2011 http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/16/4057763/two-girls-add-their-testimony.html Two sisters testified Tuesday that a Baptist preacher on trial for 12 counts of child molestation sexually abused and degraded them in his Citrus Heights home eight years ago. "Yes," the older girl, now 14, said, in a nearly inaudible whisper, in a courtroom where 32 strangers stared at her when she was asked if Tommy Gene Daniels touched her in her private areas. The answer, if the Sacramento Superior Court jury believes it, establishes the girl as the second victim in the trial of the 49-year-old defendant who is still listed on the First Baptist Church of Rio Linda website as its pastor. When Deputy District Attorney Kimberly Macy asked for some of the details of the act, the girl replied, "I don't want to remember." "I've tried to block it out," she said. She was followed to the witness stand by her 13-year-old sister. The younger girl testified tearfully that Daniels made the two of them take off their clothes, lie down on the floor in a closed room and apply substances to their bodies while he sat in a chair and watched. Prosecutors say the older girl was placed in Daniels' foster-care home in August 2003 and the younger girl in November of the same year. They say the acts took place sometime between then and December 2004, when their adoptive parents removed them from the Daniels residence on Wapiti Place in Citrus Heights. Defense attorney Michael L. Chastaine, who has declared his client innocent of all charges, harshly attacked the first girl's credibility. In his first question to her, he stood at the lawyers' lectern and asked, "It's a lot of work to lie, isn't it?" Chastaine suggested in his questioning that the girl's imagination ran wild in a recent videotaped interview with investigators. He recounted her taped comments as reporting that Daniels abused as many as 150 girls, forced her as punishment to remain in a semi-pushup position called a "plank" for an hour at a time, made the girls have sex with boys in the house and that he had stabbed his wife with a knife. The girl testified she obtained some of the information secondhand through psychotherapist Carla DeRose, who also treated three other of the five alleged victims in the case. DeRose could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Chastaine said he is likely to call her as a witness when his case gets under way, which could be as soon as Thursday. Besides the sexual abuse allegation, the girl testified Daniels also made her take cold showers and sleep in wet clothing if she talked out of turn. She said he also made her stand on her head with her feet against a wall if she acted up. The girls' mother testified that both of her adoptive daughters had behavioral problems and that she placed them in the Daniels house on the recommendation of Loomis licensed marriage and family therapist Mell LaValley. The mother said she paid Daniels and his wife $30,000 to keep the two girls for better than a year. She said she paid LaValley $10,000. She testified that she removed the children from the Daniels home based on "God's leading, to bring them out immediately." She said she and her husband then noticed a hand-shaped bruise on one of their daughters. When the girls began acting out several years after their removal from the Daniels home, the mother said she placed the younger one in a different foster home in November 2009 and the older one with DeRose in May or June 2010. It was after the placement with DeRose that the reports of child molestation were forwarded to Citrus Heights police. Contact: afurillo@sacbee.com
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