Jury Deliberating Fate of Former Pastor, Alleged Rapist Edouard

By Jeff Eckhoff
Des Moines Register
August 24, 2012

http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2012/08/23/jury-deliberating-fate-of-former-pastor-alleged-rapist-edouard/

It's now up to 12 Dallas County jurors to decide whether former Pella pastor Patrick Edouard is a cold-blooded, manipulative rapist or the victim of rewritten memories recounted by four God-fearing women who later regretted their affairs with him.

Closing arguments ended this afternoon in Edouard's trial on three counts of sexual abuse, four counts of sexual exploiting women who allegedly sought him out for counseling and one charge that involves engaging in a pattern of those sexually exploitative relationships.

Iowa prosecutors say Edouard, the former pastor of Pella's Covenant Reformed Church, pursued religious and vulnerable women in his congregation for at least a four-year period that ended in December 2010, when a husband came home early and found the pastor's van in the driveway.

Authorities say Edouard used a combination of flattery and shows of concern with the women's personal problems to force himself on them and lure them into consensual affairs.

"He exploited these women," Assistant Iowa Attorney General Laura Roan told jurors this morning. "He abused their trust, and he abused the trust of an entire congregation that placed him on a pedestal."

"The collar was his power," Roan said. "The collar was his con."

But defense attorney Angela Campbell insisted that the women's accounts of their relationships with Edouard aren't reasonable or credible.

There is no physical evidence of rape, Campbell reminded jurors, and none of the women reported anything to anyone after the incidents. Nor did any of the women make allegations of force until after they found out that they weren't the married pastor's only affair.

The first woman to allege sexual abuse also acknowledged that she later voluntary performed oral sex on Edouard.

"A couple of weeks later, she voluntarily puts her mouth on the penis of a rapist," Campbell told jurors as part of an argument that the accusation should be ignored. "That's their evidence, not ours."

The women say they voiced objections to Edouard's advances, but one also acknowledged that she wanted to have sex with him and one said she sat silently as he performed sexual activity.

The evidence points to a lack of force, Campbell said: "What matters is what happened at the time. You don't get to look back later and say, 'Wow, I wish I hadn't done that.' "

Edouard has acknowledged sex with each of his four accusers but insists all encounters were voluntary and none involved any type of counseling relationship. Iowa law prohibits sexual contact between anyone, including clergy, who provides "or purports to provide" mental health services within a year of the intimate contact.

Prosecutors said the deeply religious women sought help from their pastor with difficulties that included, ailing relatives, stress tied to an expected adoption, reports of a husband's infidelity and a high-maintenance, special-needs child.

"He's not just one of their friends … He's the pastor," Asst. Iowa Attorney General Scott Brown told jurors. "They go to him, and he sexually exploits them, and they don't know what to do."

Not good enough, Campbell insisted, noting that "adoption is not a (mental) dysfunction" and that the women had to have received some sort of mental health guidance for a counseling relationship to exist.

The defense also used phone records and testimony from psychological experts to argue that the alleged victims were in frequent contact during the year after Edourd's affairs became public and that details of their stories could have changed as they listened to each other's accounts.

"Being a victim is easier than being and adulterer," Campbell said. "You can't place blame on someone who was a victim."

Jurors received the case, which was moved from Marion County due to extensive pretrial publicity, at roughly 2:15 p.m.