TULSA (OK)
Kansas City Star [Kansas City MO]
September 27, 2024
By Kate Linderman
A pastor’s daughter was in sixth grade when he prayed over her, then started to touch her inappropriately, Oklahoma police said. Bertheophilus Maurice Bailey, of Tulsa, then sexually assaulted her and continued to do so for years, police said.
“For too long, I suffered in silence, afraid of the repercussions of speaking out against someone with such influence and power,” the daughter, Harmony Bailey Oates, said in a Sept. 17 Facebook post, coming forward about a decade of mental and sexual abuse by her father.
McClatchy News reached out to Oates but did not immediately hear back.
Tulsa police said the victim filed a report about the abuse in August 2023, but they said she was not ready to press charges until this month. On Sept. 25, 45-year-old Bailey was arrested and charged with rape, child sexual abuse, incest, forcible sodomy and burglary, according to jail records.
He’s held on a $500,000 bond in Tulsa County Jail.
The abuse that started when Oates was a child continued into her adulthood, police and Oates said.
Bailey raped the victim when she was 16, and he later broke into her home and sodomized her after she moved out as an adult, police said.
“The damage he has done is immeasurable. It has poisoned my relationships, poisoned my mind,” she said. “It has filled me with doubts, with fears, with a sense of worthlessness that I struggle to overcome.”
Her father was a pastor at St. Andrew Christian Church until Sept. 21, according to the church’s website. He had been there since 2018.
McClatchy News reached out to St. Andrew Christian Church for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
“He took away my innocence, my sense of self, my ability to trust,” Oates said. “He left me broken, shattered, a shell of the person I could have been. And yet, I refuse to let him define me.”
Family members said they learned about the abuse on the same day Oates made her Facebook post, according to a statement posted on Sept. 18.
“No one should ever have their trust and safety violated in such a horrific way, especially by their own father. We are all so deeply sorry that this happened to you,” the statement said.
Oates said she will continue to speak out about the abuse she faced.
“Silence only gives power to the abuser, and I refuse to let him have any more power over me,” she said.