Victim files federal lawsuit against Toledo ex-pastors, hotels and churches alleging compliance in child sex trafficking and abuse
The lawsuit says the properties "turned a blind eye" to the abuse, exploitation and trafficking of a minor by the former pastors and their families.
Author: WTOL Newsroom
Published: 1:08 AM EST January 22, 2021
TOLEDO, Ohio — A victim who was groomed, trafficked and assaulted as a minor by three former Toledo pastors has filed a federal lawsuit against the pastors, their families, hotels, churches and a business for crimes related to child sex trafficking and negligence that allowed it to continue.
The lawsuit was filed by a Jane Doe, who was a minor during what the lawsuit describes as "years of abuse" by former pastors Anthony Haynes, Cordell Jenkins and Kenneth Butler.
Doe and her mother attended church at the Greater Life Christian Center, where Anthony Haynes served as a pastor. When he learned that Doe's father was absent in her life, Haynes spoke before his congregation and pledged to become a father figure to Doe.
Haynes and his wife, Alisa, volunteered to allow Doe to live with them and to provide her with necessities. After moving in, Doe became the victim of molestation, sexual abuse, assault, trafficking and exploitation by Haynes. The abuse started when Doe was 14 years old.
Haynes would give Doe money for sex acts, using funds from Greater Life's accounts, which were not audited or reviewed.
He also encouraged and facilitated the abuse of Doe by Jenkins and Butler. In 2017, Doe moved out of the Haynes household and into a home with a guardian who attended Jenkins' church, Abundant Life Ministries.
That year, Doe's guardian saw inappropriate messages between Doe and her abusers on her phone. She reported the abuse to Laura Lloyd-Jenkins, who at the time was part of church leadership at Abundant Life, Lucas County Administrator, and served on the board of Lucas County Children Services.
Lloyd-Jenkins failed to report the abuse and warned Haynes. Haynes warned Jenkins and Butler, who scrubbed incriminating evidence of the abuse and trafficking from texts and Facebook.
Doe told her guidance counselor at school about the sexual abuse and trafficking. Her school reported to law enforcement and a criminal investigation was launched in conjunction with the FBI, which led to the charges and convictions in the child sex trafficking case against the pastors and their family members.
The abuse spanned approximately three years at local hotels, churches and at the Franklin Park Perfumania store. At least one other minor victim was involved during the instances of abuse.
Two more victims came forward (3rd story on link).
The hotels, churches and Perfumania are named as defendants in the lawsuit. All were named due to alleged "willful blindness" that enabled the continual abuse to protect their reputations and financial interests.
Had the businesses and churches took action against her abusers, her abusers could not have exploited and trafficked Doe, according to the lawsuit.
Anthony Haynes was an employee of Perfumania during the abuse. While working and while the mall was open to the public, Haynes allegedly sexually abused, exploited and trafficked Doe on multiple occasions on store premises.
All three pastors were convicted in 2019 of child sex trafficking. Haynes and Jenkins were sentenced to life in prison. Butler was sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison.
Doe was a witness in the trial against the pastors. In January 2019, Anthony Haynes' stepdaughter Alexis Fortune, armed with a gun, and Haynes' wife Alisa forced their way into Doe's apartment and spent hours choking and threatening her in an attempt to force her not to testify against Haynes. Doe's minor sister was present at the time.
Alisa Haynes and Fortune drove Doe and her sister to Walmart and forced her to record a statement recanting the allegations against Haynes. After she recorded the forced statement, her and her sister were released.
Fortune and Alisa Haynes pleaded guilty to witness tampering and other charges related to the incident. Alisa Haynes was sentenced to 24 months in prison and Fortune was sentenced to 48 months, but granted compassionate release in December to serve the rest of her sentence in home confinement.
Doe has demanded a jury trial, with 19 counts against the defendants named in the lawsuit.
How did these churches vet their pastors? Was there no-one with any discernment on their boards? Is no-one listening to the Lord anymore?
13 girls defiled by fake pastor to receive counselling
The paedophile lied he is a pastor and his church is in Ukunda in Kwale county.
In Summary
• The girls who range from the age of 13 to 18 years were allegedly defiled by the criminal between September 2019 and November 2020.
• All the girls are students in one of the primary schools in the area. They are in class six, seven and eight.
Thirteen girls allegedly defiled by a fake pastor in Kaloleni have been enrolled for counselling.
This is after majority of them started hallucination and contemplating suicide.
Haki Africa deputy executive director Salma Hemed, who on Saturday visited the girls at Kinarani village, said some of them wanted to drop out of school due to stigma.
“We had to come in and look for a counsellor who is going to take the girls out of the trauma they are currently in. In as much as we are looking for their justice, their mental health is equally important. We are worried without giving them psycho-social support we might lose some of them,” said Hemed.
Vespus Chenja, who is offering the counselling, said the girls are currently depressed.
He was confident that through counselling they will be able to live a normal life.
“Using trauma focused cognitive behavioural therapy (TF- CBT), they are to have like 12 individual session for them to be healed. I started with rapport building, explaining what counselling is, gathering facts and assessment. I will be visiting them until all the 12 sessions are over,” said Chinje.
I would be amazed if 12 sessions were sufficient.
Chinje said he is currently handling 27 girls who have been defiled in Kaloleni Sub County.
Perhaps he should start by finding a term other than 'defiled' to describe the girls.
“I have 19 girls in Mariakani who were defiled this month and the eight I met yesterday. I am yet to meet five other girls. Any girl who is sexually abused need psychosocial support since they are traumatised,” he said.
He said without counselling, the girls may live with trauma throughout their lives.
“They may hate men and never get married in future. They may have suicidal thoughts ending in death. They may suffer depression and low self-esteem, which will lead to poor performance in school. They might also suffer Post Trauma Stress Disorder (PTSD), live with anger, irritability, hypervigilance, and insomnia,” he added.
Chinje said trauma is an overwhelming, uncontrollable experience that creates a feeling of helplessness, vulnerability, loss of safety and loss control.
Some victims may end up hating themselves.
The girls, who range from the age of 13 to 18 years, were allegedly defiled by the paedophile between September 2019 and November 2020.
Three of them were impregnated.
The girls claimed they were lured by the man to join him in praying for people in a house where he had been hosted.
“He was an intercessor and we believed him. We used to pray for people under his guidance and some got healed. Our parents believed he was a true man of God and they allowed us to sleep in the house every time. We used to carry out the prayers in the sitting room,” said one of the girls.
All the girls are students in one of the primary schools in the area. They are in class six, seven and eight.
The girls are now a laughing stock at school and back home.
“Whenever we are seen, we are referred to as wives of the pastor. This is traumatising us,” said one of the girl.
She claimed the pastor instilled fear in them and blindfolded them.
“He used to call any of us to the bedroom and defile us after putting on loud music. He used to threaten us that misfortunes will follow us should we report the matter to anyone. He sometimes threatened us that we will be deaf and dumb and finally die. This made us not to utter a word,” said the girl.
The said pastor claimed his church is in Ukunda in Kwale county.
Karisa Kahindi, a village elder and a neighbour to the girls, said the matter was blown up after one parent discovered his daughter was pregnant.
“The father came to me after suspecting that the daughter was pregnant. I advised him to take the daughter for pregnancy test and the girl was confirmed to be six months pregnant. The matter was reported to the police and they raided the pastor’s house and all the girls who were residing with him were picked for questioning. He was later arraigned in court and released on bond,” said Kahindi.
The bogus pastor was hosted in the guise that he was an orphan.
“We believed that he was an orphan but we later realised he has parents and they are living in Mavueni in Kilifi north Sub County. He has even impregnated a girl at the home where he was hosted,” said Kahindi.
According to the girls, the fake pastor has two identity cards, one for Kenya and the other one for Tanzania.
“Both identity cards bear different names but the same photo. The name he told us is different from the two names in the identity cards,” said the girls.
Kalolini, Kenya
'Wolf In Sheep's Clothing': PA Man Gets 15 Years For
Sex Abuse Of Kenyan Orphans
Nicole Acosta
02/11/2021 4:33 p.m.
The orphanage remained in operation for nearly a decade with financial support from donors in the United States, including churches and other faith-based organizations, Williams said.
Gregory and Mary Rose Dow
Kenyan women living in the United States notified FBI officials of the allegations, to which an investigation ensued and uncovered that Dow had sexually abused at least four teenage girls between October 2013 and September 2017, Williams said.
Actually, it was a nurse from PA who did most of the investigative work before taking it to the FBI. (2nd story on link).
FBI probes couple over child sex abuse claims in Kenya (3rd story on link).
Two of the girls were as young as 11 years old when the abuse began, Williams said.
Furthermore, Dow's wife transported the girls to a medical clinic to have birth control devices implanted into their arms to avoid pregnancy, Williams said.
Dow presented himself as a Christian missionary who cared for the children and asked them to call him “Dad," Williams said.
“Under the guise of faith-based charity work benefiting orphaned children, Gregory Dow traveled halfway around the world to prey on incredibly vulnerable victims,” said Williams.
“His crimes are nearly incomprehensible in their depravity. We thank the witnesses in this case for coming forward to report him, and our law enforcement partners in the United States and in Kenya for working diligently to bring him to justice. It is no exaggeration to say that the world’s children are safer with Dow behind bars.”
“Gregory Dow was the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Michael J. Driscoll, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia Division.
“He presented himself as this big-hearted man who was living according to his faith, when all the while, he was sexually abusing girls placed in his care. These horrific crimes were a betrayal of an entire community’s trust.
It was also a betrayal of God, for which he will surely stand before God trembling.
"If Dow thought he could get away with it because he was in a different country, if he thought no one would care because these were underprivileged Black children he victimized, this investigation and today’s sentence have most emphatically proved him wrong. The FBI and our partners will never stop working to protect children from sexual predators, whomever and wherever they are.”
In July 2019, Dow was charged in a four-count indictment, in which he pleaded guilty to all four counts in June 2020.
Dow was sentenced to 15 years, and eight months in prison, a lifetime of supervised release, and ordered to pay $16,000 in restitution by United States District Judge Edward G. Smith.
The Dow case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice.
The investigation was conducted by the FBI, with assistance from the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, the Kenyan Office of Director of Public Prosecutions and Directorate of Criminal Investigations Anti-Human Trafficking & Child Protection Unit, and the Investigative Division of the Office of the District Attorney of Lancaster County. (See link above for the real story).
Boito, KA
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