LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former Riverside megachurch pastor has been accused of sexually abusing and trafficking children for years at a shelter he ran in Bucharest, according to lawsuits filed by two Romanian men in U.S. District Court in California.
The complaints, filed Tuesday by 33-year-old Marian Barbu and 40-year-old Mihai-Constantin Petcu, said former Harvest Christian Fellowship pastor and missionary Paul Havsgaard severely abused them and dozens of other children at the shelter over eight years. The lawsuits also name the church’s founder and senior pastor, Greg Laurie, a well-known evangelist and author, as well as other senior church leaders, saying they failed to prevent abuse.
The lawsuits accuse Havsgaard of luring struggling street kids with fast food and the promise of shelter and education. The men are “hurt, angry and still suffering from PTSD and social difficulties,” said Jef McAllister, a London-based lawyer with the law firm representing Barbu and Petcu.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Barbu and Petcu have done.
The church provided no contact for Havsgaard, and The Associated Press was unable to reach him through emails and phone numbers found via online searches. Harvest Christian Fellowship said in a statement that the allegations in the lawsuit were shocking but that Havsgaard should be the target, not the church or its famed founding pastor.
“This misplaced lawsuit wrongly targets Harvest Riverside and our pastor as a form of financial extortion,” the statement said. “It does not seek the truth nor does it seek to stop the purported wrongdoer.”
The complaints allege negligence on the church’s part, accusing Laurie and other senior church leaders of failing to supervise Havsgaard despite repeated red flags and reports from donors, visitors and others that they suspected sexual abuse and saw poor living conditions at the shelter.
The lawsuit said Laurie not only kept Havsgaard in Romania with minimal oversight, but that the church also deposited $17,000 each month to Havsgaard’s personal bank account. Havsgaard also returned to California, bringing some of the children he was accused of abusing, to raise money for Harvest citing his work rehabilitating street children in Romania, the lawsuit said.
The church said it did fund Havsgaard’s initiative for “a period of time,” as they have supported numerous missionaries around the world, but “most of what is in the lawsuits about our church is absolutely and entirely false; some of it is plainly slanderous.”
The church said it has tried to engage with the plaintiffs and reported their allegations to law enforcement, but the men and their lawyer have refused to cooperate with U.S. authorities.
Barbu said in his complaint that life at the shelter was like “a torture chamber inside a prison” and that Havsgaard would show up regularly in the bathroom while boys were showering or undressed, stare at them or masturbate in their presence. Both plaintiffs have also accused Havsgaard of “pimping out” older boys for sex work via video chat or at bathhouses and taking a cut of their earnings.
The complaints detail sexual assault, inappropriate touching and abuse where children were made to kneel on walnut shells or were tied to their beds or radiators. According to the lawsuit, Havsgaard told the children while abusing them: “I know what God wants; what I want, God wants.”
McAllister said that in the coming weeks he expects to file lawsuits involving at least 20 others who say they were abused at the shelter.
“Some of them are still illiterate even though they lived in these homes where they were supposed to get an education,” he said. “They have issues with trust. They look after each other.”
Most of them are living in poverty and are looking for financial help and vindication, McAllister said.
“They’ve had a hard slog,” he said. “They would really like to get some sense that they’ve been heard and that the injustices they’ve suffered are recognized.”
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