Pastor used sex as tool for exorcism, former parishioners testify in court
Warning: This article includes graphic details.
Bishop Wayne Jones was a righteous pastor at the Mt. Ararat Spiritual Baptist Church.
Or he was a sleazy, voodoo-hoodoo sexual predator. Could be, he was both. Four women, former parishioners, claim Jones extorted sex as either purifying ritual, to purge them of evil spirits, as a rite of exorcism intrinsic to their Trinidadian-based charismatic faith, or, in one case, as a blunt weapon — a threat — to coerce sex, otherwise he’d rat her out to authorities as an illegal immigrant living in Toronto.
Three of those complainants have taken the stand this week at Jones’ trial on charges of sexual assault, administering noxious substances and theft. They are all “historical witnesses,” meaning their allegations of incidents occurred ages ago — between 1986 and 1996 — and they came forward only after the Scarborough pastor was charged in 2014 with sexually assaulting another woman, convincing her to give him money and property during “spiritual guidance” sessions, which included the aforementioned exorcisms over a two-year period, 2011 to 2013.
Woven throughout the testimony is a narrative of bizarre worship that incorporated mostly naked spiritual cleansing baths in a tub in the church basement bathroom, machete-wielding, grave ashes clandestinely scooped from open cemetery plots around the city, something called “The Throne of Grace,” bits of Obeah (a form of sorcery practiced in the Caribbean) and Orisha (a syncretic religion originally hailing from West Africa), a steering wheel located in the body of the church, turned by a deaconess or “Captress,” mystic representations chalked onto a sheet, weeklong fasting periods and — this wasn’t actually part of the accepted dogma, merely the alleged means to an end — Kool-Aid laced with a stupefying drug.
And before anybody rolls their eyes at poor, ill-educated, gullible women, keep in mind that the great monolithic religions all cleave to elements of mysticism in their orthodoxy. Catholic Church doctrine, as but one example, holds crucially to the central tenet of transubstantiation: the conversion of the Eucharist into the body and blood of Christ.
“X” — none of the complainants can be identified — told court Thursday about the Kool-Aid episode, recounting how Jones had invited her to his home one evening to discuss her immigration dilemma. He handed her a glass with a cherry tasting substance. “I started feeling strange. I said, what did you put in my drink?”
Jones, “X” told the judge-only trial, then clamped his palm over her mouth. “That was the last thing I knew. The next thing I remember was somebody calling my name, saying it’s 7 o’clock in the morning and I had to go home.
“I said, it can’t be 7 a.m. I just got here.”
She was wearing only underpants, she told court. “I couldn’t understand what had happened.”
But she left without making a scene, worried more about her two young sons who’d been alone overnight.
It was only later, when “X” became increasingly aggressive about the “immigration stuff” — Jones claiming he was working on her case, until she found all the forms she’d filled stuffed into a cabinet — that the pastor grew hostile toward her, she said. By that point, “X” had already loaned Jones $400 on two separate occasions (the second time he said he was going to the U.S. to purchase ritual unguents unavailable here) and $1,200 to repair his car. None of that money was ever paid back, she said.
Annoyed with her nagging, “X” told court Jones announced: “That’s why I f----- you and you can do nothing about it.”
Crown attorney Cara Sweeny asked the witness, who’s now 64, what she took that to mean. “Well, it had to be sex.”
Shortly thereafter, said “X,” Jones’ sister began putting it around the congregation that she was “into Obeah, that voodoo stuff,” which damaged her reputation.
The witness also recalled an earlier incident which took place in the church basement, also orchestrated by “Shepherd Wayne,” shortly before she was made a deaconess, despite the fact she didn’t think herself qualified for the position.
“He lit a candle. Then he said, take your clothes off. I did. He said I was going to get a spiritual rebirth. He banded my eyes.” Covered them. “Told me to lie down. Next thing I know he was on top of me, naked as when he was born. He was trying to put his penis in my vagina. I was fighting him but he was holding my hands by the wrists.
“I pulled my band off. I saw he had an erection.
“He said, stop fighting me. The spirit is in me and I want to have sex with you. I said, I don’t want to have sex with you. Take me home.”
The alleged assault ceased then, “X” said.
Jones, 57, has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and none have been proven in court.
Thursday’s proceedings began with the continuing crossexamination of the previous wit- ness, a complainant who alleged that Jones visited her rooming house — sometime between 1993 and 1996 — and convinced her to have sex as the only way to expunge evil spirits which had been haunting her. They lay on the bed together.
“He fondled my breast, I felt his big erection behind my buttocks,” she’d told Justice Suhail Akhtar.
Defence lawyer Randall Barrs argued that the sexual contact had been consensual and that she “craved” Jones. “I suggest that if it happened, you wanted it to happen.”
The witness acknowledged an attraction but that their one and only sexual episode had been initiated by Jones — her bishop — to alleviate her distressed soul. “My body was craving for him, yes. The craving made me want to do it again with him. But I tell myself — no.”
While this woman never brought a sexual assault complaint against Jones at the time, she did sue him in small claims court to recover $1,000 he’d borrowed and won. “I was scared, knowing what he could do to me.” The inference that he would cast evil spells upon her. “He’s a spiritual man. They could do stuff for good and they could do stuff for evil. He’s capable of doing evil stuff. But I took the courage and the strength to do what I did.”
The first witness against Jones, “Y” — sister of “X” — told court she’d been arm-twisted into giving the pastor a key to her home, which he used over an 18-month period to wrest sex whenever he wanted it.
“He said he’d make me walk the streets like a crazy woman and he would destroy my kids,” she testified, adding that he’d once sliced her breast with a razor.
She further claimed Jones wanted her to have his baby. “I said, are you crazy? This is not a love affair. It was insane for him to ask me, as my pastor, to do that.”
The woman believed Jones doused himself in oils as a hexing aphrodisiac. “You could smell it on him. And you can’t resist.
Barrs: “You’re telling me, in the year 2017, that he was doing some kind of voodoo on himself that made him irresistible?”
Witness: “I felt so dirty and disgusting. He took everything from me because he knew that I was weak. I was born in rubble and this is what he did to me.”
The trial continues. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
Another woman said she’d been arm-twisted into giving pastor a key to her home, which he used to wrest sex whenever he wanted it