Ex-principal sentenced for sex abuse
The former principal of Wildomar’s Faith Baptist Academy was sentenced Wednesday to two years in prison for sexually assaulting a teenage student, who was also his family’s babysitter, in the 1990s.
Laverne Paul Fox, 62, of Erie, Pennsylvania, was handcuffed and led from the courtroom in Riverside County Superior Court to begin serving his sentence after his victim, Kathy Durbin, read a heartfelt victim impact statement.
Judge Helios J. Hernandez also ordered Fox to pay $25,682 in restitution, as well as the undetermined costs for Durbin’s ongoing therapy.
Reliving the nightmare
During Wednesday’s proceedings, Durbin said it has been more than three years since she came forward to police about what happened to her when she was 15 years old. Since then, she said, it has been like reliving the nightmare all over again as the case has made its way through the legal system.
“The court process is not easy. I now understand why most victims don’t report and why even fewer go through with the court process,” said Durbin, 46, who now lives in Montana. “I am part of a sisterhood that no one wants to be a member of, and today I am their voice.”
Though the Southern California News Group does not typically publish the names of victims of sexual abuse, Durbin has allowed publication of her name and, along with other victims, spoken out publicly against Fox and Faith Baptist Church, alleging a sex abuse scandal there that spanned more than 20 years and was covered up by longtime Pastor Bruce Goddard and his wife, Tammy.
Fox’s attorney, Paul Grech, declined to comment Wednesday.
Goddard has never spoken out publicly since the accusations began unfolding three years ago and did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Change of heart
Under a plea agreement, Fox, who also was the former bus director at Faith Baptist, pleaded guilty in January to two felony counts — penetration with a foreign object and lewd and lascivious conduct on a child 14 and 15 years old by a defendant more than 10 years older. He initially was scheduled to be sentenced to 16 months in prison on April 30 in Murrieta, but Judge Mark Mandio had a change of heart after he heard Durbin’s victim impact statement, in which she accused Fox of grooming her for sex, betraying her trust and repeatedly raping her.
Mandio said he no longer felt comfortable with Fox’s negotiated sentence, halted the proceedings, and allowed Grech to withdraw Fox’s guilty plea. Mandio then ordered Fox to return to court June 25 for a preliminary hearing.
Since then, Fox agreed to a new plea calling for a term of two years in prison, which a judge and prosecutors agreed to. He reentered his guilty plea to both counts Wednesday and was sentenced.
‘He left me broken’
Durbin said she has spent thousands of dollars on therapy that her insurance does not cover and that the abuse she suffered by Fox has affected her life in profound ways. She has trouble sleeping, she has trust issues — especially with authority figures and adults being left alone with her daughter — and she has never had a normal sex life.
“You cannot have a normal sex life when your first sexual experience is childhood rape,” Durbin said. “I will never be the person I was supposed to be. Paul Fox destroyed that version of me. He left me broken in a thousand pieces. He forever changed the trajectory of my life.”
Durbin said Fox also robbed her of her faith.
“He took my church and my God and used them against me. He confused my belief in who God is. He destroyed the very foundation my life was built on. He made me angry with God,” she said in court.
Sentence ‘not fair’
Flanked outside the courthouse by a crew of documentary filmmakers Wednesday, Durbin said she was relieved it was all over and thought it “amazing” to see justice served 30 years after the fact.
But she could not help but feel Fox was getting off easy.
“The sentence is not fair, because victims of sexual abuse are given a life sentence. It affects you forever,” Durbin said. “He’s never gonna get a life sentence, so you have to take what you can get.”
She said victims need to find their voice and the courage to use their voice to fight for justice.
“It is a long, tiring process, but I feel like there’s enough people coming forward right now that you have this group of victims that are there to support you,” Durbin said. “Any victim that wants to come forward, I’ll root for them and I’ll be there for them.”
Scandal-plagued church
Fox was not the first person who formerly served in a leadership capacity at Faith Baptist to be accused of sexually abusing a member of the church, nor was Durbin the only victim to come forward.
Malo “Victor” Monteiro, a former youth pastor at Faith Baptist, was sentenced in November 2018 to five years in prison after pleading guilty to sexually abusing three teenage girls from his ministry from 1999 to 2017. All his victims publicly accused him of sexually abusing them on social media and allowed their names to be published.
Fox and Monteiro’s victims accuse the Goddards of knowing about the sexual abuse, never contacting police, blaming the victims and transferring the accused staffers to other churches, both locally and out of state, as they did with Fox and Monteiro. Durbin said Goddard’s wife blamed her for what happened and called her a “home wrecker” and a “harlot.”