Court gives megachurch pastor 15 years for rape

By Kim Hyun-bin

The Seoul Central District Court sentenced mega-church pastor Lee Jae-rock to 15 years in prison, Thursday, for raping and sexually harassing at least eight female congregants.

It also ordered the 75-year-old pastor of Manmin Central Church to take 80 hours of therapy classes and banned him from working at youth-related institutions for 10 years after serving his prison term.

However, the court rejected the prosecution's request for probation after release, saying Lee was unlikely to repeat the crime considering his age.

Lee Jae-rock

The pastor was arrested in May for allegedly raping at least eight women at the church on nearly 40 different occasions.

The church in Seoul has over 130,000 members and the court said Lee used his power and status and the victims' faith and inability to resist in raping them numerous times. All the victims were in their 20s at the time of the assaults and Lee forced them to have sex with him claiming it was an “order from God.”

“The victims have been attending the church since their teenage years and regarded the pastor as a holy figure, thinking that obeying him would open the way to heaven. So they did not disobey his orders, and he took advantage of this to repeatedly rape and harass them for a long time,” the court said.

The victims suffered the psychological damage of overwhelming feelings of betrayal by their leader, it said.

“The victims' young days, which should have been remembered as one of the happiest times of their lives, became a nightmare and they want severe punishment for the pastor.”

It said Lee caused them even graver psychological damage during the court battle, as he kept denying his actions, showed no sense of remorse and betrayed their privacy.

Lee claimed the victims were intentionally defaming him and they were capable of resisting his advances. But the court rejected all his claims. “There was no reason for the victims to accuse him falsely because they themselves would face shame and public attention,” it said.

“The pastor praised himself as a holy figure. The victims believed him as such a figure and that the sexual acts were God's will.”

After the ruling, the church said the court did not accept material it had submitted to refute the victims' claims. It said Lee would appeal immediately.

Lee's case was among several similar sexual assault cases in the clergy, where pastors allegedly “groomed” young female congregants to sexually abuse them.

It was alleged recently that a 35-year-old pastor in Incheon sexually abused at least 26 teenage girls at his church for years.