Pastor accused of having sex with teenager more than 100 times while he was her legal guardian
An Indiana woman who says she has lost her faith in humanity after she was allegedly forced to have sex more than 100 times as a teenager with her pastor as he served as her legal guardian, says despite everything she went through, “I never lost my faith in God.”
“I never lost my faith in God in this. I lost my faith in humanity when it comes to just blindly putting my trust in people, even the ones we think are safe to go to,” Lily Masterson said of her ordeal in an interview with 14 news.
In an affidavit cited by the news outlet, Masterson told police in February that Pastor Errol Wright of Community Christian Church in Tell City had sex with her about three times a week from the time she was 15, until she turned 18, when she was a foster child under the guardianship of the pastor and his wife.
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Wright’s profile has been scrubbed from the church’s website but a cached page shows him with his wife and two daughters who Masterson lived with while she was a part of his family.
According to the affidavit, Wright became the pastor of Community Christian Church shortly after she began attending when she was 15.
She said when Wright and his wife agreed to be her foster parents, she was happy initially.
“It was church, he was the one that everybody listened to,” she said. “Everybody loved him.”
She claimed, however, that “He was just like a monster, just hiding in plain sight, and that’s the one that no one ever realizes.”
Masterson recalled once going on vacation with the pastor to his native Jamaica, and how he forced her to have sex with him on the same bed he slept with his wife.
“He sent his wife to go to the store with the kids and stuff, just to have sex with me in the same bed that he laid with her,” she said.
Wright later allegedly took her to a store and forced her to take the morning after pill.
She said when she turned 16, Wright bought her a phone, a car and other things and even promised to leave his wife for her, but it never happened.
Other details from the affidavit cited by Eyewitness News showed that when Wright was a girls’ soccer coach at Tell City High School rumors of an inappropriate relationship between him and an underage girl had surfaced. The school allegedly responded with a rule restricting Wright from being around the girls unless another adult was present. The concerns of the school were also reported to the Indiana Department of Child Services.
The distraught woman said as soon as she turned 18, she left Wright’s home, but she struggled as a result of the trauma she suffered from the pastor’s alleged abuse.
“It was just like a ghost. It was never going away. It was just always there, everywhere I went,” she said.
Masterson recalled how she began using drugs and became homeless for a while after she dropped out of the University of Evansville.
“I just wanted to die. I didn’t understand what was the point in living in this world. I really didn’t,” she said. “I was very depressed for a long time.”
Wright is facing four felony counts of Sexual Misconduct with a Minor, and felony charges of Child Seduction and Child Solicitation
Masterson says she has since been to rehab and is getting therapy to overcome the trauma of the abuse she claims to have suffered at the hands of her pastor.
“Every day now is a better day than it was then and every day before,” she said.
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