LOS ANGELES – A former Riverside Cathedral pastor was charged with abuse and trafficking in a shelter in Bucharest, according to a lawsuit filed by two Romanian men in the U.S. District Court in California.
The complaint was filed by Marian Barbu, 33, and Mihai-Constantin Petcu, 40, who said former Christian scholarship pastor and missionary Paul Havsgaard had severely abused them and suffered severely abused among dozens of other children in the shelter. The lawsuits also list the church’s founder and senior pastor, renowned missionary and writer Greg Laurie, and other senior church leaders who said they failed to prevent abuse.
The lawsuits accuse Havsgaard of seducing struggling streetboys and hope for shelter and education. These people are “injured, angry, and still suffer from PTSD and social difficulties,” Jef McAllisterHe is a London lawyer representing the law firms of Barbu and Petcu.
The Associated Press does not usually name people who say they are sexually abused unless they publicly stand up like Barbu and Petcu do.
The church did not provide contact for Havsgaard, and the Associated Press was unable to contact him via email and phone numbers found through online searches. The allegations in the lawsuit were shocking, but Hafsgard should be the target, not the church or the famous founding pastor, the Harvest Christian Scholarship said in a statement.
“This misplaced lawsuit is wrongly targeting Harvest Riverside and our pastors is a form of financial blackmail,” the statement said. “It won’t seek the truth and will not try to stop alleged wrongdoing.”
The complaints accused the church of negligence, accusing Laurie and other senior church leaders of failing to oversee Hafsgard despite repeated dangers, reports from donors, tourists and others suspected that they suspected sexual abuse and saw bad living conditions in the shelter.
The lawsuit says that Laurie not only minimized Hafsgaard’s supervision in Romania, but the church also deposited $17,000 in Hafsgaard’s personal bank account every month. Hafsgard also returned to California, bringing some of the children he was accused of abuse, raising the harvest money on the grounds that his job recovered from street children in Romania.
The Church said it did provide “a while” for Havsgaard’s initiatives because they had supported numerous missionaries around the world, but “most of the lawsuits about our church are absolutely and completely wrong; some of them are obviously defamatory.”
The church said it attempted to interact with the plaintiffs and report their allegations to law enforcement, but the men and their attorneys refused to work with U.S. authorities.
Bab said in his complaint that life in the shelter is like a “torture room in prison” and that Hafsgard would regularly show up in the bathroom while the boys were showering or undressing, staring at them or masturbating in front of them. The two plaintiffs also accused Havsgaard of having sex through video chat or in the bathroom and cutting their income.
The complaint details sexual assault, inappropriate touch and abuse that leaves children kneeling on walnut shells or tied to bed or radiator. According to the lawsuit, Havsgaard told the children while abusing the child: “I know what God wants;
McAllister He said he is expected to file a lawsuit over the next few weeks involving at least 20 people saying they are abused in the shelter.
“Even if they live in these homes where they should be educated, some of them are still illiterate,” he said. “They have issues of trust. They take care of each other.”
Most of them live in poverty and are seeking financial help and defense, McAllister explain.
“They have a tough measure,” he said. “They really want to feel something and recognize the injustice they are suffering.”
