NATION : Pastor Gets Prison for Sex Assaults
<i> From Times wire service</i> s
NEW YORK —
An East Harlem pastor was sentenced today to seven to 21 years in prison for sexual assaults on three female parishioners summoned for counseling in his basement church office.
Pleading for mercy in a Manhattan courtroom packed with 70 members of the True Church of God, the Rev. Thomas Streitferdt, 60, told the judge “as God is my judge, I did not commit the acts charged against me.” His parishioners, his wife and one of his victims, who was 16 at the time of the attack, listened in silence to his plea.
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