‘Priestess’ Defends Nude Photos as Recruiting Tool

The self-proclaimed “high priestess” of a church that incorporates sex in its rituals testified Wednesday that nude photos of her in adult publications were meant to recruit fellow worshipers, not to attract clients for prostitution.

The advertisements were “an announcement” that the Church of the Most High Goddess was seeking people “interested in hedonistic religious rituals,” Mary Ellen Tracy told U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr.

Tracy and her husband, Will Tracy, are the leaders of the church, which the city alleges is a front for prostitution.

On the sixth day of trial in their civil rights suit against Los Angeles, a city lawyer asked Ellen Tracy about the church’s practice of requiring its members to first engage in oral sex with her, then offer a $150 “sacrifice” to the church, then go through the “purification ritual” of sexual intercourse with her.

“The money was given as an offering to the goddess,” Tracy testified.