Minister to Be Tried in Molestation Case

The leader of an Illinois-based church was ordered Friday to stand trial in San Diego on charges of molesting a teen-ager who was a member of his congregation.

The Rev. Lloyd R. Davis, the 57-year-old pastor of the Christian Fellowship Church, is charged with one count of sodomy and four counts of lewd acts with a child. The boy was 14 years old at the time of the alleged attacks in 1989 in San Diego.

At a preliminary hearing Friday, Deputy Dist. Atty. David Rubin used a year-old state law to present testimony from the alleged victim via the police officer who investigated the case.

Rubin called Chula Vista Police Detective Wayne Maxey to the witness stand, where he testified that the boy told investigators that sex acts, including oral copulation, took place at a Chula Vista motel and in the bedroom of a house in San Diego owned by the church. Davis was in San Diego at the time to dedicate a new church.

However, the boy also signed a statement and made an audiotape in which he apparently said he never witnessed Davis involved in any homosexual activity.

This type of testimony is called hearsay and is usually not allowed in court, but the provisions of Proposition 115, the Crime Victims Justice Reform Act, allow hearsay evidence to be presented by an expert witness in a preliminary hearing.

Defense attorney Robert P. Will Jr. strongly objected that the evidence was unfair.

Will, an attorney based in Waukegan, Ill., told Municipal Court Judge E. Mac Amos Jr. that he had a right to cross-examine the boy directly, arguing that he would contradict what he had told authorities.

Amos refused to order the boy to testify, but he did allow Will to play the audiotape on which the boy states that he did not witness any homosexual activity in the church. However, a number of voices on the tape lend some credence to the boy’s claim that he was intimidated.

The leader of the 750-member First Christian Fellowship Church will be arraigned July 2 in Superior Court, and a trial date will be set.

Davis remains free in lieu of a $25,000 cash bond.

In a separate case, the minister is also facing a civil suit in Illinois that accuses him of child molestation and perjury.