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  Christian Musician Urges Woman to Testify

By Pierrette J. Shields
Longmont Times-Call
November 8, 2007

http://www.timescall.com/News_Story.asp?id=4509

BOULDER — A Christian music star and his family urged a Longmont woman to report a sexual relationship she had with a church leader while in high school, according to court testimony Wednesday.

The woman, 21, testified in Boulder District Court about an increasingly physical relationship she said she had while a teenager with former Central Presbyterian Church youth-ministries director Peter Kim, 40.

"I felt like I was in a relationship with him," she said of Kim, who was married at the time.

Kim is on trial this week on charges of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust and sexual assault on a child with a pattern of abuse.

His accuser met Grammy-winning singer Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife because she roomed with the couple's daughter at Baylor University in 2005 after she graduated from high school in Longmont.

The accuser testified she told her roommate about her relationship with Kim. Her roommate then arranged a meeting in Nashville with the Chapmans for advice on the situation, the accuser said.

The Chapmans laid out a plan to reveal the relationship to the woman's parents, the accuser said.

Chapman had a concert scheduled in December 2005 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, she said, and the Chapmans told her to invite her parents to the show. The accuser said she was to tell her parents about the relationship after the concert, or the Chapmans said they would do so.

The woman said she told her parents at the concert.

The accuser began her testimony late Tuesday afternoon and remained on the witness stand from 9 a.m. until about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday.

She also talked about romantic letters, e-mails and text messages she exchanged with Kim, and how the couple flirted among other church members and in private.

Guided by prosecutor Tim Johnson through a chronology stretching from her sophomore year of high school through her freshman year of college, the woman detailed physical encounters she said culminated in sexual contact before she turned 18.

While the relationship lasted from 2001 until 2005, Kim was not arrested until October 2006, following a police investigation.

Although police were not involved until after she turned 18, the accuser told jurors that many people noticed and talked about her relationship with Kim — including fellow youth group members, her parents and Kim's wife.

Kim was fired from his job at Central Presbyterian Church in Longmont in 2003 after he was accused by an Aurora woman of a similar relationship when he worked at her church about a decade earlier. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in that case and had to register as a sex offender. At the time of that case, Kim spoke with church officials and other parishioners and said the allegations were untrue, the accuser recalled.

Kim's Longmont accuser said his attentions made her feel special, while some boys in the youth group dubbed her relationship with Kim as "Catholic style," referring to allegations of sexual assaults on children by Catholic priests.

She said Kim confronted the boys and accused them of being jealous.

She said she fantasized about marrying Kim, particularly after his wife left him, and left out details in interviews with police to protect him.

The trial is scheduled to continue today.

Pierrette J. Shields can be reached at 303-684-5273 or pshields@times-call.com.

 
 

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