This Alabama Pastor Was a Serial Child Rapist; Victim Shocked at 15-year Sentence
By Jeremy Gray
An Alabama pastor might have escaped punishment for years of sexually abusing children if not for surprise testimony at a custody hearing two years ago. Mack Charles Andrews Jr., 55, on Monday pleaded guilty to multiple charges of rape, sodomy, sexual abuse and attempted rape in exchange for 15 years in prison. Andrews will get credit for the two years – 783 days, to be exact – that he spent in the Clarke County Jail prior to sentencing. Standing before Circuit Judge C. Robert Montgomery, Andrews was asked if he was entering the plea because he was guilty. "I'm pleading in the best interest," Andrews said as he stood there shackled with his back to his victims, family and the former church members who still support him. Andrews might never have found himself in that Grove Hill courtroom if not for Donna 'Shay' Smith. It was her testimony in an unsuccessful attempt to regain custody of her daughter that exposed how the pastor raped and abused young girls at First United Pentecostal Church and its school, Faith Christian Academy, in the 1980s and '90s, authorities said. Smith is angry Andrews may one day walk out of prison a free man. "I don't think it was just. That little amount of time shouldn't have even been on the table," Smith, who did not attend the sentencing, said Monday. Smith was one of the girls whom Andrews' preyed upon. AL.com and other media outlets rarely identify victims of sexual abuse, but Smith felt that it was important to share her story. Unlike Smith, the four other victims who attended Monday's hearing saw it as a welcome end to a long and torturous experience, police and prosecutors said. Andrews' attorney, Jan Jones, quickly exited the court after the sentencing and refused to comment. Andrews' daughters and other relatives slipped out of a side exit soon after he was led out of the court room. A woman who came to the door at his house in Jackson Tuesday morning said she had no comment. Asked by Clarke County Sheriff Ray Norris if he would speak to AL.com, Andrews declined. 'He said demons would get me' Smith said she was perhaps one of the youngest of Andrews' victims. In September, she detailed her story to AL.com, using a pseudonym. At the time, Smith said that the prosecution was considering a 20-year plea deal for Andrews. She said that the sentence was too short, considering the damage done by the pastor. Andrews, however, declined at that time to accept a plea, just as he had several times before. Smith said her grooming for abuse began at age 7, when Andrews called her into his Thomasville church office. District Attorney Spencer Walker said many others interviewed in the investigation described how they were "groomed" by performing chores in his office before being sexually abused. Although some people close to the investigation question parts of her story, court records support some of the details she shared with AL.com. One warrant states Smith was subjected to sexual torture in September 1988 when Andrews violated her with drumsticks, pens, letter openers, a figurine (she told AL.com it was the talons of a brass eagle) and even a flashlight, the warrant states. "A 7-year-old girl isn't ready to take a full grown man," Smith said at the time. Her grooming, Smith said, culminated when Andrews raped her on her father's grave when she was 9. "(Andrews) told me if I didn't say anything, he would come back and put flowers on the grave," she said in the interview with AL.com. "If I did, he said demons would come and get me from my bed." The charges involving Smith were dropped after she did not come to Clarke County to prepare for testimony in the case, the district attorney said Monday. Walker said that he wanted her to visit the graveyard to show where the rape took place. "I don't need to prep. I can tell you today exactly what happened to me 20 years ago because it is my story," she said Monday. Also, she said, her husband had been injured at work and that she could not be away. Smith lives in the New Orleans area. Although she disagrees with the terms of the plea and admits she has been difficult to deal with, she said she appreciates the work by law-enforcement agencies to get Andrews off the street. Smith fled Andrews' church when she was 12, but said she has struggled for years with the emotional scars, and has been to jail and rehab. Police and prosecutors agreed that Andrews would be a free man if not for Smith. "Had she not revealed what she revealed in that custody hearing, we would not have him behind bars," Walker said. "Without Donna's emotional strength, I wouldn't have been able to dig and find other victims," said David Connor, an investigator for the Clarke County Sheriff's Office who worked the case for more than two years. 'End all, be all' Connor said that Andrews ran the church like a cult, dictating what members did and what they wore and, in some cases, arranging marriages among them. He was also the headmaster of a school associated with the church. "He was the end all, be all of their lives," Connor said. One court filing suggests Andrews' own daughter witnessed him sexually abuse girls. Connor said he has been told that Andrews' kids sometimes went without food so he could dress in expensive clothes. In 1994, Walker, then a law student and an investigator in the prosecutor's office, first looked into sex-abuse claims involving Andrews. "The church under his leadership was very insular. No one would corroborate any of the allegations made in '94," he said. "We were unable to get any of them to admit to that." "I've had members of the church try to bail him out of jail. Some wouldn't even entertain the thought that he might have done it," Connor said. "He is a master of manipulating people and, for lack of a better word, brain-washing them." Connor on Monday sat on a court bench a few feet away from some of those who continue to believe in Andrews. "The hold he has on the community is still evident," Connor said. In October, Walker filed a motion stating that he planned to introduce testimony from other of Andrews' victims whose cases were not included in the criminal counts against him. An Alabama law, he said, would allow him to introduce evidence showing Andrews had an unnatural attraction to young girls. Those victims, though not eager, said they would testify if subpoenaed, he said. Smith said one of those girls, identified in the filing as L. H., was a friend of hers. "On one occasion, L.H. went in the Defendant's church office to take out the trash. The Defendant told her to 'grab it,' she thought referring to the trash. She went around his desk, and the Defendant had his penis in his hand," the filing stated. Smith recalls how she helped bring L.H. into the church. "He made me -- he drug me up to her house, to invite her to church. He did that five or six times," Smith said. L.H. eventually gave in and the abuse began, Smith said. "I would start being mean to kids who liked me because I didn't want them to come to church with me and get hurt," she said. Smith knew the kind of pull that Andrews had on people. "He's very charismatic. He laughs a lot. Mack would come into the school like a hurricane," Smith said. "He's a great theologian. Everyone loved him, but no one wanted to cross him." 'They never told anyone' Smith got into trouble with the law a few years back, she said, and entered a drug court program to have the record erased. Meanwhile, she said, her son and daughter went to stay with a friend. That friend was a member of Andrews' church, she said, and also was one of Andrews' victims. "She was supposed to give me my baby back," she said of the daughter. Smith has for years had custody of her son but still does not have her daughter. Once, when she went to Clarke County to visit her daughter, she said she saw Andrews riding with the girl on a horse on a dirt road. It was a terrifyingly familiar scene, she said. "Do you know how many times he did that with me?" she said in September. "I snatched her right off that horse." At a custody hearing in 2013, she openly asserted what some in Thomasville, a town of little more than 4,000 people, had whispered about -- that Andrews was a sex criminal. The testimony was not enough to regain custody of her daughter (which Smith blames on Andrews' influence on the community), but it quickly found the ears of police and prosecutors. As she talked further, Connor began reaching out to other victims whose names she knew. Those victims, by all accounts, were not pleased with the attention. "I forced them to tell the truth and they didn't want to," Smith said. "They are madder at me than they are him." That, she said, is another effect of what Andrews did. "It's not only sexual abuse; it's spiritual abuse. They are still addicted," she said. "Some of them (the victims) have been embarrassed and they are glad to finally have it over so they can put it behind them," Walker said. Smith said she is sorry her coming forward caused the victims pain. "I didn't do this for publicity," she said. "It hurt me to put them there but I had to save my child." 'I was her voice' Andrews was arrested in October 2013. As the investigation broadened, Connor traveled all over Alabama, and even into Mississippi. One woman told him that she'd been abused by Andrews 23 years earlier. "She had not told her husband or family for as long as she had been married," Connor said. The victims, Connor said, discussed the abuse only with each other. "They had to depend on one another for support. "I was able to get one victim to trust me and I let her know I was her voice." That victim, he said, helped him gain the trust of others. New victims, he said, have come forward as recently as several days ago. As of Monday, Connor said, he had talked to 11 victims. He speculates there are "more than 15, less than 20," but says it is hard to determine because of the tight knit structure of the church at the time. "Not all of them were willing to come out in court and say what had happened to them," Connor said. "I had victims retain lawyers to keep from talking to me." 'He'll be back' Andrews' tenure as pastor ended in early 2000. He admitted to his church that he'd cheated on his wife and left her for the other woman. Andrews "stood in front of the congregation and professed his sin," Connor said. Then, he resigned. After that, Andrews worked retail for a while in the town of McIntosh. By the time of his arrest, he was unemployed and living on his property in Jackson. "He was attempting to get back into a church," Connor said. His old church, now named New Life Pentecostal, is much different than before, according to Walker and Connor. "The vast majority of the people there now are new members," Walker said. "The members I have met are fine people." The new pastor and church staff provided great support during the investigation, they said. Efforts by AL.com to reach the pastor were unsuccessful. Two years of investigation culminated Monday as Andrews shuffled into court in his orange jail jump suit, smiling and waving to his family. "I love y'all," he said to his supporters. The proceedings were delayed when Andrews, who has suffered from diabetes for years, needed to eat to get his blood sugar under control. His daughters sobbed as he pleaded guilty. Walker said he was pleased with the sentence. "Twenty was the maximum on most of those charges," he said. "All four of these victims consented to this agreement. They did not want to go through a public trial." "Most of them did not want it publicized," he said. "A lot of them never told their parents or spouses. The vast majority, in fact, never told anyone." Connor, too, was satisfied with the sentence. "It's not so much me as it was the victims. We wanted to give them satisfaction," Connor said. "He has devastated the lives of so many women. The true extent of the mental damage will never be known." But Smith was not satisfied. "He'll back on the street one day, doing this to someone else," she said. "He can't help himself."
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