New Twist to the Case of the Surrey Pastor Charged with Sex Assault

By Jeremy Lye
Global News
October 17, 2017

https://globalnews.ca/news/3807690/new-twist-to-the-case-of-the-surrey-pastor-charged-with-sex-assault/


Weeks after multiple sexual assault charges were laid against a Surrey pastor and his wife, a Bible camp on Vancouver Island where he has been listed as a director, may have been the scene of other assaults.

Samuel Emerson has reportedly been taken off the board at Cowichan River Bible Camp, although the Canada Revenue Agency’s website still has him listed as a “Director-Trustee Official.”

Meanwhile, CKNW has spoken to a woman who says as a teenager she used to be a regular guest at the camp.

Alexis Masur has spoken out to say she wasn’t assaulted by Emerson but says she was groomed at the camp by another camp official she has not named publicly.

“It started out with really long hugs, then their face would get closer to me and they would start giving me kisses on the cheek and then they’d start kissing me on the lips and then the next thing you know they’re caressing me to the point where they’re touching my genitals.”

“At that point, I realized something’s wrong and there’s nothing I can do about it and it’s completely out of my control, you ask them to stop and then they go ‘you’re the one who’s going to be in trouble.'”

Masur says she felt she couldn’t talk to any other leaders at the camp to complain, nor police.

Following the arrest early this month of Emerson and his wife on multiple sexual assault charges, the RCMP said they believed there could be other victims out there.

Masur says for four years she was sexually assaulted as a camper at the camp, and others were too.

“I feel so guilty because I thought at first I was the only person this was happening to.”

“There are girls who already come from a place where they’re getting assaulted and they come to this place where they’re supposed to be safe and end up being assaulted there.”

“You know no one believes them because ‘they’re not people of God, they just came there, they don’t believe in God, they don’t act right; they must be lying.'”

Masur says she wanted to complain to other leaders at the camp but says she would not have been believed.

CKNW has yet to hear a response back from the Cowichan River Bible Camp to our request for comment.