IOWA
Des Moines Register
Aug 14, 2012 | by Jeff Eckhoff |
A former Pella pastor used his position to spin a web of secrets and manipulate four of his troubled, deeply religious parishioners into sex, jurors were told this morning.
Iowa prosecutors say Patrick Edouard, then the brilliant, popular leader of Pella’s Covenant Reformed Church, raped three of the women and manipulated all four in violation of a state law that prohibits sex between people who provide mental health counseling and the people they counsel.
Assistant Iowa Attorney General Laura Roan said Edouard’s pursuit of vulnerable women in his congregation stretched from 2006, when he pushed a Des Moines lawyer to the floor of his basement study after she sought advice over infertility issues and what motherhood might mean for her career, to 2010, when the woman’s brother-in-law came home early one day. Edouard’s van was in the man’s driveway, Roan said, and the man’s wife – the lawyer’s sister-in-law – was buttoning her blouse.
In both those instances and two others, Edouard used a combination of flattery and concern over the women’s personal problems to lure the women in, Roan said. Each woman then was told that they were obligated to keep the relationship secret for the good of their families, Edouard’s wife and the church. Most soon found themselves in long-term illicit affairs.
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