NEW YORK
Gothamist
A Brooklyn music teacher is accused of carrying on a two year sexual relationship with a teenage girl he met through his wife’s work as a youth choir leader at the Brooklyn Tabernacle Church. According to the Special Commissioner of Investigation, 57-year-old Vaughn McKinney started having sex with the unidentified victim when she was 16, luring her into bed with the promise of money and an iPhone. “If I get you the cell phone, you know what you have to do for it,” he allegedly told the girl.
In an ironic twist, the allegations of sexual abuse came to light only after a pastor at the church blew the whistle. Pastor Brian Pettrey went to the police, of course; according to the SCI report, the victim confided in the pastor about her relationship with McKinney, and the pastor then told her mother. He also called McKinney to warn him to stay away from the victim, and confiscated the cell phone. When the girl’s mother confronted her daughter about the relationship, she admitted to having sex with McKinney starting when she was 16 years old—often on the couch in McKinney’s basement while his wife was at church.
Also troubling is that the girl’s mother says she already knew about the relationship but didn’t do anything about it until others, like the pastor, caught on. According to the SCI report (below), “approximately two or three weeks earlier,” the mother had been contacted by McKinney’s wife Patricia McKinney, who requested an urgent meeting. They met at a restaurant, where Patricia McKinney showed the mother a phone invoice she’d found in her husband’s belongings with the daughter’s name on it, and demanded to know why her husband had the bill. It gets worse:
Several days after the first meeting, the mother contacted Patricia McKinney and arranged a second meeting; on that occasion, the mother informed Patricia McKinney about the sexual relationship her husband was having with Student A. Patricia McKinney left the restaurant, went to her car, and started to cry.
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