IOWA
Des Moines Register
Written by
Jeff Eckhoff
An ex-Pella pastor found to have sexually exploited four of his former parishioners now is embroiled in a wide-ranging lawsuit with accusations that include assault, damaged reputations and harassment.
Patrick Edouard, convicted in October of pressuring women for sex after they allegedly sought his counsel, was sued two months later by two of his former victims and their husbands. The women, sisters-in-law Valerie Bandstra and Anne Bandstra, also target the former leaders of Edouard’s church, whom the women accuse of defaming them by publicly dismissing accusations of rape as mere marital infidelity.
“You are not victims,” court papers quote church elder Clarence Hettinga as repeatedly telling the Bandstras. The lawsuit later quotes Hettinga as saying, “Unless he was holding a knife to her throat, it wasn’t rape.”
Edouard, who has always insisted the sex was consensual, in his own court papers accuses the Bandstra families of smearing his reputation by harassing his family with prank pizza orders, throwing a brick through his son’s window, and creating a fake posting on Craigslist that listed his house for sale.
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