Former ‘maiden’ sues River Road Fellowship elders over sexual abuse

MINNESOTA
Star Trbune

By Jennifer Brooks Star Tribune JANUARY 25, 2017

One of the former “maidens” of the River Road Fellowship is suing the elders of the cultlike church for failing to protect her from sexual abuse that began when she was 13 years old.

The Fellowship’s founder and charismatic leader, Victor Barnard, pleaded guilty to raping two young girls in his congregation and is serving a 30-year prison term. Now one of those young women, Lindsay Tornambe, has filed a civil suit in Pine County against Barnard, his wife, and more than a dozen Fellowship elders who stood by and did nothing as Barnard isolated young women from their families and molested them for years.

“I don’t know if they’ll ever realize that what they did was wrong,” she said in an interview this week. “But I want a jury to find them guilty and I want them to deal with the consequences of their actions.”

Tornambe’s lawsuit singles out more than a dozen Fellowship members by name who, she says, were in leadership positions that would have let them observe Barnard’s treatment the 10 girls and young women he called “maidens.” One church elder, Tornambe said, provided the maidens with a sex instruction manual.

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