JAMAICA
Jamaica Observer
ALPHEA SAUNDERS Senior staff reporter saundersa@jamaicaobserver.com
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Attorney Lambert Johnson yesterday dismissed accusations of sexual misconduct made by a church member against his client, Dr Paul Gardner, who last week stepped down as head of the Moravian Church in Jamaica in order to facilitate a probe.
“They are completely untrue, have no basis in reality or in fact, and seem to be the wild imaginings of someone who is just determined to cause him harm,” Johnson told the Jamaica Observer yesterday.
He also denied that the same congregant had written a letter of complaint against Gardner to the church board. “No such letter was written to the church,” he emphasised.
Gardner has also been accused by a former minister of the church, Dr Canute Thompson, of not acting on concerns raised by him about sexual misconduct in the church, and specifically in relation to Rev Rupert Clarke, who is now at the centre of a scandal that has hit the church. Clarke was arrested on rape and carnal abuse charges in December last year.
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