NEW YORK (NY)
The Insider
July 27, 2019
By Kelly McLaughlin
Kimberly Pollard first met Bishop James L’Keith Jones, a pastor in the Church of God in Christ, in Clovis, New Mexico, 1994. Pollard was helping her godmother make phone calls for a June youth convention organized by the church, also known as COGIC, which describes itself as “the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States,” with 6.5 million members across 63 countries.
Jones, then a 29-year-old youth group leader, was in charge of COGIC youth groups across New Mexico. During their first phone conversation, Pollard said, Jones didn’t believe how young she was — 15 — and noted her maturity and confidence.
“He was just kind of like, ‘Well, I’m gonna date you when you turn 18,'” she recently recalled. “Of course, it didn’t happen like that.” Instead, as Pollard claimed in a lawsuit she filed in 2016, the bishop pursued an on-again-off-again sexual relationship over the next decade, during which he groomed and sexually abused her.
Pollard said she waited more than 22 years to file the lawsuit because she didn’t always recognize Jones’ behavior as abusive or exploitative. Her recognition came three years ago, after she and Jones reconnected, when she witnessed him calling her six-year-old daughter ‘sexy’ in a video he sent to the child. The comment reminded her of the way he had treated her as a teen.
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