Teh One Who Knocks
08-01-2012, 03:03 PM
By The Patriot-News staff and wire reports
LANCASTER, Pa. — The attorney for a youth pastor who staged a church youth group kidnapping says his client will fight charges for blindfolding the teens, binding their wrists and transporting them by cargo van to a dingy basement where they overheard mock torture.
Andrew Jordan’s attorney says there’s no evidence anyone hurt the girl whose complaint led to charges against the Glad Tidings Assembly of God youth pastor and the Lower Swatara Township church.
Church officials say Jordan, of Elizabethtown, staged the March exercise as a lesson in religious persecution. Dauphin County prosecutors say the half-hour ordeal included interrogation and staged torture using power tools.
Defense attorney William DeStefano tells the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era he can challenge the false imprisonment charge because the girl never tried to flee her fake captors.
Jordan and the Glad Tidings church are charged with one count of false imprisonment and one count of simple assault.
“You can’t, in the name of religious liberty, engage in criminal activity, and that is what occurred here,” Dauphin County D.A. Edward M. Marsico Jr. said last week. “Just because you’re a church doesn’t mean you can hurt a kid. It was not a well-thought-out exercise; the church is lucky the incident wasn’t worse.”
DeStefano said last week that the whole matter is overblown. Jordan was not in custody, and the church is free to continue normal operations.
According to court documents, parents were not notified beforehand and only one of the children had advance warning. During a church meeting, court documents said, someone suggested that Jordan should get parental consent forms before staging the mock abduction, but he never did so
LANCASTER, Pa. — The attorney for a youth pastor who staged a church youth group kidnapping says his client will fight charges for blindfolding the teens, binding their wrists and transporting them by cargo van to a dingy basement where they overheard mock torture.
Andrew Jordan’s attorney says there’s no evidence anyone hurt the girl whose complaint led to charges against the Glad Tidings Assembly of God youth pastor and the Lower Swatara Township church.
Church officials say Jordan, of Elizabethtown, staged the March exercise as a lesson in religious persecution. Dauphin County prosecutors say the half-hour ordeal included interrogation and staged torture using power tools.
Defense attorney William DeStefano tells the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era he can challenge the false imprisonment charge because the girl never tried to flee her fake captors.
Jordan and the Glad Tidings church are charged with one count of false imprisonment and one count of simple assault.
“You can’t, in the name of religious liberty, engage in criminal activity, and that is what occurred here,” Dauphin County D.A. Edward M. Marsico Jr. said last week. “Just because you’re a church doesn’t mean you can hurt a kid. It was not a well-thought-out exercise; the church is lucky the incident wasn’t worse.”
DeStefano said last week that the whole matter is overblown. Jordan was not in custody, and the church is free to continue normal operations.
According to court documents, parents were not notified beforehand and only one of the children had advance warning. During a church meeting, court documents said, someone suggested that Jordan should get parental consent forms before staging the mock abduction, but he never did so