Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 23, 1990 TAG: 9003232799
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: DOUGLAS PARDUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
U.S. District Judge James Turk ordered Thursday that results of the tests for acquired immune deficiency syndrome and other communicable diseases be made available to potentially hundreds of victims in numerous states.
In addition, Turk ordered the results turned over to the court, the U.S. attorney's office in Roanoke and the families of the victims.
The unusual order was made at the request of Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennie Montgomery, who prosecuted the three self-ordained ministers.
Montgomery said she's not certain if Turk actually has the authority to order such tests because the ministers are in custody in federal prisons outside Virginia.
Nevertheless, she said, she made the request and the judge signed it.
Montgomery said she believes the tests are necessary because she had received unconfirmed reports that one of the ministers may have previously tested positive for the AIDS virus. If that's true, she said, "the victims should be made aware . . . especially given the number of victims."
The FBI identified and located 40 of the victims at the time of trial, but federal authorities said they suspected the number could range into the hundreds.
The three self-ordained ministers - Mario "Tony" Leyva, 43, Rias Edward Morris, 48, and Freddie M. Herring, 51 - pleaded guilty in 1988.
Leyva, founder of the now-defunct Tony Leyva Evangelistic Association in Columbus, Ga., was sentenced by Turk to 20 years in prison. He admitted that for more than 20 years, he had used his ministry to lure and pressure more than 100 boys, some as young 8, into homosexual relations with himself and the two other ministers. He and the other ministers held tent revivals throughout the Midwest and Southeast.
Morris, Leyva's organist, was sentenced to 15 years. Herring, who ran Lighthouse Assembly in Douglasville, Ga., got 12 years.
When he sentenced the three, Turk urged the federal prison system to hold the three without opportunity of parole.
Montgomery has spent two years trying to prod the federal government into providing medical, counseling and psychiatric help for the victims.
Some of the victims were from the Roanoke area, and Montgomery personally paid for a few of the victims to receive counseling.
She and Betty Fitzgerald, the victim/witness coordinator for the U.S. attorney's office in Roanoke, also sent letters to more than 30 of the victims more than a year ago offering to help them find free or low-cost help.
However, she said, only a few of the victims responded.
She said Fitzgerald, with the assistance of the Justice Department's Office for Victims of Crimes in Washington, is preparing a second effort to offer medical, counseling or psychiatric help to the victims.
The letter has been drafted by psychologists specializing in counseling for victims of sexual abuse. The letter is designed to encourage the victims to seek help.
"This case is particularly difficult . . . one of the most difficult cases we've been involved with," Jane Burnley, head of the Office for Victims of Crime, said. Part of the difficulty in providing help, she said, is that victims have to want it and ask for it.
It's especially hard for male victims of sexual abuse to be willing to seek help, Burnley said. And, she said, this case is made all the more difficult because the victims are scattered over numerous states.
Montgomery said it may be next to impossible to even get letters to the identified victims. Many are uneducated, poor and transient, she said.
Montgomery said she is concerned that the latest effort to offer help may fail like the first because the victims need personal attention. Many of the victims are simply too embarrassed to seek help, she said. They need someone to actually talk to them, hand-carry them. And, she said, they need free care.
Montgomery complained more than a year ago that the molestation victims got almost no federal help while the convicted ministers were given extensive treatment and counseling in prison.
"It's a flaw in our system," she said.
Montgomery said she hopes the latest effort to offer help is not "too little, too late."
by CNB