Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 28, 1995 TAG: 9505300001
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. LENGTH: Long
Mario "Tony" Leyva, a tent-revival preacher who admitted molesting more than 100 boys during his travels, hopes to be home with his family next month.
As leader of what could be the largest child prostitution case in U.S. history, Leyva was sentenced to 20 years in prison for using his ministry to recruit boys into homosexual prostitution. The judge urged prison officials never to parole him.
Now, a little more than six years into his sentence, Leyva is eligible for release.
His family in Hendersonville is looking forward to a happy homecoming. Some of his victims wonder why they weren't informed.
"He's paid a dear price, which he should," says his attorney, Daniel Crandall of Roanoke. But Crandall said Leyva suffered in prison. Another inmate threw a bucket of boiling water on Leyva, who suffered third-degree burns on his groin; Crandall was told that this left Leyva incapable of having sex.
That abuse, along with constant death threats that have forced the prison system to move Leyva 14 times, should be grounds for release, Crandall said.
Leyva's mother, Ada Evelyn Leyva, agrees.
"Our son has suffered enough," she says. "He should be given a chance to get on with his life. He says [he] just wants to get back with his wife and his ministry."
At his sentencing, Leyva said he knew he was wrong and assured the judge he was "100 percent willing to do whatever has to be done" to cure what he called his "deviance."
Six years later - and with a parole hearing Tuesday - Leyva writes supporters that he's innocent, a victim of a government conspiracy.
He was charged, he says, because he spoke out about CIA drug smuggling he saw while visiting Cuba. In a letter to his followers - the ministry claims 14,000 - Leyva writes that he's a "political prisoner."
His story involves seeing U.S. ships loading drugs in Cuba and being followed by Cuban and U.S. government agents working together as he left Cuba. George Bush and Bill Clinton both are involved.
Leyva accuses the media of lying about him, and he tells supporters not to believe what they've been told.
"My case," he says, "is not what you've been told by the antichrist government and their controlled media."
All the charges are detailed in his new book and, for a gift of $19.95, supporters can have a copy.
He signs his letters, "Bro. Tony (TIMEX) Leyva, Takes a lickin' but keeps on tickin'!"
Power over people
A pedophile couldn't have a better set-up than Leyva had.
Traveling from town to town with tent revivals continually provided him with new victims. And the brand of religion Leyva preached offered him near-worship from his followers.
His Pentecostal-style revivals catered to poor, generally unsophisticated believers, and he was revered as a prophet by many. Having that "gift of the Holy Spirit" of prophecy gave him power over people and fed his feelings of importance.
"My perception is these people were quite selective in their victims," said Morgan Scott, one of the prosecutors on the case and now federal court clerk in Roanoke. "Many [victims] lived fairly insular lives ... were deeply faithful to their religious beliefs - that was all used to select and to victimize, according to testimony."
Leyva admitted molesting at least 100 boys, some as young as 8, over nearly 25 years. His associates, organist Rias Edward Morris, and Freddie Herring, pastor of Lighthouse Assembly in Douglasville, Ga., shared some of those boys after the three discovered in 1983 their common interest in pedophilia.
The three were arrested for transporting minors across state lines for prostitution, charges that stemmed from their offering food, money and travel in exchange for sex. Leyva often told parents who were having trouble with their sons that he would take them on the road to work in his revivals, teach them religion and help some become ministers. He picked up boys across the Southeast and Midwest this way.
Three psychiatrists who examined the self-ordained ministers in a federal prison testified at their sentencing that there was little chance they could be rehabilitated. There is no real cure for pedophilia - sexual attraction to children - and the three pose a risk to society, they testified.
Leyva told the FBI that his preference was for performing oral sex on boys, and that he was not attracted to either men or women.
Forty percent of pedophiles are rearrested within five years, prison psychologist Edward Landis testified, and more than that likely continue molesting children without being caught.
"The prognosis for pedophiles ... is somewhat poor," the doctor testified, "and some factors in Mr. Leyva's case make his prognosis seem particularly poor."
The fact that he had been a pedophile for so long and had so many victims works against rehabilitation, Landis said.
Landis said Leyva also has a narcissistic personality that allows him to rationalize his behavior because he believes he is "very special or uniquely important." Leyva considers himself "one of God's anointed."
Family `a cover-up'
Leyva started early: He was preaching the gospel at age 12. He molested his first boy before he was out of his teens.
He married his high school sweetheart, now Mary Pitts, at 19 and they soon had two children.
Pitts had known since the fourth grade that she was going to marry Leyva. "We always said we'd have a boy and a girl and name them Ivan and Joan. And that's exactly what we did."
They were married for about four years before she learned of her husband's taste for young boys. She found out after he molested her brother.
"I didn't even know those kinds of people existed, that those things happened," she said in a telephone interview from her home in North Carolina.
Her father tried to get authorities to do something but, 25 years ago, they laughed at him, she said.
For Leyva, having a family was "more or less a cover-up," Pitts said.
"I tried to forgive him. The next thing I know, everywhere we go something's popping up again. Every time I turned around, there was another little boy in our life."
Leyva would sometimes make her sleep on the floor or with their children while he slept with a boy in his bed, she said.
When she complained, "he would say I was touching God's anointed, [that] I didn't believe in him, I was ruining his ministry. I walked around for nine years married to him with a broken heart."
Today, she says, she just wishes he'd own up to his problem.
"If he would only, only admit, people probably wouldn't mind him getting out on parole. People forgive and forget."
Victim doubted God
At least one victim can't forget.
Sam, which is not his real name, was molested by Leyva 30 years ago, and he still has flashbacks whenever he hears about a molestation case. He asked that his name and address not be used.
He was 11 or 12 when Leyva, the pastor at a small storefront church in Sam's home town in North Carolina, began fondling him. The fondling occurred about a dozen times over several months and ended when Leyva attempted to perform oral sex on the boy. That's when Sam told his mother.
His mother went to an attorney, who convinced her not to take on a respected preacher. The family was poor and unworldly and let the matter drop after Leyva apologized.
After that, what happened to Sam was a closed subject in the family - until a detective called him around 1988 to ask about Leyva. Sam, a 41-year-old federal employee, came to Virginia to testify at Leyva's 1987 state trial on charges of molesting two boys while in Roanoke County.
The encounters didn't just
affect Sam's sexuality and his emotions. They shook his most fundamental belief.
"Up until just a few years ago, I had trouble dealing with the fact, how could God allow this to happen? It shut me right down to my soul," he says. "There were times I even doubted there was a God. But I came to realize God didn't have no hand in this. It was a perverted, sick individual."
Leyva was good at choosing his victims, Sam said, and at using religion to gain access to children.
"He'd pick out the ones he felt had troubled lives, troubled homes, and he'd prey on that, gain their confidence," Sam says. "In one sense, pastors or preachers should be concerned with that, but he was using that to fulfill his own perverted sexual desires."
The evangelist repeatedly avoided criminal charges because victims were too embarrassed to tell anyone or were persuaded not to report the offenses to police after Leyva apologized. Jennie Waering, the assistant U.S. attorney in Roanoke who prosecuted him, says Leyva often would kneel with a boy after molesting him and they'd pray together.
As for Leyva's getting out of prison, Sam is taking a Christian attitude.
"I have no desire to bother him," he says. "I hope he can make his peace with God. If he doesn't, he'll bust hell wide open."
Another ministry?
Brother Tony has a nice life waiting for him when he gets out of prison.
He married one of his gospel singers, Sherry Lynn, while in prison in 1992, and she has taken over the running of his new ministry, Miracle Revival Fellowship, International, from his mother.
In a letter to supporters, Leyva wrote that, "Excited friends even 'blessed' my wife with special funds for our 'honeymoon' getaway, before returning to our home in N.C." He said he's also planning a 40-day fast in the mountains upon his release.
The ministry appears to consist mainly of writing letters to supporters updating them on Leyva's case and trying to sell his autobiography.
He wants to publish the book, but his family fears the allegations about the CIA in Cuba will hurt his chances of parole. So he will wait until he gets out of prison to market the book, he tells supporters, although he will send them a copy for $19.95 since they are "my Jesus family."
Asked about the claims of innocence, Crandall, his attorney, sighs, "I have told him not to write those." He said Leyva's mother and wife are mainly responsible for the letters.
Hendersonville is a community that thrives on attracting tourists and retirees. Former televangelist Jim Bakker has lived here since his release from prison, working on a book. At the house north of town where Sherry Lynn lives with her mother and teen-age son, her mother comes to the door and politely declines to discuss Tony Leyva's case.
"We don't talk about it. It's too much, too much," Carleen Waddell says, tears welling up. "We know he's innocent."
Ada Evelyn Leyva has contracted Parkinson's disease since her son's conviction and is closing her uniform and maternity shop in Hendersonville to retire with her husband, Mario. She is a dignified, pleasant woman and a faithful Christian.
She can't talk about the charges without her voice choking and her hands trembling. The charges against her son are too monstrous for a mother to accept.
"It's just about ruined my life. It's so horrible - all the ugly things they've charged him with," she says. "I know what a hard-working, little ol' fella he is. He's a very caring, sensitive person."
Leyva has developed a talent for writing since he's been incarcerated and he'd like to continue his ministry, his mother says.
"I didn't mean like he had before. He knows better than that, he knows he wouldn't be allowed. He wouldn't go evangelizing now like he did before. He wants to write books and Bible studies, that sort of thing."
Says Crandall: "He feels any influence he has in the U.S. has been destroyed," and he's thinking about a ministry overseas.
"He wants to really prove he can be a good guy, so to speak," Crandall says.
Leyva's theology exists outside of any denomination. While he preached a Pentecostal kind of service, his wife and his mother call themselves "reverends," a title most Pentecostals deny women.
He also remarried, which some of his followers believe is wrong even though he has a civil divorce. "I don't believe a man with a living wife can get married again or can be a preacher," says Fred Toms, a retired attorney in Hendersonville who is a friend of Leyva's.
Leyva told Toms years ago that he would never get married again because of that. For that reason, Toms believes the marriage is for appearance's sake.
"It's just a convenience. ... I think it would have some influence on his parole."
Crandall agrees it could help influence the parole examiner.
"He's remorseful, he's married since he's been in - that's helpful, he has someone to turn to," he says.
`Bad to the core'
When he sentenced Leyva and his two associates, U.S. District Judge James C. Turk had uncharacteristically harsh words for them.
"All of you, you're con artists, liars, cheats, frauds," he said. "You're just everything bad ... bad to the core."
Turk urged prison officials never to parole them. But a year after Leyva was sent to prison, he had a 1998 parole date set - meaning he could serve less than half his 20-year sentence.
Morris and Herring were sentenced to 15 years in U.S. District Court in Roanoke; both have been paroled.
Turk said he hasn't been asked what he thinks about Leyva's getting parole.
"I have not been consulted by the parole board. I'm sort of surprised they haven't, as the sentencing judge," Turk says. "It seems like, since I indicated these people shouldn't be paroled, someone would have contacted the U.S. attorney's office here or the sentencing judge and ask what we thought about it."
Turk said he wrote to Leyva's case manager, asking to be kept informed. He hasn't heard anything beyond an initial phone call.
"I just thought he'd be automatically turned down," Turk says. "I hope they hold him on to '98."
So does Waering.
"I think any pedophile who has not gotten treatment and recognized they had a problem is a continuing threat," she says. "I don't think he should be around adolescent boys."
Tuesday's parole hearing is mandatory. Barring something extraordinary, Leyva's 1998 release date will not change, says Jeff Kostbar, a case analyst with the U.S. Parole Commission. Although Leyva is technically eligible in June, the board already has determined he's not suitable for release then, he said.
Crandall said the family hopes the parole examiner will be swayed because of the abuse Leyva has suffered in prison and the problems it has caused the prison system, which repeatedly moved him and often kept him in isolation for protection.
Leyva has received some counseling in prison, but the public is not entitled to know whether he underwent treatment for pedophilia, prison officials say. Crandall doesn't think Leyva will offend again after all he has been through.
"I think the price has been too high, too great," he says. "That's what I feel."
Judge Turk isn't so sure.
"See, the tragedy is, if he hasn't had any treatment, he'll be right back doing the same thing, won't he?''
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB