Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 28, 1995 TAG: 9505300033
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I'd like to see him dead," she said, when hearing that he was up for parole.
Her son was between 15 and 16 when Leyva and two associates took turns molesting him, she said. Now 27, he is married with four children, but three of them live with her and he is not allowed to see them for reasons she won't discuss.
"I think it's still affecting him," said the woman, who did not want to be identified. "It was like he was pulling up in a shell. Even today, he don't want you to mention [Leyva's] name. I think it's affecting his marriage."
The woman met the evangelist when she began taking her parents to Leyva's revivals in the Roanoke Valley. Her teen-age son joined them and would stand in the back, selling tapes and helping out.
Then, she says, Leyva "started asking him to go to motels and things. He'd have a slew of them over there."
Leyva would stay at motels with pools, a luxury many of the kids didn't have access to at home. When her son came to ask permission to go on the road traveling with Leyva for the summer, she and her husband agreed.
"My son said he felt led of God to work for the Lord and we weren't going to stand in his way of working for the Lord."
The teen-ager spent the summer helping put up the tent at Leyva's revivals, where Leyva would get "love offerings" from the crowds and a steady supply of fresh victims. She said the kids were lucky if they got a bologna sandwich to eat.
Her son told her Leyva and his associates, Rias Morris and Freddie Herring, would take the boys to red-light districts, with X-rated movies and strip shows. Her son spent a summer traveling with Leyva, and she could tell he wanted to say something when he would call home, but the story didn't come out until charges were filed in other boys' cases.
Of Leyva, she said, "I believed he was a child of God before. But the Bible tells us they'll come in sheep's clothing, but inward they're raving wolves. He'll pay for what he's done on Judgment Day.
"I don't think I'll ever forgive Tony Leyva," she says. "I don't hate his soul. I hate his ways."
by CNB