The 80-year-old leader of a megachurch pleaded guilty Wednesday to lying under oath about his sexual affairs and was sentenced to 10 years’ probation. Archbishop Earl Paulk, who has been in ill health, was also fined $1,000 on a single felony count.
The charges stem from a 2006 deposition Paulk gave in a lawsuit against him, his brother Don and the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church by former church employee Mona Brewer, who said she was coerced into an affair.
In the deposition, Earl Paulk said under oath that the only woman with whom he had ever had sex outside his marriage was Brewer. But the results of a court-ordered paternity test revealed in October that Paulk is the biological father of his brother’s son, D.E. Paulk, who is now head pastor at the church.
As part of Brewer’s lawsuit, eight women have given sworn depositions that they were coerced into sexual relationships with Earl Paulk.
So Mona Brewer is not alone; now there are EIGHT women who were coerced into sexual relationships with Paulk.
Two questions: One, just HOW can a women be coerced into sex? With a bribe? At gunpoint? A promise of eternal life?
Whoever comes up with the answer will be a VERY RICH MAN!!!
And two, how come I never meet these coerceable women???
Steve: Possible answer to your question: ….because your mother demanded that you date only Jewish girls!
The A.P. item says the women were coerced into relationships, not sex.
Now THAT would be astonishing… eight of them, no less.
Back in the dark ages of the ’70s-’80s, some shallow, crass men used cocaine to ‘coerce’ women into sex.
I wonder what they use today.
Vince: the AP article clearly refers to a SEXUAL relationship.
See the 4th paragraph of this story:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PREACHER_PATERNITY?SITE=DCUSN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Well….that pretty much supports my observations.
Steve: I did read the article, it must have been truncated in my reader. I assumed that the ‘relationships’ were sexual– my point was that the word ‘relationships’ implies continuing sex rather than a one-time fling.
I still don’t understand how these women carried on affairs with a creep like this and then later maintain they were ‘coerced’.
I think it’s humorous– did he wine and dine them, buy them jewelry, take them out?
Given the habits of some of these megachurch impresarios, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did give them cocaine.