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Graphic Testimony Featured in Hosanna Church Trial |
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By Meredith Mendez (ABC 26 News)
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Friday, November 30 2007 |
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AMITE, La. - Thursday was full of confessions in the Hosanna Church trial. Austin “Trey” Bernard is accused of three counts of aggravated rape of children.
Jurors finished their day in the Amite courtroom by looking over a 211-page handwritten diary allegedly put together by Bernard that goes into graphic details of the ongoing rape and abuse of a two-year old girl and two young boys.
Earlier, jurors heard Bernard himself say on tape that he had oral and anal sex with two young boys and put his privates in a two-year old girl’s mouth and put his mouth on her privates. On this second day of testimony, Bernard had another smile on his face as he left the courthouse for lunch. The morning started with testimony from FBI agent Lisa Marie Fraytis who interrogated Bernard.
“First of all, some of them had their facts wrong, said Bernard’s defense attorney Al Bensabat.
Fraytis testified those facts included Bernard admitting his job at the Hosanna Church was to groom children to have sex, that there were youth group orgies inside the church and that he had done everything sexually possible with a two-year old girl as well as having ritual sex with her that included other people inside the church. Bensabat said, “We think this is a witch hunt, they first got him to admit he is a witch, what normally happens then is they burn you at the stake, which is what this is right now, they’re trying to burn him at the stake.” Inside the courthouse, jurors heard two hours of a taped interview of Bernard by Tangipahoa Sheriff’s investigators. After deputies prayed with and for Bernard and told him “We’re here to show you the way."
On tape Bernard confesses to having sex with the two young boys and molesting the two-year old girl. However, in another interview, with FBI Special Agent Joseph Edwards, Bernard says he’s not sure about what he did or did not do with the boys.
“He’s saying that he’s 70 to 80 percent sure that he did not molest or rape these kids when he apparently had already admitted to doing so to somebody else so we’re going to put Mr. Bernard on the stand and he’s going to tell the jury what his mental state was at the time,” said Bensabat. There have been lots of allegations of satanic rituals in this case and investigators testified today they didn’t find any pentagrams in the church.
But when they went over the youth room inside the Hosanna church with a special blacklight, they did find writing on the walls from the floor to the ceiling that included inverted bible verses which are common in the occult. Bernard is one of seven church members accused of crimes related to Hosanna. He is the first to go to trial. |
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Last Updated ( Friday, November 30 2007 )
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