Justice for teenage churchgoer forced to apologise to entire congregation for being raped as two-time attacker jailed for at least 15 years



A teenage churchgoer raped by a fellow believer and humiliatingly forced to apologise to her entire congregation for getting pregnant finally has finally received justice.

Her attacker Ernest Willis was jailed on Tuesday for a minimum of 15 years for twice raping Tina Anderson in 1997.



Anderson, who has waived her legal right to anonymity, was then 'banished' by church leaders to another state more than 2,000 miles away and forced to give her daughter up for adoption. She was 15 at the time.



Victim: Tina Anderson was raped twice by Ernest Willis in 1997 when she was 15 years old

Fifty-two-year-old Ernest Willis of Gilford apologised on Tuesday saying he was 'sorry and ashamed for this thoughtless act of sexual misconduct.'

But he did not admit to forcibly raping the teenager.

Miss Anderson, now 29, told The Associated Press she felt vindicated.

She said she was never really believed that the sex was not consensual until a court found him guilty.

The teen was forced to face hundreds of churchgoers at Concord's Trinity Baptist Church and say sorry for getting pregnant.

She said: 'I felt completely humiliated. I felt like my life was over.'

The then-pastor of the New Hampshire church, Chuck Phelps, arranged for her to move in with a Baptist family in Colorado and place her infant daughter up for adoption.

She said she believed 'for years' what the church leaders had told her which was: 'The rapes were her fault and she must learn to forgive and forget.'

During cross-examination Anderson lashed out at defence attorney Donna Brown for 'badgering her' about discrepancies in her recollection of the sequence of events that summer.

She said: 'You cannot remember when you are 15-years-old and scared out of your mind. It doesn't mean I was lying. I felt like my life was over.'

Sex offender: Ernest Willis was convicted of raping and impregnating the 15-year-old

Willis has been sentenced Tuesday to 15 to 30 years in prison

The court heard that Phelps initially reported the allegations to Concord police but investigators could not locate Anderson and so the case was shelved.

It wasn't until 2010 that websites decrying the 'so-called cult-like nature of the fundamentalist Baptist religion' helped lead police to Anderson, who now lives in Arizona with her husband and three children.

She said she felt 'complete shock' when she picked up the phone on her husband's birthday last year and a Concord detective asked whether she wanted to discuss what happened in 1997.

Her voice cracked throughout much of her first hour of her testimony on Monday, and she said the questions dredged up 'just a lot of bad memories.'

Leaders at Trinity Baptist Church, in Concord (pictured), forced Anderson to apologise to the congregation for getting pregnant out of wedlock

Willis, 51, pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of having sex with Anderson, who was under the legal age of consent at the time.

He denied having sex with her on more than one occasion and claimed the sex was consensual.

Anderson acknowledged she did go to dinner with Willis at a posh restaurant at around the time of her 16th birthday in 1997, after she said both rapes occurred.

She said: 'I needed to tell him I was pregnant. I can't explain some of the things I did. I was trying to be the good Christian I was supposed to be - to forgive and forget and pretend it never happened.'

Anderson's mother, Christine Leaf, refused to support her daughter during the trial.

She said: 'I only support the truth, not a lie.' She confirmed that sending her daughter out of the state to have her baby was her idea, and that Willis had paid for the airfare to Colorado.