Sexual assault claim woman was '˜scared' to report church pastor

A woman who has accused a married Pentecostal pastor of sexual assault told a jury yesterday that she had kept quiet because she feared he had the power to call down the Angel of Death on her family.

The 47-year-old Zimbabwean woman, who cannot be identified, said the largely African membership of the Stirling-based church “worshipped” her alleged abuser, Walter Masocha, 51, whom Stirling Sheriff Court heard was their “archbishop”.

The divorced mother-of-three, who lives in England, said Masocha assaulted her during one-on-one counselling sessions at the Agape for All Nations church he had founded.

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Asked why she continued to make six-hour car journeys to see Masocha and went on booking herself in for counselling sessions despite the 
sexual assaults, she told Masocha’s lawyer, John Scullion QC, that she believed he was a man of God who could solve her problems.

The woman, a worship leader, said Masocha was her “mediator between me and God”.

Mr Scullion asked: “Can you give any explanation as to why you continued to make appointments?”

She replied: “I was scared, and at the same time this was the man who I wanted to do something for me. I was so confused. He was my own Father, who I liked so much and almost worshipped.

“If I said something, he might curse me. He would say that ‘God has allowed me to curse. I can curse you and something bad will happen to you’. I was scared.”

She said Masocha once told her that even by sitting in his chair when he wasn’t even there, something beneficial would happen to her. But she also said: “This is a man who will say ‘I’ll curse you and the Angel of Death will visit your family’.”

She added: “I do look back and think ‘why didn’t I say something?’. I do blame myself, but mostly this was a man I trusted with my life.”

The woman told Mr Scullion that all she wanted was “peace of mind”.

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She said: “I don’t want him hanged, I don’t want him beaten, but I am going to move on, not because he has been punished but because I have let it out.”

Masocha, of Sauchieburn, near Stirling, denies sexually assaulting the divorcee and another woman at various locations including the church, his former home in Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire, and at Edinburgh Airport between January 2007 and May 2011.

The trial, before Sheriff Wyllie Robertson and jury, 
continues.