Exclusive: Pastor of iconic Sacramento church molested stepdaughter for years, suit claims

The first night her stepfather slipped into her bedroom and molested her was in 1994, when she was 11, Giana Lee says.

“The next night, Giana shut her door and lined up all of her stuffed animals against it,” court papers describing the alleged attacks say. “That way, in the morning, she could tell if someone had entered her room.

“When she woke up the next morning, her (stuffed) animals had been thrown about the room, but she could not figure out what happened. Subsequently, Giana would wake up and notice her shorts or underwear gone or rolled up in her blanket.”

The abuse continued, escalating to rape, visits to sex stores with her stepfather to allow him to purchase items “that he would later use on her,” court papers say, and even abuse in his workplace: Sacramento’s iconic St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Oak Park, a 5,000-member church whose former head pastor has counseled numerous Sacramento mayors and dined at the Obama White House.

Lee’s stepfather, John Bernard Black Sr., was a pastor at the church and is named in an explosive new lawsuit that also names as defendants her mother, Kelli Adriann Black, the church itself and Pastor Emeritus Ephraim Williams, who retired in July after nearly 50 years as one of the most prominent Black leaders in Sacramento.

The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento Superior Court last month, alleges that Black molested and raped Lee for years in her home, hotels, his car and inside the church. It also alleges that her mother did nothing to stop the abuse and that when Lee was taken to Williams for counseling at the church, he responded, “We don’t lie on good pastors!”

Neither John nor Kelli Black responded to a phone message left on Kelli Black’s phone or a phone message or emailed copy of the lawsuit left for Black at his office at his current church, Center of Praise Church.

Williams declined to comment after reading the lawsuit.

A spokesman for St. Paul Baptist Church, which was provided a copy of the suit by The Sacramento Bee, said it had not yet been served with it.

“We treat these reports with compassion and concern,” administrative assistant Lamont Harris wrote in an email statement. “So far, we haven’t been served with any lawsuit, so it would be premature for us to say anything at this time.”

New California law paves way for suit

Lee, now 37, and the divorced mother of two teenage children, says that the abuse she alleges has torn her family apart and left her estranged from her mother and siblings.

In an interview, Lee said she is pursuing legal action because even after more than two decades she still feels “lots of damage, as you can imagine, humiliation and embarrassment, fear that I live in the same area and I might run into these people.”

“This lawsuit is about truth and accountability,” she said. “I’m looking through this lawsuit to have the truth come out, and for those who have hurt me to be held accountable for that.”

Until this year, Lee could not have filed such a suit involving allegations dating back so far. But AB 218, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October 2019, extended the statute of limitations to allow for reckonings involving abuse claims against the Boy Scouts of America, the Catholic Church and other defendants.

“It’s because they finally recognized that there is a delayed discovery sometimes, people go through life denying that it happened,” said Oakland attorney Shawn Tillis of the Tillis Law Firm. “They’re scared to go forward, and the lucky ones find a therapist and they learn, ‘Oh, I have all these problems because of what happened in my childhood.’”

Sacramento police could not confirm there had been an investigation of Lee’s allegations, but Tillis said he planned to subpoena records from the department now that the lawsuit has been filed.

“In this case, there were a couple of police investigations, and there are going to be some documents,” he said.

Lee’s lawsuit says that John Black’s abuse started soon after he moved in with her mother.

“From the start, Mr. Black singled out Giana for attention — more than he showed towards Giana’s siblings,” the suit says. “For example, he allowed her to stay up when all the other children were asleep.

“Shortly thereafter, he began sexually molesting and raping her.”

The abuse began with fondling when she was asleep alone in her room, the suit says.

“She woke up to Mr. Black caressing her stomach and breasts,” the lawsuit says. “At first, she could not see who it was but then sat up and saw that it was Mr. Black.

“The next day, Giana told her mother, Ms. Black, what Mr. Black had done to her. Instead of confronting Mr. Black, Ms. Black told Giana that it was her (Ms. Black) that was checking on her. In other words, she tried to trick Giana into believing that Mr. Black did not come into her room the prior evening and abuse her.”

Alleged abuse happened in Oak Park church

After a time, the abuse escalated, the lawsuit says.

“He began to fondle her during the day and stick his hands down her pants and rubbing her private parts,” the lawsuit says. “He would contrive reasons to take her on errands with him so that he could be alone with Giana.

“He told her to (wear) shorts and skirts when she accompanied him so that he could have easy access to her body. By this time, Giana was terrified of her father and felt she would risk further abuse from him if she did not comply — especially given her own mother’s apparent complicity.”

When she was 12 or 13, the lawsuit says, John Black put her on birth control.

“The first time he raped her was in the family home,” the lawsuit says. “Prior to this, he told her that he did not want to be her first and arranged for her to have sex with the young boy she was dating at the time.

“It was a horrible and humiliating experience for Giana. Approximately a week later, Mr. Black forced his way into Giana’s room, grabbed her legs, forced the lower portion of her body on the edge of the bed and said, ‘tonight’s the night.’ ”

He then raped her, the lawsuit says, and between the ages of 13 and 15 the assaults occurred every other night.

“He took her to sex stores with him to buy (paraphernalia) that he would later use on her,” the lawsuit says. “He bought her sex books, crotch-less underwear and small vibrators.

“Sometimes he’d take her to hotels, in order to have sex with her without the fear of someone walking in on them.”

Other assaults occurred in his car in the church parking lot, and inside the church itself, the lawsuit says.

“It happened in a stairwell on the way back from the baptism room, and it also happened multiple times in the car in the parking lot,” she said.

Finally, when Lee was 15 or 16, she told her boyfriend and her grandmother about the attacks, the lawsuit says, and her grandmother took her to talk to Sacramento police detectives.

“The first time I interviewed with them was seven to eight hours,” Lee said. “They recorded me, and there were multiple detectives there at that time.”

Mom pressured daughter to recant

No charges were ever filed over her report because her mother pressured her to tell police she was lying, the lawsuit says.

“However, when Giana returned home, Ms. Black started working her over, telling Giana that if she did not recant what she told the police her siblings would be put in foster care,” the lawsuit says. “She told Giana to tell the detective that it did not happen, that she lied because her stepdad would not let her see her boyfriend.

“Ms. Black promised her that she would never see him again, but she did not want the kids taken away. Under this pressure, Giana told the detective that she had lied to him. However, the detective did not believe her, saying, ‘I have been doing this for a long time, and you were telling the truth before, but did someone talk to you?’ or words to that effect.

“The entire time Giana was being interviewed by the detective, Ms. Black was looking at her through the window.”

After she left the police, Kelli Black took the detective’s business card from Lee and flushed it down a toilet, the lawsuit says, then hired an attorney to keep police from talking to Lee again.

Then, Kelli Black took Lee to a therapist and also to Pastor Williams, the iconic leader of the church who built it into a major force in Oak Park and is so beloved that a charter school in the community is named for him.

But Williams, whose congregants included former Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and who has counseled Sacramento mayors since 1975, did not believe Lee, the lawsuit says.

“Dr. Williams looked menacing at Giana and said, ‘we don’t lie on good pastors!’” the lawsuit says.

“I am not lying,” she replied, according to the suit.

“Dr. Williams then said, ‘we do not lie on good men,’ ” the lawsuit says.

“Giana repeated that she was not lying, that Mr. Black had repeatedly sexually abused her, including on church premises,” the lawsuit says. “Dr. Williams said nothing more and just glared at Giana with disgust and disapproval.”

Kelli Black then hurried Lee out of the church and took her home, the lawsuit says. That night, John Black raped her again, the lawsuit says.

“He condoned a culture of this,” Lee said of Williams.

The attacks only ended, Lee says, when she was kicked out of the home at 16½ and went to live with her grandmother.

Since then, Lee said, she has lived in humiliation and fear, and says what happened to her contributed to the collapse of her marriage.

”I have been married before, and this damaged it,” she said.

And, she says, her story has torn the family apart.

“Everyone in my family wants me to keep this secret,” Lee said. “Some of my siblings, that’s their father, so this is going to bring embarrassment to them and therefore they don’t want me to say anything.”

This story was originally published October 7, 2020 at 5:00 AM.