Former Surrey youth pastor found guilty on one count of sexual assault
Credit to Author: Postmedia News| Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 19:41:23 +0000
A former Surrey youth pastor has been found guilty on one count of sexual assault, while his wife was found not guilty of all charges.
Samuel Emerson, 36, and wife Madelaine, 39, were first charged in 2017 on a multitude of sex offences, after young members of their church went to police. The couple both pleaded not guilty, with their trial starting earlier this year.
On Wednesday, a Surrey Provincial Court judge found Emerson not guilty on all but one charge of sexual assault, while his wife was found not guilty on all charges, according to the Surrey court registry.
Up until his arrest in 2017, Emerson had been serving as a pastor at Cloverdale Christian Fellowship Church. Following the couple’s arrest, attendance at the church plummeted, with three-quarters of the church’s membership leaving.
Surrey, BC: OCTOBER 04, 2017 – Randy Emerson is a senior pastor at the Cloverdale Christian Fellowship church in Surrey, B.C., where he is pictured Wednesday, October 4, 2017.
Emerson’s father Randy serves as the non-denominational church’s senior pastor, and had taken interim custody of the younger Emersons’ five children.
“That’s what makes it so hard. These are all people that we loved and had as part of our lives and I would love to be able to talk to them and bring some health to their lives again, if I could,” Randy had said in a 2017 interview with Postmedia of the individuals who came forward.
A Vancouver Island bible camp also severed ties with Emerson after the charges were announced. He had served as a director of Cowichan River Bible Camp, after attending the camp decades earlier as a child.
A man, identified as Samuel Emerson by a former member of his church, appears in a promotional video for the Cowichan River Bible Camp, a religious organization where Emerson served as a director and guest speaker until his arrest this year on allegations of sexual assault.
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