Wed, Apr. 18, 2007, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Teen describes affair with church leader
By MELODY McDONALD, STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
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| Jason Wamsley, a former church youth director and schoolteacher, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, but he is also eligible for probation. |
FORT WORTH -- The teenager estimated that she had sexual intercourse with Jason Scott Wamsley -- her church youth director and a teacher at Castleberry High School -- no fewer than 60 times.
They had sex at his house, at her house, in different rooms and buildings at the River Oaks United Methodist Church.
They even had sex, she testified, while Wamsley's wife was in the hospital where she had just given birth to his second child.
"He put [the older child] down for a nap, and we had sex in his bedroom," the teen, now 18, told a jury of six women and six men.
The teen was prosecutors' final witness Tuesday before they rested their case against Wamsley.
Wamsley, now 32, is on trial on nine counts of sexual assault of a child under 17 and one charge of having an improper relationship with a student.
If convicted, Wamsley, who is being defended by Don Gandy and Jennifer Gravley, faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, but he is also eligible for probation.
The Star-Telegram typically does not identify the accuser in sexual-assault cases.
The teen, now a student at the University of North Texas in Denton, was on the witness stand most of Tuesday afternoon. She told how she met Wamsley, how their relationship developed and, ultimately, how it ended: Her father caught her and Wamsley one Sunday morning when he returned home unexpectedly to retrieve his wife's Sunday school lesson book.
The teen told jurors that she met Wamsley when she was 13 and joined his eighth-grade leadership class at Irma Marsh Middle School.
After 9-11, she said, she was confused about how God could let something so bad happen to so many people and turned to Wamsley for guidance. He encouraged her to join his youth group at River Oaks United Methodist Church, she said.
"I could confide in him," the teen testified. "He was like a spiritual mentor to me. He was also like a friend."
The next year, she began attending Castleberry High School where Wamsley was hired as an English teacher, although he was never her teacher. The relationship began to be more intimate, beginning with hand-holding, kissing and petting.
By Jan.1, 2003, they began talking about having sex -- something the teenager said she was conflicted about because she wanted to save herself for marriage.
"He told me that he saw me as his wife," she testified.
A short time later, the teen was cast in the school play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Wamsley stepped in to play a part when another student became ill. On the afternoon of the play, the teen testified, she told her parents that she wasn't coming home, that she was going to eat with classmates after school and then get ready for the production.
Instead, she and Wamsley went to the church, where they attempted to have sex for the first time in the youth room.
"I was a virgin," she testified. "It didn't work. I was in pain. I tried to pretend like I wasn't but I didn't want to disappoint him. We figured it wasn't going to work. We got dressed and went back to school."
Not long after, the teen testified, they had sex for the first time at Wamsley's house and, from then on, had sexual intercourse regularly.
Wamsley, a prolific writer, left her cards, letters and poems professing his love and affection, she said.
Afraid that her parents would find them, the teen kept them in an orange folder in a filing cabinet in Wamsley's high school classroom.
"Hi, I don't have much time but I just wanted to tell you how special you are to me," read one. "You are so wonderful. I love you so much."
Another one said: "You are so sweet. I wish you were covered in chocolate."
On Tuesday, jurors were read 31 poems and letters and two cards, including a Valentine's Day card that DNA tests proved were sealed with Wamsley's saliva.
"I love you," Wamsley wrote. "You are precious. Be my Valentine. Love, your baby."
Keeping their a secret was "awful," the teen testified, especially because Wamsley was married and she believed she and Wamsley loved each other.
"I would be fine and then I would see them holding hands or him call her 'honey' and everything in me would break down," the teen said. She felt betrayed when Wamsley's wife became pregnant with their second child, she said.
"He called me his wife and said he wanted a life with me," she told the jury.
The teen testified that Wamsley's wife also worked with the church youth group. Once she led a girls' retreat where the participants received purity rings and talked about intimate, female things. Because the teen was unable to attend, she testified, Wamsley's wife talked to her afterward and gave her a purity ring -- which signified that the teen wanted to save herself for marriage.
When prosecutor Kim D'Avignon, who is trying the case with Bill Vassar, asked the teenager how it felt to accept a purity ring from the wife of a man she was sleeping with, the teen, crying, replied:
"There is not a word for how inappropriate that was."
The trial is scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. today in state District Judge Elizabeth Berry's court, when the defense will have an opportunity to call witnesses and present evidence.
Melody McDonald, 817-390-7386 mjmcdonald@star-telegram.com