To her boyfriend, it was just another news article.
A local pastor, accused of molesting a young girl.
Sick, the boyfriend commented. A guy of that nature, even saying that he’s a preacher.
But the name and the charges stopped her in her tracks.
She had accused the same Garrett man, Lane A. Andrews, of similar crimes when she was a child nearly 20 years ago.
School officials brought in the Department of Child Services. A caseworker in 1991 recorded interviews and sent tapes to the Garrett Police Department.
And then? Nothing.
The pain is still there as she talks inside the chilly, quiet polygraph room of the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department. The department arranged this interview at The Journal Gazette’s request. The woman asked that her name not be used.
Andrews had been a neighbor, and she was close friends with one of his children. She attended church with them, although he was not a pastor at the time. She often spent the night at their house.
“He went to church, just like my grandma did,” she said.
That’s why she wasn’t sure what to think the first time, by her account, that Andrews, in a moment alone, touched her inappropriately. He was about 35. She was about 9, she said.
Even now, as a 29-year-old woman retelling the story, she breaks eye contact, glancing out a rain-spattered window toward downtown Auburn.
“Honestly, I didn’t know that there was anything wrong with it – until he said to me, ‘Please don’t tell anybody,’ ” she said, small, thin fingers fiddling with the strap of her purse.
She realized quickly there was something wrong. The molestation, she said, continued from 1989 to 1991.
When she began resisting offers to spend the night at Andrews’ home, her sister pressed for a reason until she finally confided. He repeatedly touched her inappropriately through her clothes on at least three occasions, she said.
Her story is as much about what happened after that – and didn’t happen – as it is about what she has accused Andrews of doing.
The Department of Child Services sent the taped interviews to the Garrett Police Department for investigation, a probable cause affidavit filed last month said.
“No investigation took place,” according to the recent court documents.
Her parents pressured the police but were stonewalled, she said. Even on his deathbed years later, her father remained angry.
“He was like, ‘Just let me go kill him,’ ” she said. “He was still furious.”
While her parents wanted to dwell on the authorities’ inaction, the child wanted to forget the entire experience. Eventually, she urged her parents to drop the case – a decision she regrets as an adult.
“I was so sick of hearing about it,” she said. “I was just so tired of the situation. I didn’t want to hear about it anymore. I wanted to shove it in the back of my brain.”
‘How fair is that?’
For the longest time, she wouldn’t sleep in her bed, preferring the couch because of the feeling of security the backrest provided. A bed was too open.
“I slept on my couch for years,” she said. “My mom would get so mad at me because every night she’d put me in bed, and by the morning I was always on the couch.”
The habit kept her from inviting friends over or spending the night at their homes. Even today, some nights find her on the couch.
Those are the small adjustments she’s made to her life – sleeping on the couch, avoiding being alone with people she doesn’t know, feeling overly protective toward her infant daughter.
“I feel very privileged to have come out of the situation as strong as I have,” she said. “I don’t know what it’s like to live without it.”
She spent 20 years living the only version of a normal life she knew, memories pushed aside for her own sanity – until Andrews was arrested in May, accused of allowing a 7-year-old girl to fondle him. Until earlier this year, Andrews was pastor of New Life Ministries in Garrett.
After that arrest, a Garrett police detective tracked down his alleged 1991 victim.
Someone close to the family had given police her name during the investigation that led to the May arrest, said DeKalb Detective Don Lauer, who is now investigating the 1991 case.
After the shock wore off, she felt angry.
“It wasn’t all right to do something back then, but it’s all right to do something now,” she said. “Because somebody else has come forward? How fair is that to me? Where was the justice system back then?”
That’s a question no one has answered.
Gary Kleeman served as Garrett’s police chief from 1990 until he was relieved of his duties in 2000 by then-Mayor Herb Kleeman – a second cousin – who cited dissatisfaction with the department’s performance.
Gary Kleeman had been accused at various times in his tenure of improper conduct, but city officials at the time said the allegations were never substantiated. He did not return messages left at his home last week.
Current Garrett Police Chief Rex Harpel, who joined the department in 2000, also did not return calls seeking comment.
The real question
Wherever the justice system was then, it has acted swiftly this time around.
DeKalb County Prosecutor ClaraMary Winebrenner said that from her perspective, it’s a new case. She would not discuss specific facts of the case or where the breakdown might have occurred 20 years ago, saying it would be a waste of time to get lost in blame.
“Whoever screwed up back in ’91, it’s over,” she said. “I don’t want to get pushed off the real question of what happened.”
When Garrett police detective Tara Smurr couldn’t find Andrews’ alleged victim right away, Smurr left her business card and kept trying.
The woman had pushed it so far back in her mind that she hadn’t even told her boyfriend – the father of her infant child – about being molested. When police came to press her for her story, he sat in the next room, dumbfounded.
“He still don’t know what to think about it,” she said. “He was just flabbergasted.”
Even after Smurr reached her, she mulled over for days whether to cooperate with the case.
“It’s a memory that you do not want to relive,” she said. “My nightmares had went away.”
But the nightmares have returned, she said, the more she thinks about facing Andrews during the trial. Andrews has pleaded not guilty in both cases, and trials are pending. He was released on a combined $13,000 bond.
Andrews did not have a listed telephone number.
His alleged victim wants him to be jailed and labeled a pedophile, but beyond that, she said she’s content to let karma mete out his fate.
“I would not wish this hurt and this pain on anybody,” she says. “Even him.”
Michael Zennie of The Journal Gazette contributed to this story.
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