A church leader in Wisconsin has been taken into custody following accusations from a young girl alleging years of sexual abuse.
Greg R. Douma, aged 58, faces charges including one count of repeated sexual assault of a child, three counts of child sexual assault, and one count of incest, according to a report by the Lake-McHenry Scanner.
The Pleasant Prairie Police Department became involved on November 23 after being alerted by an employee from the state Department of Children and Family Services. The alert was raised after the girl, who is under 13, disclosed the abuse to staff at a mental health facility where she was undergoing treatment.
Authorities reported that the girl described Douma’s actions as “doing things to her that makes babies.”
According to the criminal complaint, the girl revealed that the abuse began when she was between the ages of 6 and 7 and persisted until she reached 12. She recounted that it started when Douma invited her to watch a video on his phone, which she agreed to as she enjoyed watching cooking videos at that time. While lying on her bed watching the videos, she said, Douma sexually assaulted her.
While she did, Douma raped her.
The girl provided details about what happened and said the rapes continued because she “got to watch videos, and he got to do his, you know, when man and women put private to private, and it makes them feel good.”
Douma reportedly told the girl that what he was doing was illegal and that if she told anyone, his wife would divorce him.
Finally, she called him last month. He asked her not to tell anyone what was happening, she said, but she told him she would not lie anymore. He responded, “okay,” the complaint says.
Detectives say Douma confessed during an interview at the police station on Friday, saying that everything the girl said was true. He told police the frequency of the rapes increased over the past two years but could not guess how many times he raped the girl. It “happened an awful lot over the years,” he said.
Douma was an elder with The Point church in Winthrop Harbor. He has since been scrubbed from the church’s website and YouTube channel, the Scanner said. He was still listed in a “pastor appreciation” post on the church’s Facebook page from November 1.
He appeared in Kenosha County Court on Monday and was given a $50,000 bond, which he promptly paid. He is due in court again on December 16.
