NORRISTOWN, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — A Blue Bell man who is pastor of a church that holds services at The Met Philadelphia on North Broad Street has been convicted of sexually assaulting three children and raping one of them.
It took the Montgomery County jury about 2 ½ hours to arrive at their verdict. Mark Hatcher, 60, pastor of Holy Ghost Headquarters in North Philadelphia, showed no emotion as the jury read it aloud in the courtroom: guilty on all 10 counts, including rape, statutory sexual assault and indecent assault of child.
One accuser, 22 years old, testified about three inappropriate encounters at Hatcher’s home, when he was 6 and 7 years old, including one when Hatcher kissed him and touched his buttocks under his clothes while he was playing with a Noah’s Ark toy.
A second accuser said, when she was staying at Hatcher’s house at age 15, he exposed himself then fondled her breasts from behind her.
A third accuser said, when she was 13, Hatcher took her to an unoccupied home in Philadelphia and raped her.
Hatcher’s lawyer, Robert Gamburg, argued the accusations couldn’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, because they happened between 2000 and 2008, and the accusers all had reasons to fabricate their stories.
Gamburg told the jury the accusers came forward with their allegations only after they were caught by their parents doing things they weren’t supposed to be doing. One accuser was caught with pornography on his phone, while another accuser’s mother found out she had been sexually active at age 15.
However, prosecutor Caroline Goldstein pointed out that all three accusers are now adults with good jobs, that they have tried to move on from what happened to them as children and that, in willingly testifying, each had relived what she said were some of the worst times of their lives. She asked why an adult would sit in a courtroom to describe the acts to strangers to cover up something she did when she was 15, more than 20 years ago.
She told the jury Hatcher used his position of trust to prey on them.
Hatcher will be sentenced at a later date. For now, he remains free on bail and is ordered to turn over his passport and to have no contact with minors.