I Dated a Married Minister, Now Convicted Rapist, Who Convinced Me He Was a Single Pro Athlete

The day I found out the man I was dating was married, I was devastated

I’d been seeing Terry H. for three or four months when I got a phone call from my best friend. She said, “Turn on channel 5. His wife is being interviewed about how God saved their marriage.”

My stomach dropped and my heart, cliche or not, did in fact skip a beat. “Did you know he was married?” she asked.

“I knew he was getting divorced. He said they were separated and papers were served, but she keeps filing continuances,” I answered, but not very confidently. “I’m out right now. I can’t turn the show on. What is she saying?”

“Well, honey,” my friend kindly answered, “She’s saying they had some issues in their marriage, but their faith saved them. She’s written a book about it. I’m so sorry to tell you this, but he’s the pastor of a church, and she is the assistant pastor.”

This was not quite the era of instant access to information. It had not yet become my habit to do an internet search on every man I dated.

I met him through a friend who was his massage therapist. He was an attractive, intelligent, generous, Black man. She said he was in the process of divorce. She thought I would like him. I did.

In the short course of our dating, he gave me a stereo system, took me and my son out for lunches and dinners, and bought my son expensive sneakers. He sent flowers to my work. He drove a black jaguar and a Cadillac Escalade. It was easy to believe he ran in wealthy, professional athlete circles.

He claimed to have played college and pro football until he was injured. Currently, he said he was a Life Coach for professional athletes. He was friends with pro football players and attended the wedding of one whose name everyone knew, including me, and I don’t watch football. Later I discovered he provided premarital counseling to the NFL star and his fiancee, and performed the wedding.

I rushed back home and started searching the internet for him. Amazingly there was very little at the time. I searched every roster of the pro football team he said he played for and couldn’t find him, although I did find him on his college team. I finally found something about his church. And his wife. Today they are all over the internet, but for a different reason.

I broke it off with him, of course. It wasn’t easy. The sex had been amazing. He was always a gentleman. He brought lovely wine when he came to see me, opened and poured it for us. This became an interesting detail later on.

When I confronted him, he didn’t want us to stop seeing each other, and offered to rent an apartment for me and my son in another city. Of course, I said no to that. He was married. I owned my home. That showed me how out of touch with reality he’d become.

Looking back, I realized some of his behaviors were really odd. One day he said he wanted to leave through my bedroom window. I thought it was funny, especially when, after he left, I saw he had left me money on the bedside table. I teased him about him pretending I was a prostitute. Another time he asked me to lie completely still on my stomach while he made love to me. Since I’m normally an active lover, it seemed like just another fun sexual experiment.

What didn’t seem harmless was the time he asked me to call him a derogatory racial epithet in bed. I told him no. That I had never called anyone that word and never would. Not even in fantasy play. He didn’t insist and said he understood.

After I found out about his lying to me and broke it off, he still continued to call. I stopped answering after he called once to tell me he was doing some work for the government and he was being followed. I know now he had begun using methamphetamine and had become delusional.

Two years after my experience with him, two women from his church, and one from his gym, accused him of rape. One had been a virgin when he raped her. The one from the gym admitted to using meth with him. They all claimed he had drugged them by putting GHB into wine or other drinks he gave them. The wine detail in particular gave me chills.

In a civil action, two other women accused him of rape. One, who was seventeen years old when he drugged and raped her, said he left $100 for her after he raped her a second time.

His wife stood by him during the trial. Part of me understood how he could keep her fooled. He had fooled me temporarily, and I’m a therapist.

Also, he had absolutely no “need” to rape anybody. He was charming, attractive, engaging, sexy. After me, or maybe even at the same time, he had an affair with a woman in his church, who of course knew who he was and that he was married. I’m sure there were other willing participants including those of us he was able to fool into bed.

Apparently, that wasn’t enough. He needed power over women. He needed them knocked out. All the oddities I’d noticed made sense now. The wanting me to lie completely still. Climbing out the window and leaving money.

The oddest thing of all, however, is that he never drugged me. All the times he brought wine and opened it and served me, the wine was just wine. I was always awake, aware, and an eager participant in the sex and the imagined “relationship.”

He was convicted and sentenced to 15 years. After serving his time, he was remanded to Texas Civil Commitment Center for sexually violent predators for his release. He still isn’t willing to admit what he did, and won’t be released until professionals and the administrator at the facility believe he is no longer a danger. I sometimes wonder if he’ll be able to track me down and reach out if he ever gets fully free. I hope not.

His wife finally did divorce him. She has written another book, this one about how abusive he was to her in the marriage.

It’s another piece of cognitive dissonance for me, as he didn’t show any verbal or physical signs of being an abuser when I was seeing him. But then, he didn’t show any signs of being a rapist either. What he did show was how convincing a liar he is, and what I know is that an expert, pathological liar can fool anybody for a short amount of time. Sometimes for a much longer amount of time.

I’m so lucky my friend saw his wife’s interview. If she hadn’t, maybe I would have been one of the women on the stand at his trial, although it seems he had different categories of women and I didn’t fit that one.

What I learned is to thoroughly check out the people I date. To them now, it might seem paranoid. From experience, I know it’s a necessity. I recommend you do the same.