An Indiana woman who confronted her pastor about their sexual relationship from decades ago admits she was tired of living in a “prison of lies and deceit.
Bobi Gephart spoke to Fox News Digital about the ordeal and how it all came to the surface this month.
As American Wire News reported last week, Indiana pastor John B. Lowe II addressed the congregation of the New Life Christian Church in Warsaw and confessed to having an extra-marital affair with a female member of the church who was 16 years old at the time.
“I committed adultery. It was nearly 20 years ago, it continued far too long,” he said, according to a video posted on Facebook by a congregant. “It involved one person and there’s been no other, nor any other situation of unbecoming conduct for the last 20 years. I will not use the Bible to defend, protect and deflect my past sin. I have no defense. I committed the adultery.
“I didn’t make a mistake, I didn’t have an issue, I didn’t have an affair, I didn’t make a misjudgment – I sinned. I need to say that, and you deserve to hear it,” he told the congregation.
What Lowe didn’t expect was for his victim and her husband to show up at the service during his confession and take the stage to give their version of the affair, which they said lasted 27 years, not 20.
After Lowe’s confession, Nate and Bobi Gephart are seen in a video addressing the congregation to shed more light on the affair.
“If you love us, please let us talk,” Nate said in the video. Bobi then began, “For 27 years I lived in a prison. It was not 20 years. I’ve lived in a prison of lies and shame. Lying to protect the Lowe family. For years, I thought I was a horrible person, having suicidal thoughts. Not realizing what had been truly done to me: That I was a victim.”
“And I would still be in a prison if my brother … had not approached me, just two weeks ago, with what he had seen as a teenager that bothered him all these years: His pastor, in bed, with his younger sister, with a T-shirt and underwear on,” she revealed.
“The lies and the manipulation have to stop,” she told Lowe. “I was a prisoner, and you kept me in your prison. I’m a prisoner no longer.”
She continued, “I was just 16 when you took my virginity on your office floor. Do you remember that?” she asked. “You did things to my teenage body that have never and should have never been done. If you can’t admit the truth, you have to answer to God. You are not the victim here.”
Now, Fox News Digital has released an exclusive interview with Bobi and Nate Gephardt in which the former recalled more details of the alleged sexual misconduct.
Speaking with the outlet, Gephart said that she never considered herself a victim for the longest time.
“And then realizing and opening up and just, when you step on the outside looking in, you realize what was really happening and just the prison of lies and deceit and the cover-ups,” she said.
She recalled how her brother confronted her on May 9 concerning what he witnessed when they were much younger. She decided to tell her husband that very day, and she asked her brother to help her get through it.
“I asked my brother to help me tell Nate,” she said. “What I just wanted in my life was freedom, for him to know me and to know what I went through and just to be honest. And I partly believed that it was my fault.”
She later added: “You want to tell the truth, and you begin to realize what you lived through, but at the same time, you’re trying to protect the predator and his family and the church.”
“All I ever wanted was for him to know me, because I lied to him. He thought I was a virgin when we got married,” she said, seated alongside her husband for the interview. “And so this whole time he has no clue that even the man he’s looking up to had done these horrendous things to me.”
Gephart explained the relationship between her family and that of Lowe’s only added to the confusion she felt as a child. Her mother was a nanny for the Lowe family, and both Bobi and her brother even lived with them for a brief period.
“They were like a family to us,” she told the outlet. “And that is what was the hardest part … hard for people to realize that we were there all the time and heavily involved in our church. And this whole time, stuffing those secrets inside me.”
As for how the relationship began, Gephart would only say it unfolded “the way a lot of grooming starts.”
“Shoulder massages, lap sits, long hugs, things like that nature that would get longer and deeper,” she said. In one instance, he allegedly laid his head in Gephart’s lap while they were seated on a couch, but the outlet said she would not elaborate beyond that.
“Everything I knew was that church. My whole life was that church. I went to school at that church,” she said.
Gephart’s advice to anyone in a similar situation is to bring the case to light.
“Find someone you can talk to. Because that was the thing – I didn’t. I was trying to protect my family. I was trying to protect other people,” she said. “You can’t just live your life trying to protect others. You also have to free yourself.”
Although Lowe has stepped down from his role as pastor and awaits a judgment from the church’s board, his fate in terms of legal repercussions is unclear as the age of consent in Indiana is 16.
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Frank (Chip) Webster is a musician and composer, former teacher of percussion and U.S. Army Infantry veteran. He holds a degree in English from Arizona State University.
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