HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) -
A Dauphin County church and its youth pastor have been charged as the result of youth gathering where teens were tied up and blindfolded during a mock raid.
Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church in Lower Swatara Township and the youth pastor, 28-year-old Andrew David Jordan, of Elizabethtown, were charged Friday with a felony count of false imprisonment and a misdemeanor count of simple assault.
District Attorney Ed Marsico said an investigating grand jury found that Jordan planned a mock raid for the youth ministry program in March to teach the teens about religious persecution of Christians in other countries.
About 15 to 20 minutes into the program, the lights were turned off in the basement room where the meeting was taking place and several men from the congregation entered the room with flashlights, turned over chairs, and ordered the children to the ground, according to the grand jury presentment.
The masked men bound the children loosely behind the back using plastic zip ties and placed bags and pillowcases over their heads, then moved the teens with their heads covered to a van parked outside and loaded them into the cargo area, the document states.
The men drove the children to the parsonage on the church grounds. The bags and pillowcases were removed and the men then pretended to interrogate and torture Jordan, who was restrained on the other side of a plastic tarp used as a room divider, according to the presentment.
One of the men pretending to be a guard in the parsonage basement was holding an unloaded and disabled semi-automatic rifle, according to the grand jury.
The children were finally driven to a bonfire on the church grounds, where the men explained the incident was a simulation, according to the presentment.
Marsico said that some of the children knew in advance of the staged event and were not afraid, but others were not members of the church and were frightened because they did not know it was a simulation.
He said the youth pastor and other participants would have known that visiting non-member children were among those who would be subjected to the mock abduction.
"The adults involved acted with good intentions but with an unjustified disregard for the consequences of forcibly detaining minors without the knowledge or consent of the children or their parents," Marsico said.
One of the visiting children, a 14-year-old girl, told authorities she did not know of the mock raid and was forced to the ground when she did not follow instructions to get down. She said she feared she would be raped, and as a result of the mock raid suffered a cut to her lip and bruises to both her legs, according to the presentment.
The grand jury's report states that the effects of the mock raid were exacerbated by the memory of the kidnapping and murder of the teen's young friend years earlier.
Another child told the grand jury that she was frightened throughout the staged event, and experienced fear for several following days as a result of the mock abduction.
Marsico said that if Jordan is convicted, he could face probation or up to 10 years in prison. The church would face fines if it is found accountable.
A gun similar to one authorities say was used in the fake raid at Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church.
