Ex-Hosanna pastor: Confession forced

• By DEBRA LEMOINE
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Aug 30, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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AMITE — Former Hosanna Church pastor Louis D. Lamonica told a Tangipahoa Parish jury Friday that he falsely confessed to child rape because he thought it would be the only way to get his wife and children back.

Lamonica, 49, of Hammond, is on trial in the 21st Judicial District Court on four counts of aggravated rape of his sons when they were age 11 or younger. Seven church members were indicted in 2005 on charges of molesting children. Lamonica is the second among them to go on trial.

Lamonica’s attorney, Michael Thiel, maintained in questioning his client Friday that Lamonica falsely confessed to child rape because he was being controlled by a woman who claimed to be a prophet of God.

Assistant District Attorney Don Wall asserted in his cross-examination of Lamonica that Lamonica allowed himself to be controlled out of fear that church members would go to the authorities with proof of his sex crimes.

While Thiel had his client on the stand Friday, Lamonica talked about his troubled marriage and his failed ministry at his late father’s church in Ponchatoula.

Lois Mowbray, the so-called prophet, took control of the church and began to control his wife and the remaining handful of congregants by 2003, Lamonica testified.

Mowbray, 56, formerly of Ponchatoula, had been arrested by the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office in May 2005 as an accessory after the fact to rape and failure to report a felony. Mowbray was never charged by the District Attorney’s Office and was never brought before a Tangipahoa Parish grand jury.

After his wife forced him to move into the church in 2003, Lamonica testified, his wife told him to work for an electrical company owned by Mowbray and other church members for $10 a day or she would divorce him and take his sons away.

“I really don’t want a divorce,” Lamonica testified. “I really want to work this out.”

After working 10-hour days installing wiring, Lamonica then would work around the church doing chores, such as scrubbing doors and toilets with toothbrushes, he testified.

For a while, Lamonica said, he had to wear a dress and two rubber snakes representing his mother and aunt because they were “pharaohs,” Lamonica testified. Church members once shaved his head and called him “pharaoh” as well, he said.

“She convinced herself she was like Moses and Tangipahoa was coming out of Egypt,” Lamonica said, referring to the biblical story of Moses leading the Jews people out of slavery in Egypt. “Pharaoh was blocking the way.”

In addition to suffering humiliation, Lamonica often was beaten by other church members, he testified. Or, the other church members would pace around him while cursing him in the name of God, he said.