Defendant’s sons: No abuse

• By DEBRA LEMOINE
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Aug 28, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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AMITE — The elder son of Louis D. Lamonica said on the witness stand Wednesday that his thoughts of being raped by his father and others are fuzzy because he made them up.

As they did in a previous trial, both of Lamonica’s sons recanted on the witness stand their previous allegations that they had been sexually abused by their father.

Lamonica, 49, of Hammond, on trial for the aggravated rape of his two sons, is a former pastor of the now-defunct Hosanna Church in Ponchatoula. Seven members of the Hosanna Church congregation were indicted in 2005 on charges of sexually abusing three children.

Lamonica is accused of four counts of aggravated rape of his sons while they were 11 or younger. They are now ages 22 and 18.

“The question is why would you say things that were so horrible if it wasn’t true,” defense attorney Michael Thiel asked the elder son. “I think that’s what everyone wants to know.”

The elder son had told authorities that his memories of the abuse are blurry, which he said means that his memories of the abuse aren’t real.

“You can’t have as much detail as a real memory,” the elder son testified. “I can’t remember time or what everyone was wearing or things.”

The 22-year-old man further explained that he couldn’t link the rapes to specific events in his life, such as taking a math test in school or going to see a movie.

Instead, the memories were created because of suggestions made by his mother or another church member, Nicole Bernard. Ideas about how the abuse could occur came to him because he was told to write about specific aspects of the abuse by his mother, the elder son testified. Both boys wrote hundreds of pages detailing abuse by their father and other church members.

“If it was something that happened all the time and it was normal to you, you might have a hazy memory,” Assistant District Attorney Don Wall suggested to the young man.

The elder son also said on the witness stand that he was taught at church that sinful thoughts are the same as doing the acts. Therefore, he was told that if he thought it, he should write it down because it probably happened.

“At my church, I was taught that if you thought about it, it carried on into the physical (world),” the elder son said.

“If I thought about killing someone, then there would be a dead body?” Wall asked.