American justice: Couple faces 15 years for beach sex -- pastor faces 4 months for molesting girl

A northern California pastor will serve no more than four months in jail for molesting a 9-year-old girl multiple times.

Venije Singkoh, a pastor at churches in San Francisco and Concord who also held services at his Daly City home, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor count of child sexual annoyance.

He had initially been charged with three felony counts of child molestation after investigators said he held the girl on his lap and kissing her inappropriately.

The girl told her mother and father that the 70-year-old Singkoh used his tongue while kissing her, and the family called a church meeting to confront the pastor.

Singkoh repeatedly claimed it was an accident and denied inappropriately kissing the girl and others.

A judge ruled in December that the pastor should stand trial on only one of the felony counts, deciding that kissing a girl on the cheek and another on the lips did not amount to “lewd intent.”

Singkoh, a pastor at the Indonesian Pentecostal Foursquare Church, pleaded no contest Friday to the lesser charge and will be sentenced July 1.

He faces up to four months in jail on the misdemeanor count.

A Florida couple found guilty Monday of having consensual sex on a public beach could face 15 years in prison for their conviction on lewd and lascivious exhibition charges.