Michigan Republican’s father appears to lash out at alleged sex abuse victim in his church sermon

Former Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield groomed and sexually assaulted a teenage girl at the Christian school where he taught. Now his father, who is a pastor and founder of the Northern Michigan church and school where Lee Chatfield’s accuser first met him, is speaking in defense of his son, Bridge Michigan reports.

Pastor Rusty Chatfield railed against the press and an unnamed “enemy” this weekend, telling his congregants: “You can't believe everything you read in a newspaper, on the internet or whatever.”

The pastor went on to tell his congregants that they "should know what I'm talking about – you cannot believe that. The truth will come forward.”

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In a report from Bridge Michigan from this Friday, Rebekah Chatfield, 26, told Bridge that Lee Chatfield began sexually assaulting her when she was 15 or 16-years-old and a student at the school. She was the girlfriend of Lee’s younger brother at the time. She says the assaults carried on for more than a decade. Lee claims the encounters were "consensual."

“We are in certain circumstances, as all of you know, which I'm not going to refer to specifically. We are in certain circumstances now that, yeah, we are in the spotlight,” ,” Rusty told congregants, adding that “the enemy, he wants to distract us from the work of God.”

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