A self-proclaimed pastor who argued his sexual relations with an underage girl were legal because he married her in the church that he invented when she was 10, has been found guilty of sexual assault of a minor.

The judge threw out Cormier’s “marriage” defence in June, saying there was no evidence of a marriage and the marriage certificate Cormier presented was a fake.

By the time she was 9, Daniel Cormier, a self-proclaimed minister of a now-defunct downtown Montreal church, was having intercourse with her, the girl testified yesterday at Cormier’s trial.

The leader of a fringe evangelical movement kept his so-called marriage to a 10-year-old girl hidden from her mother, a Quebec court heard yesterday.

The woman, now 18, will be able to testify against Daniel Cormier, 56, by video link, Judge Sylvie Durand said.

A teenager delayed a court hearing for hours yesterday because she was afraid of facing a man three times her age who claims to have married her when she was 10.