It was not the “affection program” former Ambassador Church member Richard Leblanc had envisioned when his church leader described it. At the front of the church, under the pulpit, his revered pastor, Roy Wood was entangled in a 20-minute embrace with a female member, his waist thrust forward into hers and her arms around his neck.
Royden Wood has pleaded not guilty to 13 charges. Ten of them are for assault and assault with a weapon in connection with his conduct involving three boys who were pupils at the church’s alternative school between 1985 and 1987. The other three — two for sexual assault and one for sexual exploitation — involve female complainants.
The man was describing what he, his older brother and another friend called “the basement treatment,” the most excessive of a wide array of physical assaults they said they endured as Wood’s students at the Ambassador Baptist Church’s alternative school between 1985 and 1987.
The trial for a teacher accused of bizarre abuse at a defunct Baptist school began this week amid allegations of students standing at attention for hours on end, having facial hair plucked with pliers and a greeting that involved fondling the breasts of parishioners.