Suit: Fla. preacher abused underage girl in Minn.
A federal lawsuit accuses a Florida-based evangelist and founder of a worldwide ministry of molesting an underage girl at his church's northern Minnesota retreat center.
Lawyers in the office of St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson said they would file the suit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Minnesota. It alleges that Gerald Derstine founder of Gospel Crusade Inc. of Bradenton, Fla., molested the girl starting in 2007, when she was 11, at the Strawberry Lake Christian Retreat Center in Ogema, Minn.
Derstine did not immediately return a phone message from The Associated Press. He denied the lawsuit's allegations to the Star Tribune, and says he believes it stems from the firing of the accuser's mother from a job at the camp.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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