A TPUSA-linked pastor who’s facing sickening and detailed allegations that he sexually abused 22 Romanian orphans and street children, is soliciting public donations in the face of multiple lawsuits.
Paul Havsgaard, a pastor at Greg Laurie’s TPUSA linked megachurch, made headlines last fall when lawsuits from his alleged victims started piling up. Havsgaard said in a Jan. 20 letter that he needs public donations to fight the pedophilia charges.
“I am not an attorney, nor can I afford to hire an attorney,” Havsgaard wrote the court. “I have repeatedly denied all of these horrific accusations and attested to my innocence.”
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Greg Laurie is closely linked to TPUSA, recently touring and sharing a stage with Erika Kirk during the Make Heaven Crowded tour. He is also accused in dozens of lawsuits alleging pedophilia and child trafficking connected to his ministry’s overseas operations in, wait for it…Romania.
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U.S. District Judge Sunshine Skyes received the letter from Havsgaard at the federal courthouse in Riverside, California, on Feb. 2, court records show, more than six weeks after Havsgaard was supposed to respond to a summons.
The other defendants — Harvest Christian Fellowship, Greg Laurie, and former pastor Richard Shutte — have hired lawyers and begun work on their defense. Harvest Christian Fellowship, a Calvary Chapel megachurch in Riverside, California, employed Havsgaard when he first went to Romania and worked closely with the nonprofit he set up in the early 2000s.
Havsgaard blames the Romanian children
In his letter, he dismisses all the allegations as malicious fiction. He blames the Romanian children he once fed, clothed and housed and the law firm representing them in the court.
“Everything I am accused of in these lawsuits are blatant, ugly lies manufactured for one purpose, to achieve a payout,” Havsgaard wrote in the letter. “The former street kids behind all of these lawsuits are only one part of the kids we were able to help and it is all about money for them. It has always been all about money to them, when I was still there and now.”
Havsgaard said that the needy children in Romania could have left the orphanages — which were more like foster homes — at any time, if the conditions were not to their liking. He told the court that when he started to care for them, Romanian officials warned him street children would be ungrateful. Yet he still doesn’t believe they would be this ungrateful if an attorney hadn’t “used the promise of financial gain to coax witnesses to testify.”
However, the testimony from the former street kids is detailed and extensive. The first plaintiff named in a 77-page complaint, Marian Barbu, recalls that Havsgaard would masturbate in front of him when he was a child, kissing his neck and his body.
Now 34, Barbu remembers Havsgaard touching his penis. When he objected and started crying out, he claims, the minister choked him and said, “It will be over soon.”
Another plaintiff, 28-year-old Alexandra-Elana Langa, remembers that Havsgaard would strip her and spank her violently while touching himself over his pants. After, Havsgaard would stop her from putting her clothes back on, take her into his arms and tell her she was his daughter, Langa told attorneys, according to the complaint filed in federal court.
“Alexandra lived in constant fear of the sexual environment at Harvest and that she would be sexually assaulted, as well as, physically assaulted,” the lawsuit says.
Langa left the orphanage when she was 9.
The 20 other plaintiffs have similar stories about growing up in Havsgaard’s care, with accounts of extensive abuse and long-term consequences for their mental health.
Havsgaard did not respond to specific allegations in his letter. He said he is angry at the accusations, characterizing them as not only false but wildly unfair. He claims he was really the only one who cared about children suffering in Romania.
“I saw them living on the streets, in wind and snow of January weather, doing whatever they could (begging and stealing) to get food, stay warm and survive,” Havsgaard wrote. “Most of their families didn’t know where they were and didn’t care. … I was even asked more than once why I helped them and was told they were worthless.”
Havsgaard stayed in ministry
Havsgaard also appeals to his reputation, noting in the letter that he was a pastor for 27 years before he went to Romania. For much of that time, he was Greg Laurie’s No. 2 man at Harvest.
Havsgaard returned to the U.S. in 2008. He worked at several Southern California churches in the Calvary Chapel association, including one in Riverside and another in Redlands. It is unclear whether Harvest leadership informed those churches of allegations against Havsgaard. Several former employees told The Roys Report that Harvest secretly settled an expensive lawsuit involving allegations of sexual misconduct overseas in 2016.
Havsgaard, who lives in a three-bedroom home west of Riverside in Forest Falls, continued teaching a Bible study in the area until 2025, according to his letter.
“These lawsuits have ruined any hope of being able to minister,” he wrote. “No church wants to risk a potential lawsuit.”
The court has not yet decided whether to appoint an attorney to represent Havsgaard.
The judge has decided to merge the lawsuits into a single case. She has given Harvest, Laurie and Shutte until April to file a motion to dismiss.
