A Pennsylvania pastor claims he was merely counseling a naked man bound and gagged with nylon rope in the pastor’s car found by police parked on a residential street.
George Nelson Gregory, 61, was sitting in the back seat of a car parked outside a house in Homestead when cops — responding to a call for a suspicious vehicle — spotted a naked man bound with nylon rope in the front seat around 11:30 p.m. on Friday, KDKA reported.
But the preacher claims “nothing weird” was happening and he has “nothing to hide.”
A witness told police the naked man got out of the car in full view from his daughter’s window.
NY Post reports: Gregory told the officers that he and other unidentified man were “just playing” in a consensual setting, adding that they “meet up from time to time to play with each other,” according to a criminal complaint obtained by the station.
And despite being inside a car on a well-lit public street — one witness said he saw the naked man from his daughter’s window — Gregory believed they were in a private setting, police said.
Gregory, who could not be reached for comment Tuesday, still disputed what cops said about the bizarre ordeal, telling a KDKA reporter he has “nothing to hide.”
“I did nothing wrong,” Gregory told the station, adding that he and the man were approached by police because the officer thought somebody in the car was unconscious.
“I was counseling a young man with a drug problem,” Gregory told the station. “It did turn strange, but it wasn’t my doing, OK? And I was adamant that I’m participating in that way. And so that’s when the police pulled up, and they assume things, but I’m standing by my story. It’s not true.”
Gregory said he and his wife have been trying to help the man for years.
“I won’t deny that he began to take his clothes off and propositioned me, but I will deny, on a stack of Bibles with God as my witness, that I did nothing,” Gregory told KDKA.
Gregory and the unidentified man will receive a summons for open lewdness and indecent exposure, accusations the pastor disputes, since it wasn’t he who was naked at the time, he said.
“There’s no reason for me to be charged with open lewdness,” he said.
Gregory serves as a preacher at the Waterfront Christian Community Church in West Homestead, according to its website.
“If you have ever heard him preach or teach, you will agree that he is definitely using the gifts God gave him,” Gregory’s bio on the website reads. “George has a way of presenting messages from God’s word, the Bible, in such a way that you walk away saying, ‘now it makes sense.’ He speaks with clarity and conviction. There is no doubt that George believes and lives what he preaches.”