A 67-year-old church volunteer was sentenced Friday to 98 years to life in prison for molesting a male relative from 1997 through 2001 in the Stanton area.
Terry Lyn Myers of Garden Grove was convicted in February of five counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and three counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a minor, all felonies.
Myers volunteered at multiple churches in Orange County, including Grace Community Church, formerly known as Nutwood Church, in Garden Grove, from 1995-2013, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
Since 2013, volunteered at MidCities Baptist Church in Westminster, deputies said.
The boy said Myers began molesting him when he was about 9 years old with cucumbers and hot dogs, prosecutors said in a sentencing brief.
In one instance, Myers sexually assaulted the boy “in exchange for a trip to church camp,” prosecutors said.
The boy would go to church camp every year, but he was being “punished” with not being allowed to go on year, prompting Myers to tell him he would intervene on his behalf if the victim let him sexually assault him, prosecutors said.
The boy said the trips were an “escape” for him “from his chaotic reality,” prosecutors said.
The boy was sexually assaulted from ages 8 through 12, prosecutors said. At times the victim was forced to watch pornography when he was about 8 or 9.
The boy “was a child who came from a chaotic and broken home, looking for safety and security,” prosecutors said in the court papers. “He had no one to care for him or protect him. The defendant knew this an applied physical, psychological and emotional force to repeatedly sexually assault (him).”