The same testimony also allegedly shows William Meinsen tried to pull the girl into his lap as he gave her the kiss. He was 47 at the time the matter allegedly took place in January of 2014.
Assistant District Attorney Keith Werner told jurors the case is a matter of the victim “not understanding what true love is and her being led down the primrose path by Mr. Meinsen.”
Meinsen’s attorney, Geoffrey Davis, told jurors “there’s always a degree of uncertainty.”
Davis said the state’s argument will show there were several versions of what happened that January. “The state is going to ask you to believe one version. What you will find out is there was only two people in the room.”
Davis asked jurors to not only look at what witnesses said happened but to “look at the circumstances and other things going on. That’s going to help you evaluate her credibility.”
The victim, now 17, sat at the witness stand, often choking back tears and holding tissues.
Meinsen was not only her preacher at New Life Church of Christ in Roanoke Rapids, but worked as a substitute teacher. “He was my preacher. I saw him every day. We had conversations at school.”
In all, the victim said, she had known Meinsen, who was also neighbors with her father and stepmother, for seven years.
On the evening the charge centers on, the victim said she was over at the minister’s house to check on his wife, who had sustained an injury. “I was on one end of the couch and he was on the other. She (his wife) went to bed. He inched closer. He kissed me from the collarbone to the neck. It felt wet. I thought he was trying to gross me out. I didn’t know what to do. I was in shock. I told him bye.”
She said the matter occurred because the minister told her he had a “moment of weakness because he hadn’t been intimate with his wife in months.”
The victim also testified the minister asked her about the color and type of underwear she was wearing as they were going to church as well as remarks made at school about whether she was wearing a thong.
The victim admitted when she first talked to the Halifax County Sheriff’s she told Lieutenant Joseph Sealey nothing happened. Asked why, she said she was scared. In July she said she told him the truth.
Davis asked the victim about a series of tweets she made, some indicating she may have had a crush on the minister, like one which said, “I will never get tired of talking to you.”
Davis also brought up tweets the victim made counting down the days until Meinsen got back from a cruise.
The victim said, however, she didn’t know whether the minister had a Twitter account. “We were friends on Facebook.”
The victim’s stepmother said the girl initially reneged on what she was telling her about the episode. “She thought he had kissed her on the neck. When she saw my reaction she said never mind. What she said at that point I knew something happened. When (we were) told an investigation was going on we knew this was for real.”
The stepmother said she received a text from the minister saying he was sorry it all happened and then another later which said to tell the victim and her father to use the word zebert, similar to a raspberry, when talking about what he allegedly did on her neck.
She said the minister reportedly texted her he was deleting the texts between them. The stepmother did not delete her texts. “Part of me trusted him, part of me thought it was suspicious.”
The stepmother’s testimony backs statements made in a search warrant application which say Meinsen was texting the victim, wanting to know why law enforcement was at her residence. The stepmother had also been receiving text messages from the minister in which “he was advising her what to say regarding the incident if the mother should ask or make a scene.”
Wrote Sealey in the search warrant application, “He also stated in text messages that he would be deleting all text message conversations. The affiant has probable cause to believe that the incident was discussed between the defendant as well as her stepmother.”