Pastor Admits Adultery, Asks Forgiveness, Gets Standing Ovation. Then The Woman Tells Congregation How Old She Was.

A 65-year-old Indiana pastor admitted to his congregation that he had committed adultery in the past, begged for forgiveness, then was rewarded with a standing ovation.

Then the woman with whom he had conducted the affair ascended the stage, saying  the pastor had slept with her when he was 38 and she was 16.

“For 27 years I lived in a prison. It was not 20 years.  I lived in a prison of lies and shame,” she stated.

Pastor John Lowe prompted the response by telling the congregation at the New Life Christian Church:

I committed adultery. It was nearly 20 years ago. It continued far too long. It involved one person and there’s been no other, nor any other situation of unbecoming conduct for the last 20 years. I will not use the Bible to defend, protect, deflect my past sin. I have no defense. I committed the adultery.

“I didn’t make a misjudgment; I sinned,” he stated. “I need to say that and you deserve to hear it. I have been asked why did I wait so long to deal with it. Why hide it all these years. The answer? There is no good answer.”

Lowe said he could have claimed he kept silent to protect the woman involved but admitted, “The silence was to protect myself as well.”

After he finished by asking forgiveness, then announcing he was stepping down from his position and exiting the stage, the congregation gave Lowe a standing ovation.

Then Bobi Gephart, now 43, and her husband Nate strode up to the stage, according to the Daily Mail.

“If you love us, let us talk,” Nate said into the microphone.

“For 27 years I lived in a prison. It was not 20 years.  I lived in a prison of lies and shame,” Bobi Gephart recalled. “Lying to protect the Lowe family. For years I thought I was a horrible person, having suicidal thoughts and not realizing what had been truly done to me; that I was a victim, and I would still be in a prison, if my brother — and many of you know him— had not just approached me just two weeks ago with what he had seen as a teenager that bothered him all these years: his pastor in bed with his younger sister.”

“A T-shirt and underwear on,” she remembered. “People knew but were too afraid to come forward. And they have now. The lies and the manipulation have to stop.”

“I was a prisoner and you kept me in your prison,” she said to Lowe. “I’m a prisoner no longer. I was just 16 when you took my virginity on your office floor. Do you remember that? I know you do and I have plenty of other stories that I could bring to your remembrance.”

“You did things to my teenage body that had never and should have never been done. If you can’t admit the truth, you have to answer to God. You are not the victim here,” she declared.

“I tried to tell someone but all that was done was