The Reverend Freak

Her next memory was of a presence lifting off of her. She looked up to see a naked Hornbuckle run into the bathroom. She realized she was on the bed with no clothes on. Still woozy, she managed to stand and find her clothes on the side of the bed. She tried to get dressed again, but just then Hornbuckle emerged from the bathroom.

"I'm not done," he said. He grabbed her wrist and guided her back down on the bed. She was having trouble focusing. She felt what she would later describe as the feeling of a tampon being inserted too far into her vagina. She tried to push him off, and he jumped up. As she got up again to get dressed, she says she saw him masturbating.

Before they left the apartment, she said, he asked her to blow out the candles he'd lit on the bedside table. This time she refused.

The Prophecy

Renee Hornbuckle could preach, but she could also prophesy. Once, she did just that to Traci Williams, a bleach-blond, caramel-skinned woman with a nose ring. It would be Williams' mission to break something big, Renee told her. It took a long time for Williams to grasp the import of Renee's prophecy. Today its meaning seems obvious to her.

"You are going to confront or uncover something," Williams said she was told, not long after she and her husband Tony joined Agape Christian Fellowship in 1997. She was going through a rough time at work and had asked to talk to the pastors about it. The prophecy must be about her job, she thought. But then she saw visions that led her to believe otherwise.

One day as she was leaving the church with her family, she says, she looked back and saw a vision of all the people in the building tied down with chains.

She saw church elders standing at the door, bound to the ground. She asked her mother about the vision. "These people are in jeopardy of their salvation," her mother explained.

Another time, Williams said, she saw a spirit spring from one of the female elders during a church service. It flew out of the woman, who was rumored to be having an affair with Bishop Hornbuckle, looking like a ghostly shadow. Then it stood next to her with its hands on its hips and spoke.

"It said, 'This is my house,'" Williams says, swaying her body from side to side. Only later, when the confessions began pouring in, did she understand what she'd seen.

Many of Hornbuckle's victims, she said, confided in her and her husband months before their allegations became public in the media.

Tony Williams, Traci's husband, says at first he and his wife would wonder why people were suddenly leaving the church. Then, as the stories rolled in, "Traci and I put it together." There were the Gressets. Mary Gresset testified during the trial that Hornbuckle had tried to seduce her while her husband, Mark, was in rehab for alcohol addiction. They told the Williamses about their experience.

Then, Tony says, he was the one who finally convinced Joycelyn's parents that the rumors about the bishop's numerous affairs were true when they refused to believe what was happening at the church. Traci worked with the relatives of several of the accusers and would end up hearing their stories at work.

Tony Williams, a hairdresser who used to color Renee Hornbuckle's hair, is also a touring musician and backup singer for Kanye West. He'd run into the bishop at some of the area nightclubs where he performed. Tony was there to do a job; the bishop was there to chase women. He says many victims came to the couple totally unaware that others had shared similar stories of what Hornbuckle had done to them. "They...would feel led to come to us and say, 'This is what happened to me,'" he says.

The Williamses stopped attending Agape in April 2004. Though rumors about the bishop were flying all over the church, many members elected to stay. "They have your emotion and your spirit and your money and your time," Traci says.

The members, bound up in what Traci calls "man's rules," stayed blindly loyal to the bishop. Scriptural references about submitting to those in authority were cited constantly. Emphasis was placed on never questioning the bishop's role. Even new member pamphlets command parishioners to stay loyal to their leaders.