The pastor made me do it.
That's what a teenage girl told Will Evans when the California Watch reporter asked her why she was out soliciting donations for a West Oakland church at a BART station at night. She said that if she refused, she would get in trouble.
Evans would see kids asking strangers for money when he took BART home from work.
He smelled a rat and started digging.
What legitimate man of God sends children out into the streets at night in harm's way where they can be robbed and God knows what else to ask for money?
It wasn't fresh ground. Two years ago, a CBS report had raised disturbing questions about St. Andrew Missionary Baptist Church school and its fundraising practices. But nothing ever came of it.
Evans dug deeper. He discovered that the K-12 private school is run by Robert Lacy, a 79-year-old pastor who pleaded guilty to theft in 2007. According to court documents, the good reverend helped himself to his dead father's Social