Roberson Says He’s Due Credit Pastor Wants Talks With Media Counted As Community Service

After his acquittal on child rape and molestation charges last year, unordained pastor Robert “Roby” Roberson launched a media blitz on the so-called Wenatchee sex-ring cases.

Roberson contends he and 27 other people accused of child sex abuse in the cases were victimized by false accusations and obsessed authorities. To promote that perspective, he has been on dozens of television talk shows, met with at least 100 reporters and faxed out thousands of documents.

Now he says some of the time he invested in that campaign should count toward the 240 hours of community service he was ordered to serve after pleading guilty in March to welfare fraud.

That contention was initially advanced in June by Mario Fry, president of Concerned Citizens for Legal Accountability - an advocacy group for those accused of participating in the alleged sex rings.

Fry wrote a letter to the state Department of Corrections saying Roberson had fulfilled his community-service obligations by doing work for the organization. He said Roberson’s duties included making more than 200 copies of a videotape of his March 21 appearance on the “Gordon Elliott Show”; a trip to Hailey, Idaho, for an unrelated child-molestation trial; and preparing documents needed for a presentation by Trevor Armbrister, who wrote about the Wenatchee cases for Reader’s Digest.

Douglas County Prosecutor Steve Clem declined to speak directly about Roberson’s case. But generally speaking, he said, “It’s not left up to the convicted felon to determine what their community service will be. That would be ludicrous.”

Marge Littrell, community correction supervisor for the Department of Correction’s Wenatchee office, also said she could not comment specifically on Roberson’s case, citing confidentiality rules.

But community service usually is performed with government or non-profit agencies helping low-income, disabled, infirm and otherwise disadvantaged people, she said.

Roberson said he was told he could do his service with any non-profit group as long as it wasn’t the East Wenatchee Pentecostal Church of God House of Prayer, where he serves, or the food bank he formerly operated in the church basement.

Roberson contends he reported to officials immediately after sentencing, and that they never got back to him with a specific assignment.

Roberson pleaded guilty March 5 to first-degree theft and and false swearing, a gross misdemeanor. In exchange, prosecutors dismissed eight counts of second-degree perjury and all charges against his wife, Connie, who had faced nine counts of second-degree perjury and one count of first-degree theft.

The Robersons were accused of fraudulently obtaining more than $27,000 in welfare aid between 1991 and 1995 - $11,865 worth of food stamps, $10,181 in Aid to Families with Dependent Children payments and $4,960 in medical payments.