Testimony begins in trial of church volunteer accused of sexually abusing boys

An alleged victim of child sexual abuse took the witness stand Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court and testified that a former Costa Mesa Sunday school volunteer lured him into posing for nude photos in exchange for $300.

The witness, who is now 20 and was identified in court only by his first name and last initial, was the first to testify in the trial of Christopher McKenzie, a 51-year-old pool cleaner accused of using his job and position as a volunteer at two churches in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach to meet victims.

McKenzie has pleaded not guilty to 24 felonies related to sexual abuse and child pornography that authorities say occurred between 1996 and 2012. If convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of 234 years to life in prison.

Newport Beach police learned of McKenzie in 2012 when Wednesday’s witness, then 18, reported that he had been abused when he was between 10 and 12 years old.

As the trial began, the witness wiped his eyes as he told his story. He occasionally balked and swore at a defense attorney who questioned whether he had an ulterior motive for accusing McKenzie.

At one moment, he pointed to McKenzie and asked the judge, “Can you have him stop looking at me please?”

Judge Patrick Donahue shook his head and answered no.

The witness described meeting McKenzie at the Newport Beach apartment complex where they both lived. McKenzie cleaned the pool where the boy played “all day every day,” the witness said.

He said McKenzie offered him a job diving into pools around Orange County to fish out underwater lights that needed to be changed.

After some of the jobs, he said, McKenzie insisted the boy rinse the chlorine off his body. As he showered, the witness testified, McKenzie would rub soap all over the boy’s body, touching his genitals and buttocks.

“He had told me that he was just going to wash me off and it’s normal because he did it to his kids,” the witness said.

After one job in Laguna Beach, McKenzie said the pool’s owner was a sculptor who had offered $300 if the boy would pose for nude photos as a model for her next work, the witness testified.

The witness said McKenzie rubbed baby oil all over the boy’s body before snapping naked pictures of him posing on an air mattress.

“I didn’t really question it, because $300 was a lot to me,” he said.

Prosecutor Heather Brown told jurors in her opening statement that this is a pattern they will see as the trial progresses.

McKenzie used or tried to use the sculptor story on three boys who worked with him after meeting at Rock Harbor church in Costa Mesa or Christ Church by the Sea in Newport Beach.

Brown said he would push them into posing, one time telling a boy who refused, “Are you ashamed of the body God gave you?”

McKenzie’s abuse, she alleged, also included two boys he molested and raped for years. According to Brown, one of them eventually ended the abuse when he broke free from McKenzie while he tried to rape him in a closed bedroom, as he had many times before.

“[The boy] will tell you he often cried during these incidents,” she said.

Public defender Darren Thompson’s opening statement presented McKenzie as a pious man who is shocked by the accusations against him.

He told about McKenzie growing up in Sacramento, sitting at his grandmother’s feet as she read books to him and his sister.

“The one book that she would read in particular was the Bible,” Thompson said.

Later, as Thompson questioned the first witness’s account, he asked about a civil lawsuit filed against McKenzie based on the molestation accusations. The witness testified that he had little involvement in the suit — that his father had pushed the idea to cover the costs of his therapy to help cope with the molestation. The civil action was later dropped, he said.

“Sir, isn’t it true that these allegations are all about money?” Thompson said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” the witness shot back.

Later, he added, “No money amount in the world could compensate for coming up here and having to discuss this.”