You Are The Father!

A former pastor who once was consider to be America's next great black preacher... Has admitted to fathering a child by a woman who claims he raped her during a counseling session in 2004...Court documents show the civil lawsuit was settled in mediation and terms are confidential... Initially the victim accused Gilyard of using a session after her husband died to convince her she needed to have sex with him to hasten her healing....

Her lawsuit accused Shiloh of negligence in hiring, supervising and retaining Gilyard as pastor...The victim amended her complaint to say that when she rejected Gilyard’s advances he pushed her to the floor and sexually assaulted her. When she later discovered she was pregnant, she said Gilyard persuaded her that only by continuing to have sex with him would she receive support...The church quietly settled the suit for $300,000.

But , over the years Gilyard has resigned from a total of five churches...All with a claim of sexual misconduct.... Many of the top leaders in his organization disbelieved the accusations, and continued to support him until a article was published in 1991...In which over a dozens women had accused him of sexual misconduct, with some alleging rape.

Gilyard resigned Jan. 4, 2008, after 15 years as pastor of Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church a 7,000-member predominantly African-American congregation. As a young minister in the 1980s, he was mentored by prominent Southern Baptist Convention leaders including Paige Patterson and Jerry Vines and promoted on Jerry Falwell's Old Time Gospel Hour.