Attorneys representing Pastor John Gray say he is a victim of a malicious extortion attempt. The 47-year-old megachurch leader of Relentless Church in South Carolina is involved in yet another cheating scandal.
New allegations came to light over the weekend when YouTube blogger UnwinewithTashaK obtained a short video clip featuring the portly preacher.
In the clip, Gray, picture with his wife Aventer Gray, is speaking with a 48-year-old Houston woman named “Mary”. He criticizes his wife’s cooking and he asks the woman to go on an exotic trip with him.
The woman claims she sent Gray nude photos of her breasts at his request — and she said he video-chatted with her while revealing his underwear.
She claimed he invited her to visit his home and she declined because she believed he wanted to sleep with her.
Mary said she hooked up with Gray after the death of her brother’s wife in April. Her brother, a pastor in New Jersey, is friends with Gray, who spoke at the memorial service.
After the service, Gray asked for her friendship on Instagram and began liking her posts. Gray asked where she worked and he looked up the phone number for the hair salon where she was employed.
“A couple days after that he called my job and I answered the phone. I’m the manager of the hair salon and I answered the phone and he said ‘Hey Mary, it’s John Gray,'” she said.
Mary said she was shocked and told him it wasn’t a good time to talk but she gave him her personal number, which she described as a bad decision in hindsight.
She said Gray asked for her measurements and for explicit photos. She complied, sending him images of her breasts.
But lawyers for the embattled preacher say he did not step out on his long-suffering wife this time because he and Mary never reached first base.
“There are allegations that there were phone conversations between the two parties, and that’s essentially the extent of the allegations,” attorney Devon Puriefoy of the law firm Truluck Thomason told Greenville News. “When you take her own words, she says there was no affair, no physical contact, they never met each other, they never saw each other.”
That’s good news for Aventer, who shares two minor children, daughter Theory Aspyn-Sky and son John W. Gray IV, with her husband.
