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NAACP Image Awards Special Screening Of OWN's 'The Book Of John Gray'

Source: Robin L Marshall / Getty

Via MadameNoire

This morning, I stumbled across a tweet that had wondering if I missed something.

Now, I saw Pastor John Gray and his wife, Aventer speak about the scripture they spoke over the strange woman who tried to come in, infiltrate their marriage and thereby ruin the reputation he’s built as a church leader.

Months later, the couple appeared on “The Real,” where Adrienne Houghton asked if Gray had an affair. There he said that he did not sleep with anyone and that there was no baby. Instead, Gray claimed that he had an emotional affair.

“Over a year ago, my wife and I were in a very difficult place in our marriage. And in that time I began to converse with someone other than a counselor, other than a pastoral leader, which is literally where I should have taken my issues and challenges and began to converse,” he said. “And I was even in the presence of that person one time. But being in the presence of someone is not the same as sleeping with them. I did not sleep with anyone. There is no baby. There’s none of that. So it’s important for me to take responsibility for the areas where I did come up short. Sharing things about my marriage outside of my wife and outside of trusted counselors, it was wrong, and I take responsibility for that. But I will not take responsibility for that which I did not do. As a pastor, it’s important for people to know when I get up in that pulpit, I come not as a perfect man, but as a broken man, which is why we talked about these very things at the first sermon of our church. People act like this is something brand new, but we’ve walked through this. We have peace, but people don’t. The genesis of this was over a year ago, but we talked about this in May at our church. And so we’re moving forward, we’re believing God that this will be an opportunity for other people to heal. But I do want to set that record straight.”

Aventer, as you might have guessed, was sitting by her husband’s side as he offered this explanation. And she smiled and clapped when he assured us that he didn’t sleep with another woman. And everything seemed to be resolved.

But it turns out, I did miss something. After clips of Gray’s sermon came out at the top of the year, the woman who Aventer spoke about in the clip came forward to tell her side of the story. Apparently, she took issue being named as the woman who tried to disrupt their marriage and their ministry. She claims that while she believed she was maintaining a friendship with Gray, he was attempting to escalate the relationship to something else.

In an interview with Larry Reid, a woman whose identity has been hidden, claimed that she’s known John Gray for twenty years before he became the aggressor, trying to transition their relationship into something else. The two started speaking when she was going through a divorce because of domestic violence.

In the interview with Reid she said, “It started with him—he likes to say—breathing life into me. So he was just there as far as talking to me, pretty much pastoring me, ministering to me. And I called on him to do a favor to a person that I knew that was struggling with some addiction issues. And so I called upon him to help with that. It was an employee of mine. That employee actually wound up speaking with him and it got him on the straight and narrow. So I sent him a text message telling him thank you. And he said, ‘Whatever you need.’ And I was like ‘Well thank you.’ And he said, ‘I’m talking about you.’

This interaction launched the relationship. Later, the woman claimed that she fell upon hard times financially. Gray was there to help.

“I ran into an issue financially and he was just like absolutely. and it was a big deal. It was a really big thing. From that moment on, it started from there. It snowballed into ‘I just love you so much. I always loved you. I always thought about you. I always cared about you.’ Then he was going through the stuff with his wife and he was saying how he didn’t like her, didn’t love her, that he was never attracted to her, that he only married her because she looked good on paper. His exact words were, ‘She don’t suck. She don’t f*ck. She ain’t never washed a pair of my drawers.”

The mistress said that Gray led her to believe that he was going to leave her because he was tired of wearing a mask.

And according to her, it was more than just an emotional affair.

She described how Gray would behave. “He would say, ‘The Lord told me that you need some money so go ahead and check your cash app. I already put money in your account. Then he’ll be like, ‘What color panties you got on? Let me see your nipples.’ … He likes to jack off on the screen and he comes and when he comes, he speaks in tongues. No joke. When we slept together, he jumped up!”

This is just her side of the story. There’s no telling how credible her story is or what is true and what is not. But what was particularly damning about her allegations were the voicemails she provided. In them, Gray confirms that he sent her money and confirms that the two were in the same hotel room, the same time Aventer was there.

In the voicemails, Gray says:

“Yo are you like ignoring me now? I’m just trying to make sure. Let me get this straight. I’m being ignored by someone who I have sought to sow seed into, get resources to. I’m in your city and I can’t get a call back. I just wanted to make sure I got my facts straight. Got it!”

In another voice message, he says, “When you get this message, delete it. My wife saw our text messages from Friday. She knows you were in the same hotel as me and she does not know that I went to your room. She doesn’t remember me leaving. She’s got your number.”

You can listen to Gray’s voicemails and the interview with the alleged mistress in the video below. The voicemails and the interview with the mistress begin at 1:02:50.

Related: Pastor John Gray Denies Sleeping With Another Woman, ‘I Had An Emotional Affair’

Related: Pastor John Gray May Have Confessed to Cheating on Wife

Related: Lakewood Pastor John Gray Defends Gifting His Wife A $200K Lamborghini For Their Anniversary