Conduct of boy, his mom is focus of monk’s trial

JOHNSON CITY — A Texas psychotherapist, testifying Thursday in the trial of Jonathan Irving Hitt, an Orthodox Christian monk accused of indecency with a child, said she believed the child’s account of being forced to have sex with Hitt.

But, under questioning by a defense lawyer, psychotherapist Susan Packwood of Sugar Land said she was only called on by the boy’s mother to treat her son, not to establish his credibility.

“My job was not to determine if it was true or not,” said Packwood, a prosecution witness.

The 14-year-old boy testified Wednesday that Hitt, 39, got in bed with him — or insisted that he get in bed with Hitt — and kissed and fondled him on three occasions in summer 1997 at the Christ of the Hills Monastery near Blanco.

The boy, whose mother sent him to be schooled at the Hill Country monastery when he was 8 years old, testified that he was told by the monastery’s founding monk, Samuel Alexander Greene Jr., that Hitt’s advances were acceptable and not to tell his mother.

The trial of Greene, who faces the same charges as Hitt, has been postponed indefinitely because of Greene’s worsening case of congestive heart failure.

Lawyers for Hitt tried Thursday to convince the jury that the mother’s New Age lifestyle and her belief that her son had a special religious calling had so emotionally wounded him that he was prone to lie and be disruptive.

The boy admitted under questioning by the defense, for instance, that his godmother conducted “channeling” sessions, in which the dead are summoned to speak to the living, and that he had attended some of the sessions.

Packwood agreed that the boy could have been hurt by other children’s teasing because his mother gave him an unusual first name and no last name at all until he was 6 or 8 years old .

Packwood said the boy, who testified that he had never met his father, had trouble with male authority figures.

But the boy’s mother, whom presiding 33rd District Judge Guilford Jones has ordered the news media not to identify by name or hometown, testified that her son doesn’t lie any more than other children do.

And she said that, although she thought even an 8-year-old could have a religious calling, she saw no special spiritual destiny for her son. Nor, she testified, was she concerned about the monastery’s connection to Russian Orthodoxy, although she was raised as a Baptist.

“I’ve always believed that the teachings of Christ were the same for everyone,” the mother testified.

She also denied the defense’s contention, raised in its opening statements to the jury, that the case against Hitt stemmed from her anger at him for rebuffing her romantic interest in him.

“I didn’t have romantic feelings for him or anyone else at the monastery,” the mother testified.

The trial, in which Hitt faces up to 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $10,000, is expected to continue into next week.

You may contact Dick Stanley at dstanley@statesman.com or 445-3629.