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We don't know who else has been hurt by this. God forbid there are more out there.
Audrey Pereira, associate representative to the Vietnam Veterans of America chapter where Weaver served as chaplain
Pereira described Weaver as a "smart and cunning" man who did do good things, such as praying with veterans in the hospital, but did so with a "mask" hiding his alleged misdeeds.
"He did good on one hand, but he's like a Jekyll and Hyde," she said. "On the other hand, he did this evil to who knows how many. It can't just have been these guys, there has to be more."
Pereira said Weaver actually performed an "exorcism" in her Linden home, which her family thought had a poltergeist.
Although RWJ did not confirm Weaver's connections to the hospital — declining multiple requests from My Central Jersey and the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey to do so — Pereira said she personally saw Weaver acting as a chaplain at RWJ Hospital in Rahway on several occasions while she and her family were in the hospital.
"I was in the hospital and he would visit when he was the resident chaplain," Pereira said. "Within the last 10 years he was there."
She also said she was a member of Linden Presbyterian Church, but stopped going after she learned of the allegations against its minister.
A suitcase of feathers, gemstones and Ziploc bags
“If you mentioned Bill Weaver’s name in Linden or Union County, people would say, ‘Oh, we love Bill!” said A.J. Meeker, one of the men claiming to have been sexually abused by Weaver. “He volunteered all over the place, he was moderator of the Presbytery. He did a lot of things and was very well connected.”
Meeker, of Edison, now 37, said he was 20 when he began seeing Weaver as a counselor in 2000. He was one of the three men who detailed their allegations in impact statements and delivered them to the Presbytery. For this article, My Central Jersey and the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey separately interviewed the three men who claim to be victims, as well as two other individuals who were informed by the men of the incidents, and reported from the impact statements.
The three men said they also informed law enforcement of the allegations against Weaver, including the Union County Prosecutor’s Office, New Jersey State Police and the state Attorney General's clergy abuse hotline.
Mark Spivey, director of communications for the Union County Prosecutor’s Office, said he "cannot confirm nor deny" information relating to Weaver.
Meeker had flunked out of college and moved out of his family’s house, according to his impact statement to the Presbytery. He said he had a strained relationship with his father and his stepmother was not speaking to him. His biological mother stopped communicating with him when he was 15, he said.
“I have dealt with the abandonment issues, depression and anxiety that this caused. I was dating my soon-to-be ex-wife and became a member of the Linden Presbyterian Church,” Meeker wrote in his statement. “While going there, I found Rev. Bill Weaver to be a kind and compassionate person who was very easy to talk to.”
When he began seeing Weaver for counseling sessions, the minister told him that there are “individuals based around the Watchung Reservation” who were engaged in spiritual warfare to attack people with evil energy. The minister also recited the Full Armor of God verses from Ephesians 6:10-18.
“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes,” the passage states. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
Meeker said the counseling sessions were held in a bedroom of the manse, the house owned by the Presbyterian church for its ministers. Before the sessions began, Weaver would open a square suitcase that he kept in his office holding the same items the other men also described in statements and interviews: feathers, assorted stones, buckeyes, a magnetic strip, an angel coin and Ziploc bags.
https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2...JPG?width=1800
The manse on Georgian Drive in Linden owned by the Elizabeth Presbyterian where the Rev. William Weaver lived while serving as the minister of Linden...
NICK MUSCAVAGE/STAFF PHOTO
Every meeting with Weaver began the same way, Meeker said. The minister told him to undress completely and lie on the bed. Then he placed an angel coin — a coin with an angel or saint printed on it used for praying — on Meeker’s forehead and wrapped a magnetic strip around his head to keep it in place.
Weaver then would place a series of stones on both of Meeker’s feet his hands and on the left side and right side of his chest.
“I was told that for him to get everything out me, I needed to lay completely still to not move the stones on my feet,” Meeker said in the impact statement. “He would then take out the feather and scan my body from my neck to my stomach.”
Weaver then opened Meeker’s mouth, placed his own mouth on top of Meeker’s mouth, and moved his tongue around “to see if I had anything in my mouth or throat,” Meeker wrote.
Then the interaction became sexual, with Weaver engaging in oral sex, according to Meeker.
“He would then ingest my ejaculate and then would spit up multiple pieces of plastic or metal into a Ziploc bag,” Meeker stated.
He said he began to ask Weaver about the necessity of the ritual and asked the minister if he was using the same techniques on women. Weaver, according to Meeker’s statement, said “everything would come out of a woman’s navel and every 30 days their cycle would clear them out.”
Weaver said the evil energy manifested itself into what he called “hits.”
He also told Meeker that if the “hits” were left inside of him, they would cause infertility and erectile dysfunction.
After every session, Meeker wrote, “he would then hold me and say he loved me and he would protect me, and he would never let anything bad happen to me.”
Weaver also told him he could never mention what happened because “nobody would understand.”
Meeker described Weaver as “a shepherd of the flock” and affectionate.
“He was very touchy-feely, like everyone got a hug or a kiss on the cheek, or stuff like that,” Meeker said in a phone interview. “He was just very hands-on — never inappropriate publicly — it was just like he was very loving and very caring.”
Weaver also strove to represent a “picture of piety,” according to Meeker.
“He always wore his shirt and collar, which Presbyterians don’t do,” Meeker said.
'I thought it was all helping'
William Weist told of a similar account of his encounters with Weaver.
Weist, Pereira's son, was one of the few people present when his soon-to-be wife’s son, Rusty, 26, was found floating lifeless in the Delaware River three days after a boating accident in 1999. He was the one who called the police and he was there when Rusty’s body was pulled out of the water.
“As clear as day, I can still see Rusty there,” Weist said through tears. “I can see that image.”
The trauma tormented him, so when a friend recommended he speak to Weaver in counseling sessions, Weist was interested.
“I was at an extremely low point,” he said.
Weist, 52, of Edison, who never considered himself a devout Christian but always was spiritual and faithful, began meeting with Weaver and discussing other tumultuous points in his upbringing, such as the death of close relatives and tensions that arose later in life. He was in his early 30s at the time.
“We went through the whole thing,” Weist said about the counseling sessions. “It was always wrapped around the Bible and Bible verses, and Jesus loves you, and all this stuff, and it just evolved.”
Often catching his attention, hanging on the wall of Weaver’s church office, was a picture of Jesus hugging a man.
In his impact statement he sent to Presbytery officials, Weist said that he and Weaver often spoke about Heaven and the spirit world.
