Leader of Church Craig Mack Attended Accused of Rape and Pedophilia
Craig Mack had a successful run in the mid-1990s but after his career slowed down, the rapper left hip-hop and turned to religion. Mack eventually found the Overcomer Farm and Ministry in South Carolina.
While the church had been controversial during Mack's time alive, new reports after his death show just how bad of a place it may have been. According to a March 27 report from the Daily Mail, the church is alleged to be a sex cult run by Robert Stair, who has been accused of being a serial sexual assaulter, an alleged rapist and a pedophile who infected people with sexually transmitted diseases.
The 84-year-old leader of Overcomer is also currently awaiting trial on three counts of criminal sexual misconduct, kidnapping, burglary, assault with intent to commit criminal sexual misconduct and criminal sexual misconduct with a minor.
Stair's most recent arrest came in December after Colleton County launched an investigation into the Overcome leader following a YouTube video that surfaced showing him touching a 12-year-old girl's breast during a service. "I'm going to touch them things until nobody else can touch them," he can be heard saying in the footage.
According to claims from members of the church, Stair made victims of the women who lived on the farm. "I remember Stair used to preach to the girls that the soldiers would come and they would rape us all," said one woman. "I didn't know what rape was but I knew it sounded bad and like it would hurt. And he would say, 'I'm going to tell you sisters what can spare you all. You just stay still. You don't do nothing. You don't fight 'em. You just stay still.'"
The woman alleges Stair first molested her in a small room they called the "inner sanctum." After allegedly being sexually assaulted by Stair, she said she was left to continue on with her chores. According to the woman, life in the church consisted of prayers in the morning, followed by breakfast, cleaning, gardening, farming and cooking.
In 2002, Stair was charged with the unlawful removal of a child's body after a child had been born, died and was then buried on the property without Stair alerting authorities. According to preacher Mike Rowland, "Stair had been using the wife of one of the men and she got pregnant. He didn't want it."
It's believed that some time between Feb. 1, 1994 and Feb. 11, 1994, Stair "did unlawfully bury the body of... a person supposed to have come to a violent death, before notice to the coroner to examine the body and before inquiry was made into the manner and circumstances of the death." The child was barely two months old at the time of his death.
The case was never processed and in return, Stair pleaded guilty to two other cases of sexual assault that were brought against him. Stair was sentenced to 30 days in county jail.
While members of the church who lived on the farm were aware of Stair's behavior, someone like Mack who did not live on the farm had no clue what was going on. "He came with money so Stair would have smoothed his entrance and let him walk straight, which you couldn't usually do," said Rowland. "He wasn't to know what was really going on."
The "Flava in Your Ear" rapper is reported to have joined the church in 2012. The reports followed a video that was posted on YouTube around that time that showed Mack attending services held by Stair.
Mack passed away due to heart failure on March 12 in his Walterboro, S.C. home. The Long Island rapper was 47 years old.
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