LACROSSE, Wis. – A LaCrosse man was charged with sexually and physically abusing a teen-ager over a five-year period while professing to be an agent of God. Bond for David “Kenny” Singer, 40, was set at $10,000. The criminal complaint is chilling. The teen-ager, now 19, said Singer met her in eighth grade in Tennessee and began touching her inappropriately. When she talked to him about their age difference — he was 34, she 14 — she quoted him: “This is how God intended it.” When the girl’s family moved to La Crosse in 2015, Singer followed, according to the complaint. The victim told police that Singer gave her Xanax, Gabapentin, alcohol and marijuana and told her that “God allowed it.” He took videos of her naked and exposed her to pornograohy, she said. She stopped attending school and Singer homeschooled her. In 2016 Singer “married” the girl in a religious ceremony, according to the complaint. But a child-protection social worker who visited their home was told by the girl that there was no sex. Singer, the girl said, had told her to play along or become demon possessed and be kicked out and “thrown to the wolves.” This January the girl confronted Singer in a text message. He responded, she said, that she had manipulated, abused and raped him. “I raped you??? I was a CHILD,” she responded in the text exchange included in the criminal complaint.
Verbatim
Girl to police: “We lived together, we had sex often, I can’t give exact dates obviously. But it was just really often we’d be having sex. Fights would happen. He would choke me, he would say it needed to happen because God was showing me something through him of demons were in me, and I’m a reflection of that.”
Verbatim
Girl to police: “Ever since we had moved in with them, if we didn’t agree with the God stuff they were saying, we were threatened to be kicked out. Or, oh you’re possessed or, whatever.”
Singer. Besides sexual abuse, he’s charged with physical abuse. Police say he admitted to grabbing the teen by the throat during fights but only to scare her. He said he never applied “a lot of pressure.”