FAIRBANKS — A teenage girl told a jury Thursday of how a once popular pastor manipulated her into carrying on a sexual relationship with him last year.

The teen was the first witness called in the trial of Shawn Anthony Justice, 32, the former pastor of Corinthian Baptist Church who has pleaded not guilty to 12 counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor. Each count of the class B felony carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

The girl detailed how Justice revitalized the church when he took over in 2007, expanding membership and getting long-time members more active in the church.

While she knew him from lock-ins at the church and her time with the dance team, it wasn’t until 2008 when she was 14 that Justice began to text her, first on her friend’s phones, and then her first cell phone, which her parents allowed her to purchase with that year’s Permanent Fund dividend.

“I thought it was cool to be able to talk to him,” she said. “He was the youth pastor. I didn’t really have feelings for him.”

The News-Miner does not identify victims of sex crimes.

Though the teen had to return her cell phone to her parents at night, she would often delete the texts. It wasn’t until November 2008 when she took the phone to a sleep over without her parent’s permission that they quickly confiscated the phone and discovered the first texts between her and Justice.

Justice, who had been removed as the church’s pastor three months earlier, had asked the teen to come over to his apartment to shower with him.

“(The mother) looked at this text and she probably got one of the shocks of her life,” prosecutor Gayle Garrigues told the jury in her opening statements.

She went to the police the next morning. While police agreed the texts were inappropriate, they said they were not illegal. The family stopped going to Corinthian Baptist Church and monitored the teen’s phone use even more closely, but that wasn’t enough to keep her and Justice apart.

At school, at the library, she continued to e-mail him. Around the beginning of the summer of 2009, they arranged their first sexual encounter. She snuck out of her house early one morning and rode her bike to Jillian Square where Justice lived and they had their first sexual encounter.

“I don’t remember why, like the actual transition,” she said. “I couldn’t tell you how it transitioned.”

She said Thursday she met Justice three more times that summer. Justice’s attorney, Nelson Traverso questioned her several times about sometimes contradictory statements she made about Justice.

Last year, she told investigators she first had sex with Justice in the winter, and her account of the activities she engaged with in Justice has some times changed. She said at the time she was more hesitant to talk about what had occurred.

In October 2009, she confided to one of her friends what had been going on. That friend in turn told her mother who told the teen’s mother. The police were alerted again, but this time, their investigation culminated in a March indictment.

Justice’s trial continues this morning.

Superior Court Judge Michael McConahy has ruled the jury of seven men and seven women, including two alternates, will also hear about Justice’s 2003 misdemeanor conviction in Virgina for contributing to the delinquencey of a minor.

In that case, Justice, then 24 years-old and a choir director, had sex with a 15-year-old member of the choir.

Contact staff writer Chris Freiberg at 459-7545.