Member of St. John’s Episcopal says pastor defamed her.

Rev. William Martin left the dinner party and stepped out on the balcony to sneak a cigarette. According to a deposition given by Kim Rennick, a parishioner at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Martin had downed “quite a few drinks” by that point in the evening. “He was in his cups,” Rennick says. And then, she says, her pastor began badmouthing another parishioner.

Rayn Random, a 73-year-old Monterey woman, is suing Martin in Superior Court, claiming defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress and fraud. Random’s lawsuit claims that Martin “told parishioners of St. John’s and others that Random tried to lure him into her hot tub, that she is actually a man and not a woman, that her breasts were false, [and] that she had made inappropriate sexual advances toward [him].”

According to Rennick’s deposition, Martin told her he had a restraining order against Random. “And he made some comments about Rayn probably not even being a woman, and was that her real name or some sort of stripper name, or something like that,” Rennick says. “I was a little upset…And then he for some reason turned into history. And I thought, oh, good, we’ll talk about history. And he started talking about Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and what horrible people they were. And I thought, I’ve got to get out of here.”

There is just one point that both Martin and Random agree on: That none of the things he allegedly told people about Random are true. On March 2, 2005, both Martin and Random signed a “mutual release” settlement in which Martin admitted saying these things about Random, admitted they were false, and apologized. He also paid half of her legal fees, and both parties agreed to drop the court battle.

Random says later that same month, however, Martin started defaming her again. On Feb. 10, 2006, Random filed a complaint seeking an unspecified dollar amount in damages against Martin, St. John’s and the Diocese of El Camino Real. The trial begins this Monday, Feb. 26.