Pastor Jamal Bryant son fathered out of wedlock, DNA test confirms

Chiqui Guyjoco Sunday, May 15, 2016

The Rev. Jamal Bryant, pastor of Empowerment Temple Church in Northwest Baltimore, is supposedly the father of a son born out of wedlock and there's a DNA paternity test to prove it.

St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church in Coatesville, PA | Creative Commons/Hshuvaeva

The child's mother, Latoya Shawntee Odom, a 34-year-old Californian massage therapist, bare it all to Obnoxious Television through a series of text messages that she had a sexual relationship with the popular pastor and gave birth to his son, whom she named John Karston Bryant, in July 2015. The woman also freely and willingly provided Obnoxious Media a copy of the paternity test that Bryant has requested and paid for.

The test was carried out by LB Genetics, one of the most trusted DNA testing facilities in California among U.S. federal courts. The facility specializes in paternity, family relationship, and human identification testing. Test results sent to Odom showed that Bryant is 99.9999% father to the 10-month-old boy.

"The alleged father, Jamal Harrison Bryant, cannot be excluded as the biological father of the child, John Karston Bryant, since they share genetic markers....The probability of paternity is 99.9999%, as compared to an untested, unrelated man of the Black population," read a statement in the test results signed by Karl-Hans Wurzinger and certified by notary public Oma Marquez Lopez.

Odom claimed that Bryant had pleaded her to have an abortion fearing that he might not survive another scandal. She also said that the pastor is inconsistent to the $1,100 a month child support he has supposedly agreed to and refuses to be a father figure.

According to a previous report from Baltimore Sun, Bryant has two children before his marriage and has acknowledged one of them only after a court battle over child support payment surfaced. He and his now ex-wife, a former model, filed for divorce in 2008. Court papers indicated that his ex-wife charged him of adultery and cruel treatment.

Bryant, the son of the presiding bishop of the oldest organized black church in America and a vocal supporter of civil rights and Black Lives Matter campaign, has also been known for his flashy lifestyle.