FBI Lie Drew Confession, Minister Says : Hate crimes: Two teen-agers are accused of putting a cross on a black couple’s lawn. Agents tricked them into admitting the act by promising they would not be charged, says a pastor who counseled the youths.

Two Lancaster youths charged with putting a cross laden with racial slurs in the yard of an elderly African-American couple were tricked into confessing by a false FBI promise that no action would be taken against them, a minister who counseled the boys protested Tuesday.

Neither the FBI nor the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, which brought state misdemeanor charges against the youths, would comment.

The Rev. Henry Hearns, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Littlerock--and a Lancaster city councilman--said Tuesday that the boys spoke to the FBI voluntarily only after an agent had made them a promise, using Hearns as a go-between. Hearns said he passed along a message from the FBI agent that “if they would come to him and talk there would no problem at all . . . because of their age they would not be exposed” to criminal charges or public identification.

Hearns, also African-American, had known the identities of the youths, ages 16 and 17, since shortly after the incident in January. However, he had refused to reveal them to investigators, citing the ministerial counseling privilege.

But Monday in Sylmar Juvenile Court, the boys were ordered to appear in Lancaster Juvenile Court on Aug. 24 to face charges of interference with the enjoyment of civil rights and terrorism against a property owner, based on an FBI report the U.S. Department of Justice forwarded to the district attorney’s office.

They were not identified because they are under 18, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Bill Ryder.

Gary Auer, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Ventura office, which investigated the matter, said he could not comment.

The youths placed a 6-by-4-foot wooden cross carrying white supremacist slogans in the front yard of Eleanor and James Pate’s Lancaster home on Jan. 9, according to the district attorney’s office.

Eleanor Pate, 63, discovered the cross and called her 70-year-old husband, who contacted authorities. The couple, who previously had been reluctant to press charges, declined comment.

Controversy has dogged the case from the beginning. At the center of the storm are Hearns, the Antelope Valley branch of the NAACP and the FBI.

About two weeks after the incident, the older youth contacted Hearns, pastor at the church where the Pates attend services, and confessed to placing the cross in the couple’s yard.

The boy, who said his conscience bothered him, then told Hearns the name of his accomplice and provided the names and address of the boy’s parents. Hearns invited the youths to a memorial service for Dr. Martin Luther King, held at the Lancaster Performing Arts Center the following week.

They attended, met Hearns, and gave him letters apologizing for what they had done, asking him to pass them on to the Pates, his congregation and a local newspaper, Hearns said.

Hearns said he believes the matter should have ended there. “The thing was done and put to bed and that’s the way it should have stayed,” he said.

Without a victim to help prosecute the case, the Sheriff’s Department also closed its books.

But the NAACP asked the FBI to look into the case as a possible civil rights violation against the community as a whole, said Antelope Valley branch President Lynda Taylor.

“When you are displaying this type of hatred in the community, you’ve got to send a message that this sort of thing won’t be tolerated,” Taylor said.