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http://www.newwest.net/index.php/main/article/9225/
Two Child Molestation Scandals Break Over Moscow’s Christ Church
Steven James Sitler was a student at New St. Andrews College. Jamin
Wight was enrolled in Greyfriars Seminary. Both of these institutions
were founded by Pastor Douglas J. Wilson of Moscow's Christ Church.
What happened? In legal terms, Greyfriars Seminary student Jamin Wight
pled guilty to one count of felony injury to a child. He was sentenced
to four years with retained jurisdiction and is now serving 4 to 6
months in the North Idaho Correctional Institution at Cottonwood.
Both inside and outside of the courtroom, the story is sad and it's
complex. At the age of 24, Jamin Wight began a year-and-a-half long
sexual relationship with a 14-year old girl. Wight was a boarder in
the house where the girl lived. He was attractive -- he's tall,
blonde, and the living definition of clean-cut. The girl was readily
accessible and perhaps flattered by Wight's attention. He was
handsome, he was older, and he was enrolled in Doug Wilson’s seminary
-- in short, a dream husband for a Christ Church girl.
I don't know how or when it all went South. Wight is now 28; the girl
is 18. I attended his sentencing hearing, at which the judge spoke at
some length about the immaturity of many of the home-schooled young
men of his professional acquaintance -- men in the loosest sense of
the term. Men in age only.
I've read the court documents in the Wight case. The victim is
shielded. She's not named but is instead referred to by her initials.
I am sympathetic to those who say that this is not enough; that in a
town of 21,000, it doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to learn where Wight
boarded and with whom. The story, however, is telling, and in light of
the Steven James Sitler case, it needs to be told.
Sitler is a serial child molester. He admits to having sexually abused
children ranging in age from 2 to 12 across three states: Virginia,
Washington, and Idaho. Sitler attended New St. Andrews College for
eighteen months, during which time he boarded with a Christ Church
family. New St. Andrews students are encouraged to board in local
Christian homes. In practice, this means that seventeen or eighteen
Christ Church families run unlicensed boarding houses within the City
of Moscow. This is a separate but serious legal issue, and one I have
written about before.
On July 6, 2005, Steven James Sitler was arrested. For his defense
attorney Sitler retained Dean Wullenwaber, who has acted in the past
as legal counsel for New St. Andrews.
In April of 2005, two months before Sitler's arrest, Sitler’s home
church in Colville, Washington, Emmanuel Presbyterian Church, informed
Doug Wilson of their knowledge of Sitler's offenses. Emmanuel
Presbyterian also informed its congregation, and its pastor and elders
offered counseling and support to Sitler's Colville victims and their
families.
Doug Wilson did not inform the rank and file of Christ Church. He
claims on his blog that he notified a meeting of the Christ Church
Heads of Households in November or December of 2005, some eight or
nine months after Sitler's confession, but some in attendance seem to
remember this and others don't. Wilson asserts that he acted with
perfect pastoral concern and propriety, but other blogs have taken
Wilson and his timeline of events to task. What is clear is that
Wilson did not inform Christ Church members of the exact nature of
Sitler's offenses until eight months after Wilson himself learned of
the problem.
On August 19th, 2005, three or four months before notifying his
parishioners of Sitler's crimes, Doug Wilson wrote a letter on Christ
Church letterhead to Judge William Stegner. In that letter, Wilson
requested leniency for Steven Sitler, writing:
"I would urge that the civil penalties applied would be measured and
limited. I have a good hope that Steven has genuinely repented, and
that he will continue to deal with this to become a productive and
contributing member of society."
Steven Sitler is sitting right now in the Latah County Jail, serving a
one-year sentence. Twice a week, Sitler drives himself, unsupervised,
to his court-ordered therapy in Clarkston and Pullman. For 18 months,
Sitler was a member of the Moscow community. He was a student in good
standing at New St. Andrews College. He was not then and is not now a
registered sex offender: his face won’t appear on websites like
Watchdog until he's released back into the community -- a community
Doug Wilson seems to believe should welcome the return of Steven
Sitler not as a criminal; not as a serial pedophile; not as a
dangerous man, but as a repentant sinner.
Doug Wilson has written that he believes Sitler was delusional when he
was molesting children. Wilson has no training in psychology or
counseling, not even ministerial training. Wilson is not ordained. In
response to criticism that he did not warn his congregation or the
greater Moscow community in an adequate or timely fashion, Wilson
writes: "I am a pastor. I cover up sins for a living."
Is this what pastors do? Is this what reporters do? The Sitler and
Wight cases were not broken by the local news media: they were first
exposed on a local blog. Many in the community -- and many in Christ
Church -- first heard about both Sitler and Wight on Moscow's Vision
2020, an Internet chat group.
Now that the filthy cats are out of the filthy bag, what's the
reaction from Doug Wilson and New St. Andrews College? And what do our
local newspapers have to say? The Moscow-Pullman Daily News first
reported the Sitler and Wight cases not as crimes but as scandals. The
Daily News headline was "Church officials say rumors about sex
offender are 'ludicrous.'" Ludicrous? The rumors referred to were on
Vision 2020, but was that the real story? Was it the gossip or was
that two young men pled guilty to sex crimes against children, and
that one of these men was a student at New St. Andrews and the other
at Greyfriars Seminary? How was it that the local news media managed
to miss this?
I have some ideas. Doug Wilson and Roy Atwood, the President of New
St. Andrews, are very good at spinning. Atwood is a former Professor
of Communications at the University of Idaho. Between them, Wilson and
Atwood have thus far managed to avoid any acceptance of responsibility
for Sitler, for Wight, or for how the stories have broken. They have
instead managed to turn two Daily News stories, one written by David
Johnson and the other by Omie Drawhorn, into a sordid tale of a church
under siege by liberals, secularists, and the bogeyman of last resort,
“the homosexual agenda.”
David Johnson's piece ends with the following observations:
"Wilson and Atwood said the Internet entries that began appearing . .
.. on blogs and the local Vision 2020 community bulletin board . . .
are most likely from people who continue to attack the church and
college on a number of political fronts.
‘These people are taking a tragedy and using it to advance a petty
political agenda,’ Wilson said.
‘This is the kind of thing that they try to make political mileage out
of and that is almost as reprehensible as the act,’ Atwood said."
Aliens at Christ Church would be ludicrous. Claims that Bigfoot stood
in the pulpit, that the elders ate puppies, or that Christ Church in
fact condoned pedophilia would be ludicrous. No one has made those
claims. What has happened, what is undeniable, is that New St. Andrews
College has disgorged a serial child molester, and Greyfriars Seminary
has produced a man guilty of felony injury to a child. The only thing
ludicrous in this whole sorry mess is the naivete evident in our local
newspapers.
Moscow-Pullman Daily News reporter Omie Drawhorn ended her piece on
Sitler and Wight with NSA President Roy Atwood opining sadly:
"'Society is becoming more tolerant of sexual sins and perversions,'
Atwood said. 'Homosexuality and other forms of sexual perversion are
becoming mainstream.'"
It's time to stop spinning. It's time to put out the kick-stand and
get off the gyroscope. A serial child molester attended New St.
Andrews for 18 months. He boarded with a Christ Church family. He was
welcomed into Christ Church homes -- homes full of vulnerable
children. Steven Sitler confessed his crimes to his pastor in
Colville, and he confessed them to Doug Wilson. The Colville pastor
chose to warn the members of his congregation immediately; the Moscow
pastor did not. Instead, Doug Wilson allowed members of his church to
find out about Steven Sitler and Jamin Wight in the worst possible
way: through gossip, through rumor, through inaccuracy and innuendo.
People who should have been told this news by their minister were
instead left hanging fire -- never receiving an adequate explanation
or a humble apology, but only a full bucket of spin.
This is not the Doug Wilson Show. This is not the time for any pastor
worthy of trust to be playing the bride at the wedding or the corpse
at the funeral. This is owning up time. This is when a good shepherd
would try to focus on the families. According to Watchdog, there are
20 registered sex offenders in the immediate vicinity of the 83843
zipcode. As far as I know, Doug Wilson and Christ Church are not
responsible for any of these 20 offenders, except insofar as we are
all responsible for one another, and we all have an obligation to our
children to be protective and vigilant.
When it comes to Steven Sitler and Jamin Wight, however, Doug Wilson
does bear a peculiar burden. He is not to blame for what either man
did, but he is open to fair criticism for his respective responses to
their actions. Why the eight-month delay in informing his congregation
about Steven Sitler? Why no mention of Jamin Wight? If Doug Wilson was
worried about the possibility of bad press, then he sadly
miscalculated. He's now got bad press. In spades.
-----
Yang
a.a. #28
AthD (h.c.) conferred by the regents of the LCL
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Sorcery Division
The Bush 'balanced' budget: 2 trillion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: 12.5 million FEWER jobs than Clinton and counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -2496 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
-----
"Ahhhhhh, yessssssss, ummmmmmm - Alito, Alito, Alito"
-duke (duckgumbo@cox.net), aka PedophilEarl J Weber, 59
year old mateless, heirless biological failure
of Afton Oaks Apartment, Baton Rouge,who pussied
out of the Vietnam draft, showing his gay side
despite his avowed anti-gay bigotry
Contact duke's priest and ask
him why duke is such a racist:
http://www.stpatrickbr.org/
Father Gerard "Jerry" Martin
stpatrickbr<AT>bellsouth<DOT>net
Saint Patrick Catholic Church
12424 Brogdon Lane
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70816
.
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