child molester

Doug Wilson Continues to Twist the Truth About Child Molester Jamin C. Wight

HA Editorial Team17 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Natalie Rose Greenfield’s blog My Naptime Journal. It was originally published on October 1, 2015.

For background information about Doug Wilson, Jamin C. Wight, and Natalie Rose Greenfield, see The Jamin C. Wight Story: The Other Child Molester in Doug Wilson’s Closet.

Once again the spotlight is being taken from the only place it has ever belonged.

Once again accusations against my parents for allowing a ‘secret courtship’ to occur between my 14 year-old self and my abuser have been plastered all over the Internet. Comments about my physical appearance as a young teen are being used to redefine the nature of the criminal activity. A severe and dangerous contorting of my story by people who were not there is taking place and while this means a very uncomfortable re-shaming for myself and my family, the deeper concern is what it means for future victims. The marginalization of a serious and devastating crime does not bode well at all for others who will suffer abuse in the future.

The church’s lack of acknowledgment of mishandling the situation and causing further devastation to myself and my family and to the individuals my abuser would go on to hurt is disheartening and deplorable. It is tarnishing not only Pastor Wilson’s reputation but the reputation of every pastor in the CREC denomination and every last member of those churches, for that matter. Another such pastor reached out to me earlier this morning, one removed from this particular situation, and he expressed his severe disappointment in how I and my family were treated and are continuing to be treated. He wanted me to know not everyone in the CREC feels this way and that there is serious questioning happening from within.

I have heard from myriads of others, some within the denomination and some not, who are appalled at the way sexual abuse within the church is handled. Personally, I have experienced a wide range of emotions concerning all of this but the overwhelming emotion recently has been sadness – sadness that a pastor’s gross misunderstanding of abuse, consent, and criminal behavior has resulted in such harm and shaming and will inevitably result in harm to others who are abused. I am sad that he cannot humbly admit wrongdoing and begin to rebuild a system which is broken, a system which perpetuates abuse and marginalizes victims, which in turn creates a ripple effect of devastation and pain.

Doug was not in my home when my parents discussed allowing Jamin to court me.

Doug was not in the room when they spoke about whether or not we should be allowed to hold hands. I imagine he may have something in writing from them, perhaps asking advice or seeking guidance on the situation and this may shed light on the foolishness and naivety of some of my parent’s choices. The fact that my parents trusted a dangerous and conniving criminal to respect the boundaries they had set is no secret and yes, it’s embarrassing. They have sought my forgiveness heartily over the years and I have unconditionally given it. But I would like to also point at that neither was Doug in the room when my father said, No. I am not comfortable with this. There will be no courtship. There will be no hand-holding. Do not touch my daughter and do not foster a relationship with her. Doug was not with my father as time dragged on and he began to become suspicious of Jamin. He was not in the hallway with my father where he sat on a chair in the middle of the night watching my bedroom door to make sure I was safe and protected. If only he had known my father’s heart, and yet he is quick to place blame on two parents who were deceived and manipulated by a calculated criminal.

The fact that my parents were deceived does not change the nature of Jamin’s crime.

The fact that my parents had moments of naivety does not merit letters from a pastor requesting leniency for a man who the prosecuting attorney called ‘a textbook pedophile’ and place a massive amount of blame on a father already broken by the news of his daughter’s abuse. The fact that I was beautiful and stood taller than my abuser does not lessen or change the sickening nature of what he did to me. The fact that I was infatuated with him and lived to please him does not mean that I was asking for it. Nobody asked for it.

In a response published on the widely viewed Christian publication, The American Conservative, earlier today, Doug calls what happened ‘sexual behavior’. A conveniently softened term for the abuse that took place.

Doug says about he and the elders, “we wanted him (Jamin) to pay the penalty for that criminal behavior, which was a species of statutory rape.” What Jamin did was severe far beyond statutory rape, though it did include that. Jamin targeted, groomed, and molested me for several years while manipulating and deceiving every other person around him in order to cover his crime. Jamin is a sexual predator in every sense of the word.

Doug writes “The reason we did not want it (the crime) treated as pedophilia is that her parents had bizarrely brought Jamin into the house as a boarder so that he could conduct a secret courtship with Natalie. So Jamin was in a romantic relationship with a young girl, her parents knew of the relationship and encouraged it, her parents permitted a certain measure of physical affection to exist between them (e.g. hand-holding), Natalie was a beautiful and striking young woman, and at the time was about eight inches taller than Jamin was. Her parents believed that she was mature enough to be in that relationship, and the standards they set for the relationship would have been reasonable if she had in fact been of age and if the two had not been living under the same roof.”

This paragraph is so full of untruths it makes my head spin.

I’m not sure if Doug is deliberately twisting the truth or if he is basing his version of events on incomplete information (my sincere hope is that it’s the latter), but these allegations are simply false. As I said before, he was not there for any of this. There were discussions of this nature but the truth is that Jamin and I did not develop and maintain a romantic relationship under the encouragement of my parents. It is false, and from where I stand it is dangerously close to slander. Additionally and most importantly, why the hell does it matter? These grandiose and desperate attempts to take the attention away from what matters and place it where it does not belong is truly frightening and it’s hurting real people.

Doug is spending an awful lot of time and energy saying things like this “But please note well: Things like her height, apparent maturity, and parental knowledge of the fact of a relationship are simply irrelevant to the morality of Jamin’s behavior. They are irrelevant to the criminality of his behavior. They are irrelevant to whether Jamin was selfishly manipulating a young girl, preying on her for his own selfish ends. They are irrelevant to whether it was statutory rape or not. But such things were not irrelevant to whether it was pedophilia.” when he should be spending time and energy saying “We messed up. We defended a really bad guy. I wrote to a judge and an officer on his behalf and it directly effected the outcome of the sentencing. We failed the victim, we didn’t extend to her the love of Christ and offer her the resources she so desperately needed. We blamed her parents disproportionately, we talked about her physical appearance and said it changed the nature of Jamin’s crimes. We are deeply sorry and we want to learn how we can educate ourselves and how we can do things differently in the future so that more innocent people are not hurt and shamed and subsequently driven away. We want to learn from this mishandled situation.”

Will that ever happen? I hope so very much that it will. I hope we can stop talking about the things that don’t matter and start talking about things that do, like how we can spot potentially abusive situations before they escalate and destroy lives, how we can educate our youth to have strong voices about their own bodies and sexuality, how we can create a system in which criminals are not readily trusted and given opportunities to re-offend, how we can foster an environment in which victims feel as though they are unconditionally supported and cared for, free of suffocating judgement and blame…This what truly matters.

Doug sums up the way he feels about his role in my situation “…it is also a snarl where it is possible to look back with a clean conscience.”

He has no regrets and clearly no intention of apologizing. He has twisted the truth. He has shone a light in a place where there is nothing of relevance to see, and in so doing has pushed into the shadows a hideous truth that promises to grow and swallow Lord knows how many more innocent victims.

That is the story we need to listen to. That is what we should be talking about.

Here’s the Perfect Example of Doug Wilson Minimizing Steven Sitler’s Abuse

HA Editorial Team11 Comments

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

Content warning: descriptions of child sexual abuse and abuse minimization.

In one of his many, many self-defensive blog posts, Doug Wilson provides us the perfect example of how he has minimized (and continues to minimize) the child sexual abuse perpetrated by Steven Sitler, the homeschool alumnus who attended Wilson’s New Saint Andrews College. The blog post is titled, “The Only Kind of Gospel There Is”, and was published Thursday, September 10, 2015. Wilson writes,

The twittermob has been circulating numerous untruths, among them that Steven Sitler is a child rapist. He was actually convicted of one count of Lewd Conduct with a Minor under 16 years of age (Idaho Code 18-1508).

Yes, of all the actually important and relevant aspects of the current dialogue about child molesters Steven Sitler and Jamin C. Wight, Wilson chooses to focus on this. The fact that Steven Sitler was not convicted of “Child Rape” but rather “Lewd Conduct With a Minor,” the implication of which is, of course, that “Lewd Conduct” is somehow less egregious. Thus these evil twittermobs are the real abusers, falsely accusing poor Sitler of something he never did.

Well, yes, Steven Sitler was never convicted of Child Rape. Yes, Sitler was convicted of Lewd Conduct With a Minor. And yes, in Idaho, those two charges are distinct (though advocacy groups and other states like Washington State consider them the same). But let’s look at the Idaho statute Wilson cites to determine what Lewd Conduct with a Minor actually is. This is from Idaho Code 18-1508:

LEWD CONDUCT WITH MINOR CHILD UNDER SIXTEEN. Any person who shall commit any lewd or lascivious act or acts upon or with the body or any part or member thereof of a minor child under the age of sixteen (16) years, including but not limited to, genital-genital contact, oral-genital contact, anal-genital contact, oral-anal contact, manual-anal contact, or manual-genital contact, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex, or who shall involve such minor child in any act of bestiality or sado-masochism as defined in section 18-1507, Idaho Code, when any of such acts are done with the intent of arousing, appealing to, or gratifying the lust or passions or sexual desires of such person, such minor child, or third party, shall be guilty of a felony and shall be imprisoned in the state prison for a term of not more than life.

Wilson wants us to believe, in other words, that Steven Sitler isn’t as bad as a rapist. No, all Sitler did was force a young child to engage in all sorts of other sex acts that are… “better”? “Less bad”?

And we do not have to guess as to what Sitler actually did. Because the father of one of Sitler’s abuse victims did tell the Idaho court what Sitler did to his child. This is a September 7, 2005 letter written by a victim’s family to Idaho Judge Stegner. ** Content warning for explicit description of child sexual abuse. ** Click the image to enlarge:

Private_Letter

In other words, Steven Sitler lured a 2 year old child into an isolated area and forced that toddler to perform oral sex on him.

And somehow this is important to Wilson to clarify… why? Why is it only important to Wilson that he wins these little semantic games with people bringing sincere and heartfelt concerns to him regarding his and his church’s actions? So he wins on this technicality. So what? What does Doug Wilson want? Does he want us to give him a round of applause for having the courage to say what no one else did: that poor Steven Sitler is falsely accused? That Sitler never raped a child? That Sitler instead only forced a 2 year old to perform oral sex on him? That somehow that’s a relief? That somehow that makes Wilson a courageous champion of truth?

If Wilson actually cares about the God he claims to love, he should set aside his pride and his desire to play games of technicality. Because at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter to anyone except the Idaho court system whether Sitler “raped” a child or “forced oral sex” on a child. You know why? Because both are egregious cases of child abuse, for God’s sake!

I’d like to conclude with an excerpt from Mike Sloan and Beth Hart’s important article, “Doug Wilson’s Failure to Safeguard Children,” which I highly recommend you read here. Sloan and Hart write,

Where are the voices of the leaders of Reformed churches and Reformed networks who can gain a hearing from Doug Wilson and influence thousands of other pastors in their denominations and circles of influence? Where are the voices from The Gospel Coalition? Crossway, why are you giving a voice to a man who will not use his voice for voiceless? Who is asking Wilson, “Where is your grieving heart for this baby and the other victims? What child protection training are you putting in place or experts are you consulting so this does not happen again?”

Where indeed.

*****

UPDATE, September 12, 2015, 2 pm PT:

Doug Wilson has issued a clarification on his post. An image and the text of the clarification follow:

Screen Shot 2015-09-12 at 2.00.15 PM

Text is,

Important clarification: When I say above that Steven was convicted of one count, I was not meaning that this was his only offense, and neither was I seeking to minimize the egregiousness of his behavior in those other instances. That is why I argued, just below this, that the father in Texas who killed the molester he walked in on was fully justified. I should have made my meaning more clear than I did, which I could have done by putting the Texas paragraph first, and linking it expressly to Steven’s offenses. My apologies to any friends who missed my meaning here, and who thought I was trying to trim and be cute on Steven’s behalf. Such a misreading would be my responsibility. I believe there was at least one scenario where Steven could have been killed on the spot, and no injustice done.

Doug Wilson Is Missing the Real Locus of Anger

HA Editorial Team5 Comments

CC image courtesy of Flickr, Thomas Hawk.

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on September 8, 2015.

I posted yesterday about Steven Sitler, a convicted serial child molester who attends Doug Wilson’s Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and is back in court over concerns about the safety of his infant son. My post was long, and quoted at length from a number of sources. When readers pointed out that the court’s finding that “(Sitler) has had contact with his child that resulted in actual sexual stimulation” likely referred to Sitler being sexually aroused by his son rather than to him molesting his son, I edited my post to reflect this language. I’ve now had some time to mull over the situation, read the comments on my post, and peruse the responses of Wilson’s defenders.

In this post, I want to boil things down to what I see as the root of the issue.

In 2005, Sitler was caught molesting a child in a Christ Church home where he was boarding. Wilson encouraged the victim’s parents to report the situation to the police, and when Sitler subsequently confessed to him he conveyed this information to the appropriate authorities. Nevertheless, Wilson made two mistakes that summer.

— Wilson wrote to the judge to ask that Sitler’s sentence be “measured and limited,” arguing that Sitler was “genuinely repentant” and that he was capable of being a productive member of society. Wilson does not have any training or background in psychology and should have trusted others expertise in this area.

— Wilson failed to tell his congregation about what had happened for a full eight months. While Sitler was no longer living in Moscow, Idaho, at this time, Wilson’s congregation should have been told that they had had a child molester living in their midst because there might have been additional victims yet unidentified.

After Sitler was convicted and served his time in jail, he returned to Moscow, Idaho, and once again attended Christ Church. Wilson has written that Sitler always had a chaperone with him, as a stipulation of his probation. And you know what? I don’t have a problem with this. While I question the short length of Sitler’s prison term, I do not have a problem with a church allowing a convicted pedophile attend their congregation if careful steps are taken to ensure further predation does not take place.

When Wilson defends himself by talking about the importance of the church ministering to the broken, etc., I think he is missing the real locus of anger here. People aren’t upset that Wilson allowed Sitler to continue attending his church when he got out on parole. People are upset that Wilson married Sitler, a convicted child molester, to a woman in his church knowing full well that they intended to have children. In fact, the Department of Corrections opposed Sitler’s decision to marry in large part because Sitler had told his probation officer that he and his fiancee, Katie Travis, intended to have children.

Wilson and his defenders have argued that Wilson did no wrong in supporting Sitler’s marriage because the judge gave it his go-ahead. However, as others have pointed out, there isn’t much precedent for allowing judges to prohibit sex offenders from marrying to begin with. Indeed, Sitler’s lawyer (a member of Christ Church) argued during the hearing that the question before the court was marriage, not children. The judge affirmed that Sitler would almost certainly be a danger to any children he might father, and noted that should the marriage produce children it might be necessary for the court to bar Sitler from living with his wife and offspring.

Wilson ought to have set both Sitler and Travis down for a long, hard talk about the realities before them. He could have discouraged Sitler from marrying given the danger he would present to any children he might father. He could have discouraged Travis from marrying Sitler given the danger he would pose to any children she might bear. He could have told the couple that should they decide to marry anyway, they should never have children. Instead, he officiated at their wedding and asked God to bless them with children. 

And now here we are. Sitler’s wife gave birth to a baby boy last spring, and Sitler is now back in court over the danger he poses to his infant. It appears, from what has been released, that Sitler has become sexually aroused by his infant son and that his wife, Katie, has failed to report relevant information on the subject to the court, which suggests that she cannot be trusted to keep her infant safe.

As one of my commenters noted:

Sitler being sexually aroused isn’t a crime and isn’t actually the problem. He’s a pedophile. He will always get aroused by children, just like people attracted to sexually mature people will get aroused by people they can never legally or morally engage in a sex act with. The problem is he is sexually aroused by his infant son with whom he lives and he has a history of actually abusing young children while other adults are at home even when he is a casual visitor. His wife cannot, even if they never have another child, succeed in her task to have eyes on him at all times. If nothing else, she has to sleep, pee, and shower. When they, inevitably, have more children and as this one grows, her task becomes even more impossible.

There is an extremely high risk that Sitler will reoffend in this situation. He already is having sexual feelings to his infant son. Even if he doesn’t want to do anything wrong, and he may not, he almost certainly will if he continues to reside in the house. A repentant offender would accept this and move out, but a repentant pedophile wouldn’t have set out to produce a family that will always have to be on guard against his predation. The court and the state child welfare authorities would be criminaly derelict in their duties if they continued to put this child at risk by letting Sitler reside in the home, even if Sitler hasn’t actuallt committed a crime or violated his probation yet.

Could Wilson have prevented this situation? Perhaps not. But he could have discouraged Sitler from marrying, or at the very least discouraged him from bearing children, and he should now be encouraging Sitler, for the good of his child, to move out and live separately from his wife and son.

In his open letter, Wilson argued that:

Our ministry to Steven, in other words, has not been conducted at the expense of any children in our church community, or in a way that puts any of them at risk.

This is simply not true. Wilson’s ministry to Sitler has put his infant son, who is by definition one of the children in Wilson’s church community, in serious danger. Both Sitler and his lawyer are in Wilson’s congregation. Wilson could easily call them in and urge them to listen to the court’s concerns. He could urge Sitler to remove himself from temptation, to move out of the house and thereby place his son’s safety over his own wellbeing. Indeed, Wilson could place both Sitler and his lawyer under church discipline, arguing that they are failing to uphold Christ’s command to protect and value children. All of this could be done in the context of ministering to Sitler.

I’m not upset that Wilson has chosen to minister to a convicted serial pedophile. I’m upset with how Wilson has chosen to minister to a convicted serial pedophile. But rather than actually listening to these concerns, Wilson would rather throw up his hands and call those critical of the way he has handled the situation “bitter.” Meanwhile, the safety and wellbeing of Sitler’s infant son hangs in the balance.