Attorneys for serial pedophile Steven Sitler have motioned the Court for the following orders:

1. Reinstate Katie Sitler as a chaperone for her pedophiliac husband;
2. Adopt the “Safety Plan” written by Sitler’s psychotherapists;
3. Allow Sitler to move back in to the home where his wife and child live; and
4. Reinstate Dave Sitler as a chaperone for his pedophiliac son.

Team Sitler predicates this motion on the following 12-point “Safety Plan,” which they submitted to the Court for approval:

The following safety plan was develop [sic] by VTS with both Steven and Katie. The Sitler’s agree that the following stipulations are appropriate and realistic for them to follow through with.

1. Steven will be line of sight of a chaperone when he is with his son.
2. Steven will not be alone with his son. This means he will only be with his son when an approved chaperone is also present.
3. Steven will not bath, or diaper his son, nor will he attend to his son when his son is not clothed. Clothed for his son means he has the minimum of a diaper on.
4. Steven will wear a shirt, and shorts, or pants when holding or caring for his son.
5. Steven and Katie will not have the baby in bed with them, nor will they use the bed to play on with their son. This stipulation is for Steven not Katie.
6. When Katie is using the restroom for any reason Steven will be in Katie’s line of sight or their son will be in Katie’s line of sight when another chaperone is not present.
7. Steven may use the restroom at night without Katie following him when their son is sleeping. This is the plan for their current home as the master bedroom looks directly into the bathroom. There is currently no door to the bathroom. If a door is hung it will remain open during nighttime when the family is sleeping.
8. If there is some type of unforeseen circumstance or emergency that would require one or any of these stipulations to not be followed, Steven and/ or Katie will call VTS and the probation officer as soon as possible after the occurrence.
9. Sitler will call V.T.S. for support if he has any high-risk thoughts, experiences a high-risk situation, or feels he needs therapeutic support.
10. Sitler will report high risk behaviors, or behaviors of concern regarding Steven to V.T.S.
11. Steven may be polygraphed on reasonable concerns in regards to possible violations of this plan.
12. As outlined in the chaperone agreement, Katie may be asked to participate in a polygraph if reasonable concern is present regarding possible violations of this plan or the chaperone agreement. (Valley Treatment Specialties “Safety Plan”)

COMMENT

Incomplete

VTS offers an incomplete “Safety Plan” in that it fails to state the goal of the plan, which is a significant omission because a plan by definition must have an objective. They call it a “Safety Plan” but they don’t state the nature of the threat or the person or persons who require safety from this unspecified danger. VTS may have omitted these points from the plan for rhetorical reasons, because including them would have likely prejudiced the Court against their client. For example:

Goal
The Idaho Department of Correction charged VTS with drafting a safety plan that would allow Steven Sitler to live in the same home as his 1 ½-year-old child. Therefore, the goal of this plan is to install an impenetrable firewall in a house between a diagnosed fixated pedophile and a child, so that the two can live together in the same home without the sex offender posing any threat to the infant. Long-term protection of the child from the father is the only concern.

Threat Assessment
Steven Sitler is a diagnosed fixated pedophile who confessed to molesting 25+ children, including his own family members, over a seven-year period before he was caught. Experts have determined that Mr. Sitler is a “Level III” (worst) sex offender and he “scored as a high risk to reoffend.” No cure exists for Mr. Sitler’s condition. Mr. Sitler’s history of pedophilia informs us that he attacks his victims quickly and he strikes them even when adults are present in the home, which means that the immediate company of authority figures does not deter him from assaulting children. On June 1, 2011, Judge John Stegner affirmed the threat represented by Mr. Sitler, stating, “I think it’s a reasonable restriction that he not reside with his wife and child, in the future, if in fact they have children.” In August 2015 Mr. Sitler admitted during a polygraph exam that he had “contact resulting in actual sexual stimulation” with his child, which was the IDOC’s cause of action for removing him from his home.

The potential victim in this case is the 1 ½-year-old son of the pedophile. The infant is unable to protect himself from abuse and he is unable to communicate with adults if his father harms him. Accordingly, if the Court permits Mr. Sitler to live in the same home as his child, then he would pose a clear threat to that child for the next eleven years. Therefore Mr. Sitler’s son would require 24-hour 7-days-a-week protection, or safety, from his father.

You can see why VTS neglected to state the goal of their plan as well as the exact danger the plan seeks to remedy, because when you frame the facts of the case in clinical language you realize that the IDOC charged VTS with an impossible task. A child who lives in a normal home without a fixated pedophile enjoys no risk of being molested. However, a child who lives in an abnormal home with a fixated pedophile suffers continuous exposure to the possibility of molestation, as long as the threat is present. Therefore, Steven Sitler’s son is safer right now with his father banned from the premises than he would be if his father lived in the home. It follows, therefore, that any plan to allow Mr. Sitler to live in the same home as his child does not place the child’s safety first.

No Firewall

The firewall in the VTS plan does not pass muster. Consider, for example, condition #3:

“Steven will not bath, or diaper his son, nor will he attend to his son when his son is not clothed. Clothed for his son means he has the minimum of a diaper on.”

Notice that this stipulation does not prohibit Mr. Sitler from watching his wife bathe his son or change his diaper, which strikes me as a substantial oversight because Sitler is an admitted voyeur. Moreover, I am unsure why VTS distinguishes between naked & clothed children because Mr. Sitler has admitted that he feels sexual arousal when he sees clothed children. On September 1, 2015, Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson recounted the following incident:

“As pointed out, as disclosed in the most recent polygraph interview, there were historic events that apparently were shared with one or both of Mr. Sitler’s parents, of Mr. Sitler becoming sexually aroused observing a young female on a vacation trip — um, none of that was reported, although the chaperone agreements require them to report that.” (@26:47)

Unless Sitler committed another act of voyeurism, then this young girl was clothed when he felt “sexually aroused” at the sight of her. Additionally, in 2003 Steven Sitler uploaded photographs of children (including some of his victims) to the web and every one of them was clothed — some fully, others in bathing suits. So nudity does not trigger Sitler, though it may inflame him. Either way, naked children are not the problem. Steven Sitler is the problem because he is a fixated pedophile. His radar locks & zooms whenever he sees a child — any child, clothed or not — and he feels aroused. This is his mental disorder; 11 years of psychotherapy has not changed this; no amount of therapy can change it; and the VTS plan does not acknowledge this fact or address it.

Condition #4 ignores, or makes light of, Sitler’s essential problem as well: “Steven will wear a shirt, and shorts, or pants when holding or caring for his son.” One layer of cotton between Sitler and his child will not prevent him from fixating, though it will likely incite his natural sexual orientation for children in an unhealthy way.

Condition #7 appears to be the weakest link and the most accommodating term of the plan:

“Steven may use the restroom at night without Katie following him when their son is sleeping. This is the plan for their current home as the master bedroom looks directly into the bathroom. There is currently no door to the bathroom. If a door is hung it will remain open during nighttime when the family is sleeping.”

According to the Latah County Sheriff’s report that was written by the father of the ground zero victims in Moscow, Steven Sitler snatched a three-year-old child from her bed, took her to the bathroom, and committed abominations as the parents slept:

“Sitler . . . had taken . . . from her bedroom in the middle of the night to one of the bathrooms in the residence and touched her private to private.” (Latah County Sheriff’s Report)

Condition #7 of the VTS plan accommodates this pattern of behavior because it does not state that Katie must be awake when Sitler relieves himself, to ensure that he does not sneak around the home.

The VTS plan crumbles at this point because it fundamentally denies that Steven Sitler requires a 24-7 chaperone whenever children are present. All married couples know how to take a bathroom break in the middle of the night without waking up their spouse. Steven Sitler knew how to do this with his roommates during his 18-month crime spree in Moscow and I believe he learned to do it during the first five years of his marriage before Katie conceived. Therefore, if we assume he can crawl out of bed at 2 AM without Katie knowing, then we may also assume he can do other things at that time without Katie knowing. And the VTS plan does not acknowledge this ordinary routine of life or make provision for it.

Unrealistic

The VTS plan is impractical and unrealistic. Consider condition #6: “When Katie is using the restroom for any reason Steven will be in Katie’s line of sight or their son will be in Katie’s line of sight when another chaperone is not present.” This term does not contemplate shower time. For example, my wife disappears from the universe when she showers at night. Roughly 25 minutes pass from the time when she turns on the water and the time she presents herself — shower, toweling, skin softener, make up, blow drying hair (twice), and whatever else. It’s simply impossible to expect Katie Sitler to perform her daily routine and maintain a direct line of sight on her husband or child, every single day of her life, for the next eleven years.

Conclusion

The VTS “Safety Plan” indicates little concern for the Sitler child as it contemplates a living environment where the father is a predator to his son. This thought alone — the father is a predator to his son — should be enough to end the conversation, at least in my opinion. The VTS plan does not consider the long-term emotional toll this plan will exact from the child or other unimaginable horrors this plan may ultimately visit upon him. This plan assumes that Steven Sitler’s impulse to molest his child can be controlled or limited by circumstances or living conditions, which VTS knows (or should know) is not true. The primary goal of this plan appears to be an accommodation of Mr. Sitler’s whims, who apparently does not grasp the nature of his desperate condition. For if he understood his diagnosis, and if he loved his child, then he would be the first person to argue against his reintroduction into the home, in order to protect his son from himself.