Here is today’s editorial in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, and as noted the Daily News and Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson have shown more concern for the Sitler child than everyone in Christ Church, the CREC, and the Sitler family combined.
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Family values no reason to let Steven Sitler go home
By Lee Rozen, for the editorial board
Latah County 2nd District Court Judge John Stegner seems more rooted in reality than the counselor, social worker and minister at Valley Treatment Specialties, a Lewiston sexual offender treatment provider.
They recommended Steven Sitler, 30, a Moscow man sentenced in 2005 to life in prison for lewd conduct with a child, be allowed to move back into his family home with his young child, whom he admitted to having contact with that resulted in sexual stimulation.
Stegner denied Sitler that privilege Wednesday.
Ya think?
This “fixated pedophile” has quite a history. Before his conviction in 2005, he babysat for several members of his church congregation, Doug Wilson’s Christ Church. He served a year in prison, and nearly a year in jail. Then, released on probation for life, he was required to find a male roommate and have no contact with his victims or their families. With encouragement from some of his congregation, he married in 2011. Then, his wife got pregnant. As these things go, he soon had a son.
His wife, mom and dad, among some nine other “approved chaperones,” were to keep track of his activities to make sure he didn’t have inappropriate contact with his own child. But within a month they failed. Beyond that, wife, mother and father knew about it but failed to tell his probation officer. That disqualified them as chaperones, essentially barring Sitler from his own house.
Mom was retrained and reinstated as a chaperone in January. The wife’s retraining took until August to demonstrate an increase in knowledge and skill.
So, Sitler’s lawyers thought he could move back home.
Stegner disagreed.
The conditions recommended for a happy home life for all, bordered on absurd. If Sitler, his wife and son were alone in the house, his wife had to be able to see him when he was with his son; he couldn’t change his son’s diaper; his wife had to be able to see either her son or her husband from the bathroom; both he and his wife had to undergo polygraph testing; and he had to self-report any wrongdoing.
Most of those are unrealistic expectations.
It’s simple. Pedophiles — and no one claims Sitler has been cured — should not be around children, their own or anyone else’s.
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Between this and yesterday’s post, I’m confused. Is Sitler going home soon or not? Have his family members already been reinstated as chaperones?
Hi NJ — Good questions. The Daily News slightly whiffed on their initial headline as well as the editorial at one point, which has created a little confusion: Judge Stegner stated that he intended to reunify the family in the future unless the State produces expert witnesses to contradict Team Sitler’s hired guns. Stegner did reinstate Katie Sitler as a chaperone with that goal in mind, but he did not reinstate Dave Sitler because he had not done the requisite counseling. The defense asked Stegner to allow Sitler back into the home immediately and Stegner said no — for now. He said he wants to move forward in “baby steps.” He set no date. So Sitler is not back in the home — he’s inches away; and Katie is a chaperone effective immediately.
Or, to slightly augment Ulysses statement above, “Katie is an ineffective chaperone immediately.” I would guess that is because the large, fancy motor home parked behind the house (and possibly serving as a guest house for mama Roxanne Sitler since her reinstatement as chaperone occurred in January of 2016) has headed home to Colville, Washington now that Katie now serves in that capacity. I hope someone thought to polygraph Roxanne during her stint as chaperone. What a travesty of justice for the infant.
Rose Huskey
Based on what I am reading, this judge is doing everything in his power to prevent Sitler from being in the home with his son or at least limit contact as much as he can. Team Sitler seems to be skilled at bending the law without breaking it and the judge is trying to avoid a three ring circus. He said he needs expert proof to refute the defense to keep Sitler out of the home. I get the impression he doesn’t want to allow Steven around Baby Boy, but he has to make sure his ruling is iron clad so that it can’t be thrown out by another court.
Maybe this story should go viral around the country instead of staying contained in Moscow. To protect the child.
Thanks for the feedback. I wonder if Sitler’s lawyer will push for home visits next, as a stepping stone to letting him move back in.
The have established an obvious trajectory and if that’s not the next leg, it’s certainly in the flight path.
This insanity is bending my brain. This should be a national story. Less bizarre freak shows are.
This story is being willfully ignored my the media-at-large on the grounds of “religious freedom” or “religious exemption,” most likely.
“Pastor” Wilson references the public reaction to the Sitler case this morning (August 22), writing in his “Blah and More Blah” blog “…..our congregation here in Moscow contains a registered sex offender, for whose sake we have taken a pounding over the years. Maybe you’ve read about it somewhere, and some of what you have read is even true. But the reason we have taken that pounding is because—like every other member of our church—he has professed repentance. All he would need to do to make all the intoleristas lay off him completely is to start wearing a dress and lipstick, denounce Christ Church for its pharisaism, blame his repressive Christian upbringing for his crimes, and announce the formation of a political action organization devoted to opening up Idaho’s bathrooms to every kind of perversion. If he were to do that, there would be a statue to his heroism in Friendship Square, and a gig on the Today show.” Word salad. What does Moscow (the real Moscow, Idaho) want? We want a very young little boy kept away from a fixated, incurable pedophile. Who, “Pastor” Wilson, regardless of the magnificence that is you, with your overarching knowledge of EVERYTHING, including, apparently, counseling serial pedophiles, would and will be a constant threat to the boy until he grows too old to attract your “repentant” congregant’s fancy. That’s all. And anyone outside of your cult knows that’s all. Your attempt at cleverness regarding any other wishes falls flat to the world outside of your, uh, “church”. And you do realize that, given who and what you are, the mantle of “intolerista” is a compliment. The last thing I would want is to be thought of as a believer in your swill.
Doug Wilson appears to be conflating repentance with “I will not do it again.” As one who has worked with abusers in my distance past, i can assure you that most abuser expresses remorse or repentance. Then they go ahead and abuse and start repentance all over again. It is often a never ending cycle. Doug Wilson is dangerously naive if he believes that repentance means all is well.
Hi Dee: He absolutely knows better and has publicly stated so on multiple occasions. I’ve been posting a string of quotes by him along those lines to make that point. Here are two:
“we do believe that he, his wife, his chaperons, his ministers and elders, his fellow church members, his probation officers, and the state of Idaho, have reason and cause to be wary”
“Churches that specialize in superficial reconciliation”
He’s just lying. He does that a lot.
It seems to me one could take a lot of what Doug says and do what I did below.
“When [someone like “pastor” Doug Wilson] has gotten to the point where [he is] willing to call evil good, [he does] not back down simply because someone points it out. [He] double[s] down. [He] lie[s]. [He] twist[s] everything completely around and say[s] that you are the one calling evil good. And [he] will continue to do this unless and until God gives His sovereign, inexorable, unstoppable, tsunami-like gift of repentance. This will happen when God takes up the [gigantic forest fire] of [his] lies, has an angelic helicopter pilot fly [it] a couple hundred miles out over the Pacific Ocean of watery truth, and tells him to drop [it] all in.”
Repentance Made Vile, Fog and More Fog (Blog and Mablog), Monday Aug 22, 2016
“Scumbag” is an insufficient adjective for Doug Wilson.
Our family has attended and left 3 churches in 12 years that have had pedophiles assault children and the elders immediately said “well he repented so he has to immediately be reinstated.” Of course those men have gone on to hurt others and left 3 churches completely hurt , bewildered and then split with many never to attend an organized church again because of the pain and miss trust it all caused. The most simple of fix is to have seen fruit of repentance right away by the pedophile admitting what he done without excuse and willingly removing himself from the congregation and especially the victims and frankly deciding to never enter that church again for the good of everyone. But instead you have very gullible elders want to “restore” everyone in days , they believe the evil mans word without any testing time and within days the victim is the one who is seen as unrepentant . If some one repents don’t they want to count themselves as loss and put the person they hurt above themselves? Is this not the face of true repentance in the Bible ?Are not we told about restitution in the Bible? Then why don’t these supposed great and learned men of the church apply that same principle when it comes to these kind of sexual sins? I believe it is because they are hiding their own depravity of some kind and just want to get things over with and move away from that subject as soon as possible for their own sakes . At the very least it is because they are ignorant of the simple Bible truth of true repentance and fruit bearing. Unless the Lord intervenes by some miracle the son of this man is and will forever be damaged beyond belief for the rest of his life and he will never be able to trust a living soul or the great God who gave Himself for such a time as this. Again and again I have to say” People lets read our Bibles and live His Word.
The modern church as a general rule has been overrun with thieves and liars. Trying to make sense of it is futile. All they do is distort the words of Christ and try to buy themselves back under the law.