“. . . without natural affection, implacable, false accusers, brutal, fierce, despisers of those that are good. . .” 2 Timothy 3:3

How should a father respond after he discovers that someone boarding in his home had been molesting one of his children? People typically answer this question by appealing to some form of physical violence. For example, four years before he learned about child rapist Steven Sitler, Pastor Doug Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow, required physical engagement as the only appropriate response to such a discovery:

If a man were to see his wife being attacked by rapists, all his professions of love and deep concern are meaningless unless he fights for her. Under such circumstances, a refusal to fight does not stem from a love of peace, but rather from the now-revealed contempt he has for his wife. (Mother Kirk: Essays & Forays in Practical Ecclesiology [Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2001], p. 74)

Replace “wife” with “children” and the point is exact. Doug Wilson holds as an article of his faith that a man should resort to violence to protect his family from rape. Mr. Wilson semi-repeated this point last year in response to some of the revelations about Steven Sitler:

I believe there was at least one scenario where Steven could have been killed on the spot, and no injustice done. (The Only Kind of Gospel There Is)

By saying “could have been killed,” Mr. Wilson backed off his obligation to fight and made a “refusal to fight” optional, and his statement raises the question, what kind of scenario could warrant summary execution of a pedophile? I suspect the answer to this question would incriminate someone for failing to report Sitler. Mr. Wilson continued,

However, quite apart from the penalties applied by the current justice system, you may remember what that father in Texas did a couple years ago. The Texas grand jury in that instance did the right thing, and there was no injustice done. (The Only Kind of Gospel There Is)

The Texas case that Mr. Wilson linked is close to point. The father beat the perpetrator to death with his fists when he caught the man, pants down, molesting his five-year-old daughter:

Authorities say a witness saw Flores ‘forcibly carrying’ the girl into a secluded area and then scrambled to find the father. Running toward his daughter’s screams, investigators said, the father pulled Flores off his child and ‘inflicted several blows to the man’s head and neck area.’

Emergency crews found Flores’ pants and underwear pulled down on his lifeless body by the time they responded to the 911 call. (Daily Mail)

Passions run high in these circumstances; no one can say with certainty how they would respond. People who talk tough seldom have the physical or moral courage to act as they speak, like Mr. Wilson. He demonstrated this when he waived 27 years of written exposition on the biblical requirement of executing pedophiles to accommodate serial pedophile Steven Sitler. I’m pretty sure that Doug Wilson’s convictions are for sale to the highest bidder, unless you can think of another reason why he suddenly believed in the theological merit of waiting 500 years to pull the trigger on child molesters.

This brings us to how the ground-zero father in Moscow responded when he learned that Steven Sitler had violated one of his children and the child of a fellow kirker. To refresh your memory, he confronted Sitler at 4:00 PM on Thursday, March 10, 2005, to account for his behavior. Sitler admitted that he had touched two of the children — one of them on the “bottom.” He said he fondled the other’s “private parts” “more than once”; which is the point in time where the ground-zero father refused to fight. He reported that he said the following to Sitler:

“I told him he needed to move out of our house. I told Steven to confess these things to his parents because I wanted them to know before I called them.”

Again, no one knows how they would respond to this kind of discovery, but this response is abnormal and nothing in the public record indicates that he considered the welfare of his children — including this line:

“That evening Sitler was still in the [victims’] home. [The ground-zero father] said that he ‘pretty much stayed upstairs in the hallway in case he tried to come up stairs again.’”

Steven Sitler should have spent the night in jail — not in the same home as the children he had molested for the previous 18 months. But the ground-zero father acted with another interest in mind. Note what he did and did not do:

• He did not immediately report Sitler to the sheriff;
• He allowed Sitler to sleep in his home that night;
• He let Sitler slip across state lines the next morning without reporting him to authorities;
• He waited until late afternoon the next day until he notified the sheriff by telephone about Sitler;
• He enjoyed a spring break vacation before he filed his official written complaint with the sheriff;
• He falsely reported to the sheriff that Sitler lived in his home to attend the University of Idaho, not New St. Andrews College;
• He refused to make a consensual call — that is, he denied permission to the Latah County Sheriff’s Department to record a phone conversation between him and Sitler.

All seven of these actions benefited Doug Wilson by reducing the risk of Christ Church or New Saint Andrews College (NSA) from making headlines. Six of these seven actions benefited Steven Sitler by protecting him from arrest, which kept him out of jail. One action thwarted the investigation into Sitler’s crimes and simultaneously aided Sitler’s criminal defense. None of these actions followed Doug Wilson’s teaching on the subject, especially the ground-zero father’s “refusal to fight.” And none of the ground-zero father’s actions benefited his own children — the little ones whom Steven Sitler raped. Rather, he acted in a way that appeared coordinated to further Doug Wilson’s best interests at the expense of his family and he did this with his pastor’s blessing. He was a true team player.

The other day I named Steven Sitler as the lead kirker who suffers from what St. Paul called “without natural affection,” but as noted Sitler has a legitimate excuse — he’s a psychopath. He can’t help himself. The ground-zero father, however, has no excuse. No one expected him to kill Sitler on the spot — but in the least he could have called the sheriff. He didn’t have to pamper the molester. And even now the ground-zero father could blow this thing wide open, if he came clean. He knows exactly what Sitler is doing. He knows as well as anyone that Sitler is a stealthy predator who should never be around children. But he has remained silent as this horror has unfolded before the Palouse.

The judgment of charity reckons the ground-zero father a weak man whose moral compass is oriented to Doug Wilson, the man who has deprogramed from him whatever natural affection he may have felt for his children. He put the Kirk cultus before his own family. He gave it all. And Mr. Wilson promoted the ground-zero father to an officer in the CREC as reward for his team play, just as he promoted Dave Sitler, father of the pedophile.

How should a father respond after he discovers that someone boarding in his home had been molesting one of his children? Perhaps he could start by showing some natural affection for his children and none for the man who committed abominations on them.