“You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice.” Exodus 23:1–2

Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow, admitted in writing to Rachel Shubin that Steven Silter “was never arrested.” On November 19, 2015, in his first email to her, he wrote:

“Steven corrected me on one mistake I made in our HOH meeting. Steven was never arrested. Shortly after the victim’s father reported him, Steven contacted the authorities here and said he was going to cooperate fully, and did he need to come down? They said no. That means that he wasn’t arrested until his sentencing.” (The Shubin Report, page 115)

Doug Wilson’s admission is significant because it contradicts what the Christ Church elders documented in their elders’ meeting minutes. We know this because Mr. Wilson wrote the following statement to Rod Dreher of The American Conservative:

A Sitler Timeline
The second thing is to fit a Sitler timeline into one extended paragraph. This is not scintillating prose, but the actual record matters. Every point in this paragraph is taken from a transcript of every reference to Steven Sitler in our elder minutes from 2005 to the present.

Steven was caught in March of 2005. I counseled the father of the victim to turn Steven into the authorities immediately. That happened the following day, and Steven was arrested. He was immediately expelled from New St. Andrews College. . . . (“Doug Wilson’s ‘Reluctant Response’”; October 1, 2015, emphasis original)

According to this, the Christ Church elders documented in their minutes that Steven Sitler was arrested, even though Mr. Wilson now admits he was not. And this is significant because of a statement that Doug Wilson posted to the community bulletin board on June 6, 2006:

“In the real world, where all this actually happened, the civil authorities were contacted immediately, and no children were endangered by him from that moment to this. Steven left Moscow immediately, and was allowed by the civil authorities to wait for his trial in his home town, which is why the people there were informed right away.” (“shamelessness”; June 6, 2006)

One week later, Mr. Wilson uploaded the same statement to his blog:

“In the real world, where all this actually happened, the civil authorities were contacted immediately, and no children were endangered by him from that moment to this. Steven left Moscow immediately, and was allowed by the civil authorities to wait for his trial in his home town, which is why the people there were informed right away.” (“Vision 20/20 Posts On Sitler”; June 13, 2006)

According to both entries, Doug Wilson understood that Steven Sitler was not arrested, because he “left Moscow immediately, and was allowed by the civil authorities to wait for his trial in his home town.” Please note that Steven Sitler lived across state lines in Colville, Washington, where no victim family reported any crimes, so those civil authorities had no cause to arrest him. Further, we know that Sitler couldn’t have been arrested in Moscow because the ground-zero father waited several days to file his official complaint with the sheriff, by which time Sitler had fled the state and retained legal counsel who began negotiating his plea bargain. Everyone knew that Steven Sitler was never arrested. Even the Latah County Sheriff’s Department served notice of this fact by posting it the community bulletin board:

“The detective wrote an affidavit for a warrant of arrest that was notarized on 6/28/2005. There is no indication in the file that an arrest warrant was issued or served” (“shamelessness”; June 8, 2006)

Here’s a bullet synopsis:

• 2005 Kirk elder minutes state that Sitler was arrested
• 2006 Doug Wilson informs the community on two separate occasions that Sitler left town immediately to live with his parents, unmolested by the law — that is, he was not arrested.
• 2015 Doug Wilson quotes the 2005 Kirk elder minutes to Rod Dreher, saying Sitler was arrested.

These facts raise the following questions:

1. Why did the Kirk elder minutes document something that Doug Wilson knew was false?
2. Why did Doug Wilson report to the Moscow community the opposite of what he reported to the Kirk elders?
3. Why did Doug Wilson knowingly quote from falsified minutes to Rod Dreher? Why didn’t he quote from his personal website instead?
4. Did Douglas Wilson and the Kirk elders deliver these falsified minutes to the CREC Review Committee?
5. What other fabrications do the Christ Church elder minutes contain?

These are not rhetorical questions, because “In the real world, where all this actually happened,” Doug Wilson told two different stories to three different audiences. He told his elders one thing; he told the Moscow community another; and he told Rod Dreher the same falsehood that he told his elders (and he told the Kirk HOHs the same lie). In each account he tailored his details to relieve his audience’s possible concerns. But he doesn’t appear as concerned about the truth as he does circulating his spin.

Doug Wilson’s contradictory tales reveal what Doug Wilson’s “real world” actually looks like: He may or may not tell the truth, depending on how it serves his interests. And he’ll put it in writing.