Last year when we launched MoscowID.net, I missed four critical Sitler documents during site prep — that is, I did not upload them. I discovered them on my hard drive yesterday by accident. But this is good, especially for our new readers, because the arguments in these court records identify the essential problem with the Steven Sitler marriage and all of its unhappy fallout.
For those just joining us, Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow, presided over the marriage of a serial pedophile named Steven Sitler to a terribly naïve graduate of New St. Andrews College (NSA). Mr. Sitler is a fixated pedophile, which is a clinical mental disorder that means he is sexually oriented to prepubescent children. That is, prepubescent children are his first and only choice for a sex partner. No cure exists for fixated pedophiles, including castration. It’s a mental disorder.
The public record shows that Mr. Sitler molested boys & girls — newborns to 11-years old — including members of his own family. Mr. Sitler molested children in his home state of Washington, in Idaho, and in Virginia. Mr. Sitler’s criminal defense attorney once summarized his client’s career in pedophilia as “the volume of Steven’s offenses over the years.” After pleading guilty to one count of Lewd Conduct With a Minor Under Sixteen Years of Age, Mr. Sitler served about 18 months in jail upon which the judge released him on probation for life. If Mr. Sitler violates his probation, he will very likely be sent to prison where he will finish his life sentence. That is, he will die behind bars.
So after two dates with this graduate of New Saint Andrews College, Mr. Sitler proposed to marry her and she accepted. Ten months later Mr. Wilson officiated the wedding ceremony and 4 ½ years later, in March 2015, the wife gave birth to a son for her pedophiliac husband. An inconceivable oversight in the Department of Probation & Parole allowed Mr. Sitler to live in the same home as his child for four months, unbeknownst to the Court. During this time, Mr. Sitler enjoyed unlimited access to his baby. The Court did not discover this until June 2015, whereupon it scheduled a hearing for July 31, 2015, which is the point where our newly discovered documents enter the picture.
In July 2015, Mr. Sitler’s attorneys found four expert witnesses who recommended that the Court release Mr. Sitler from his probation term that prohibited from being alone with children — specifically, his child. These experts did not declare Mr. Sitler healed of his pedophilia. Rather, they declared him a model patient whom the Court and society could trust to be alone with his child. The Court held a hearing on July 31, 2015, but continued it to September 1, after receiving the results of a polygraph test. Two weeks later, on August 13, 2015, Steven Sitler failed a follow-up polygraph, and on August 22, 2015, he failed another polygraph. The Department of Probation & Parole immediately banned him from being at his home or with his child. According to the public record, Mr. Sitler admitted he had “deviant sexual fantasies regarding the infant” and “contact resulting in actual sexual stimulation.”
These unpleasant facts bring us to our four new additions to the Sitler archive, from 2015. Accordingly, we have added,
- A Letter from Valley Treatment Specialties LLC to Judge Stegner (July 28, 2015)
The money quote: “There is no indication that Steven needs to have ‘line of sight’ supervision to parent his son.” - Order Sealing Documents dated August 4, 2015
Readers will recognize these words from Doug Wilson’s threat to Natalie Greenfield:This Court finds that the documents listed below “contain highly intimate facts or statements, the publication of which would be highly objectionable to a reasonable person.” I.C.A.R. 32(i)(1). Further, in weighing the interests of the public against the defendant’s privacy interest, the documents listed below should be sealed to reasonable preserve defendant’s privacy.
Mr. Wilson illegally threatened Natalie Greenfield with publishing documents that the Court sealed because they “contain highly intimate facts or statements, the publication of which would be highly objectionable to a reasonable person.” Mr. Wilson hoped his threat would silence Natalie. It didn’t. And while he threatened to publish her sealed records, he ignored, and continues to ignore, a baby in his congregation whose father wants to molest him. That man has sealed records that should concern Mr. Wilson.
- Exhibit A: IDOC Offender Family Contact Rules List
This is a list of restrictions placed upon Mr. Sitler as terms of his probation. All of them restrict his access to children. - Defense Memorandum (July 30, 2015)
This memo advances bold arguments in favor of allowing Steven Sitler to have unhindered contact with his child, citing four experts who, within two weeks, would look like fools. And whores. Team Sitler specifically asked the Court to remove the following terms from Sitler’s probation (Exhibit A above):General Rules:
- Never be alone with children.
- Never be responsible for supervising or disciplining children.
- Never initiate physical contact with children. . . .
Rules for family visits outside the home:
- The offender is to never be alone with children. A chaperone approved by the Probation/Parole officer is to be present at all times.
- The offender is not to discipline children. The chaperone is responsible for determining appropriate disciplining of the children. The chaperone is responsible for administering rewards or punishment.
- Any discussions of the abuse between the offender and the children will take place in the treatment setting.
- The offender will minimize physical contact with children and will not initiate physical contact with children (ie, hugs, hand holding, etc.). The offender will not sit next to children in a car, a restaurant, etc. . . .
Visits home:
- The offender will never enter the children’s bedrooms.
- The offender should be within eyesight of the chaperone at all times during home visits.
- The offender is not to control or dictate children’s activities. . . .
- The offender is not to sit next to children or have a child sit on his or her lap.
- The offender is not to be involved in the physical hygiene of the children.
- The offender is not to criticize or compliment children’s physical appearance (ie, hair, clothes, makeup, etc.), unless specifically asked for his or her opinion by the child.
- The offender is not to engage in horseplay or tickling with the children.
After their client underwent ten years of psychotherapy from two different clinics, Team Sitler heralded expert testimony from four paid witnesses to recommend that the Court give Steven Sitler free access to his son. And two weeks later, a $500 polygraph test revealed more about Steven Sitler’s behavior and thought process than all the hired guns combined: He’s a fixated pedophile and he acts according to his nature.
The one and arguably the most crucial element that has been persistently absent throughout this entire repugnant saga is sacrificial love, a foundational tenet of Christianity which the families involved in the Sitler–Travis marital abomination claim to admire and long to emulate. They know the words yet they refuse to act on them.
If Steven Sitler truly loved his wife and child he would asked that his prison sentence be immediately applied. In doing so he would never hurt another child and he would free his wife to rebuild her life in a healthy, meaningful way.
If Dave and Roxanne Sitler (Steven’s parents) loved him and rightfully feared what deviant desires he might act on they would stop protecting him with continual and meaningless financial gestures of parental concern. They would not protect and enable him by their silence. They would acknowledge that their son is a fixated pedophile and insist he endure the consequences of his exceptionally sexually aberrant and destructive behavior toward children. They would focus on helping their grandchild and daughter-in-law have a fresh start by providing opportunities to free them from the worry and anxiety their son has inflicted on them and many others.
If Katie Travis Sitler’s parents had genuinely cherished and respected her they would never, absolutely never, have allowed this courtship and marriage to go forward. Either they are/were so profoundly ignorant that they remained deliberately unaware of the danger and ignominy they were placing her in, or they are cruel and uncaring parents who happily tossed her into the Sitler cesspool.
If Katie Travis Sitler was/is so pathetically and pathologically anxious for a husband, despite her complete awareness of the range of his crimes and diagnosis (and according to Probation and Parole, Valley Treatment Specialties, and Dr. Greg Wilson she was fully informed) she herself is unfit to be a wife or mother. By staying with Steven she demonstrates her own profound mental health problems and failure to act on behalf of the wellbeing of her baby boy. She cannot/will not protect her son because she has demonstrated she cannot/will not protect herself. The unspoken anger and despair in their home must be overwhelming. No child should have to live in such tangled web of deceit and helplessness with the ever present encroaching specter and pattern of predatory sexual behavior minimized and ignored. This child will never have a home or parental relationship that can approach the unachievable goal of normalcy. Steven Sitler’s criminal record and reputation by extension robs the child of any opportunity for a normal childhood.
While the role of the parents was and continues to be malignant we must be ever mindful that the original and ongoing villains in this unbelievably evil and thoughtless matchmaking rests solely on the heads of Ed Iverson, former librarian at New Saint Andrews College, currently pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Colville Washington (where Dave Sitler serves as a deacon); Tim Tucker, Greyfriars attendee and pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Fallon, Nevada, the home church of the Travis family; and most especially Doug Wilson without whose permission this marital tragedy would never have occurred. Doug never admits or apologizes publicly for his own lapses in judgment up to and including his pivotal role in conducting the marriage. Indeed, he claims he was “glad to do so.” Perhaps he shares the profound ignorance of the other participants in thinking that a wife — over the age of 11 — would be a desirable sexual partner for Steven. This was and continues to be a catastrophic thinking error on his part.
There is no happy ending to this story only the unrelenting unraveling of the innocence of a child and the jagged piece by piece destruction of the life of an immature, longing for a fairy tale romance, young woman who was encouraged by family and clergy to believed she was powerful enough to reprogram the thought process of a fixated pedophile. We must not neglect to mention the church and CREC denomination members who either remain silent out of ill-founded respect for their pastors, fear of the consequences of speaking out, while pretending to believe that Steven has repented. They share in the culpability of their leaders and are equally answerable for the consequences of their silence.
Perhaps, there remains a single question for Kirkers to answer on the topic of Steven Sitler. Forget Doug Wilson’s self-serving and theologically indefensible parade of justifications and turn instead to the beloved novels of your own childhood. Ask yourself, what would Aslan say?
Rose Huskey
“If Katie Travis Sitler’s parents had genuinely cherished and respected her they would never, absolutely never, have allowed this courtship and marriage to go forward. Either they are/were so profoundly ignorant that they remained deliberately unaware of the danger and ignominy they were placing her in, or they are cruel and uncaring parents who happily tossed her into the Sitler cesspool.” If God, says it’s ok, then it must be ok. Oh, it was Doug. Dyslexia strikes again. Still they are one and the same for some people.
I remain curious about Judge Stegner.. what is his bias in this case? Does he have a known relationship with Wilson or CREC?
Hi Janet — We get this question a lot. It’s a natural question to ask. But there is no relationship or connection between Christ Church and the Honorable Judge John Stegner. You have to see it this way: In the original Court documents from 2006, Team Sitler made the argument that Stegner should release Sitler on probation so that he could receive professional help that is not available in prison. Stegner agreed and set in motion the series of events that have brought us to this point. He made his Court subject to expert witnesses — the experts are calling the shots. That’s why he chastised Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson at the last hearing, asking, “Are you an expert?” Stegner surrendered to the experts; the Sitlers have demonstrated that they will pay experts for certain opinions; and now the State must retain an expert to contradict Sitler’s experts, who recently modified their position, saying that Sitler should be permitted in the home with direct line-of-sight supervision. Stegner made it real clear in the last hearing that he wants an expert opinion from the State. Also, Team Sitler made it clear that they have the resources to fight the State, which suggests they have contemplated war with the State on this point. They want that pedophile in the home with their grandson.
But the actions of the Steven Sitler parents are totally understandable. There are a series of beliefs in Calvinsta aligned churches, which includes a lack of belief in psychology. They really do believe a pedophile of Steven Sitler’s type can change his spots, and that marriage to a good Christian girl is part of that (many of them believe this works with Gays too).
So there’s no surprise to me. Just a feeling of dread over what may happen to Katie Sitler and her child.
If, in reading the Family Contact Rules List, one mentally substitutes the word ‘father’ for the word ‘offender,’ it becomes very painfully obvious that Steven is not permitted to do most of the things that normal parents do with and for their children. The court would have to completely reverse these rules in order for him to be able to function as a parent at all. That poor child. How will they explain why Daddy can’t [___]?
(Nor should he be allowed to do any of these things, in case I wasn’t clear. It’s just so sad for the child, and also for Katie, who was in many ways still a child.)