Please take a moment to watch this video of Pastor Douglas Wilson officiating the marriage ceremony of a serial pedophile named Steven Sitler to a graduate of New St. Andrews College. Mr. Wilson presided over the wedding in 2011, apparently unbeknownst to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). We uploaded this website in September 2015 and we featured the video. Within a week of our launch, the CREC announced the formation of a committee to review the two (2) sex abuse cases that were the primary focus of this website. The committee is still working on its report.
The serial pedophile, a sophomore at New St. Andrews College, boarded with a Kirk family. An example of his wicked behavior can be found here. Mr. Wilson claims he molested 15+ children. The Latah County Prosecutor said it was closer to 20+ victims (we have reason to believe the number is significantly higher). He committed these crimes over a 6–7 year period in at least three different states. After he was caught, the judge sentenced him to 99 years but placed him on lifetime probation after about 18 months in jail. While on probation, Doug Wilson arranged an introduction between the young felon and a graduate of New Saint Andrews College and after two (2) dates, they engaged to marry. Ten months later they tied the knot. They published their story on a blog, which we archived here.
Last year, the couple had a baby and not long afterwards the pedophiliac father began failing his mandatory polygraph tests. He admitted that he had “deviant sexual fantasies regarding the infant” and “contact resulting in actual sexual stimulation.” The Department of Probation & Parole immediately banned him living in his home and from being with his son, which is where things stand now. The pedophile has lived in a motel for over a year to protect his 1½-year-old child from being molested.
These few paragraphs are a quick pencil sketch. There are many more details, which you can read in the archive. You may also see a timeline of events here. And you may read about the other sex-abuse case in this archive. In short, a Christ Church ministerial student raped a 14-year-old girl on a number of different occasions; was convicted of a felony (2006); returned to the Kirk; and sent on a missionary journey to Haiti. In 2014, he was convicted of domestic battery after he attempted to strangulate his wife — and he was convicted of perjury. A member of the CREC drafted a 499-page report of both sex-abuse cases, which you can read here.
So please take a look around. You can see the categories of subjects we address here. And leave a comment or question; we’re here to serve.
I did watch the first part of the wedding video and multiple things caught my attention.
The first was that Doug Wilson probably has a custom suit designed to camouflage his ample derriere and all around heft. He’s substantial, but not in the way he thinks.
The next thing I noticed was Sitler looking at the flower girl. Ish.
The third thing, equally creepy, concerned the reciting of vows, which were said while Sitler was standing beside DW and the bride remained beside her father, several steps below the raised stage. It occurred to me that this wasn’t a wedding ceremony as much as a transfer of headship from father to husband. In a normal Protestant wedding, the bride and groom recite their vows while facing each other, often holding hands. It seems in this wedding, and perhaps all Kirk weddings, the bride isn’t turned loose from her current headship to stand with her new headship until she promises to obey Mr. New Headship Guy. However, I’m projecting here because I turned it off before Sitler finished with his vows; who can watch the whole thing?
I couldn’t watch the whole thing, but Stephen looked much more excited about the flower girls than the bride. And who would allow their children to participate in this “wedding”?
Ok, I watched the whole thing.
First off, everyone was grinning at the flower girls, not just Steven.
Second off, while the beginning of the wedding was outside the norm, the “obey” part of her vows didn’t happen until they were facing each other holding hands. The vows themselves were modified from the original Book of Common Prayer, and actually sounded very traditional.
Third off, we see Doug at the end saying “On the basis of the vows exchanged here today and by the authority that is vested in me as a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ and His grace, I now declare that you are husband and wife. You may kiss your bride.”
I guess he must have changed his mind sometime after writing in one of his books that officiants at weddings ought not to “pronounce” a marriage into existence, ’cause…sacerdotalism.
Fourth off, I realized that something was missing that was part of the original western marriage ceremony. It was the line from the BCP that went something like “If anyone knows of any cause why these two should not be joined together in holy matrimony, let him speak now, or forever hold his peace”.
I probably should have said the original Anglican marriage ceremony, but anyway.
I didn’t notice Doug himself praying for the gift of children. Another guy near the beginning, stood at a microphone off to the side and prayed a lengthy prayer which included,
“Heavenly Father, Thou art also the wellspring of life. Bestow upon these Thy servants, if it be Thy will, the gift and heritage of children. Grant that they may see their children brought up in Thy faith and fear, to the honor and glory of Thy name, to the grace given to us in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I don’t know who the guy was; maybe somebody else can recognize him.
After the vows and rings were exchanged, they turned to listen to the “charges” from each of the dads. Mr. Travis said among other things (to Katie),
“Help Steven moderate his logical and analytical views that God provided to him with the empathy and sensitivity that God provided to you.”
Now I’m sure Mr. Travis knows his daughter better than any of us, but this stereotype rubs me the wrong way. It came off sounding like Sitler was the intellectual one (in need of moderation!) while Katie was the feeler, not as known for her logic, etc. I could be making too much of this, especially as a female INTP, but I’ve come across this in Christian books and church circles enough over the years, that it’s gotten somewhat annoying. Of course, given what we know now, it’s tempting to see Katie as possessing all the empathy and sensitivity in that marriage.
The man who offered the prayer is Tim Tucker. He graduated for ministry in the CREC from Greyfriars Hall. He pastors the CREC church in Fallon, Nevada, which was Katie’s hometown. Mr. Tucker was Wilson’s ace in the hole to close the deal with Katie’s parents. They knew Iverson, who set up the couple, and they sat under Tucker’s ministry — so it follows that it would be easy for them to reckon Tucker credible when he gave the serial pedophile a thumbs up.
Wilson had an affirmative moral obligation to call a timeout in the middle of that prayer, to inform the congregation that they could not enter those waters. Actually, he had an affirmative moral obligation to recommend life in prison for Sitler to Judge Stegner. And he had an affirmative moral obligation to block the marriage. And he had an affirmative moral obligation not to officiate the ceremony. So I’m pretty sure that moral obligations don’t register on his radar.
We have pics of Sitler focusing on the flower girl. Been sitting on them since the launch. It’s just been a matter of logistics.
Thanks, Ulysses. Do you think if Tucker had objected to the match, the Travises would have also?
Man. The thought of a pedo staring at a kid…evil comes from within the heart, but every time this happens, a new occasion of sin is created, as the Catholics would put it. I think of Jesus’ teaching that if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out, for it is better to enter the kingdom blind than be cast body and soul into hell. It seems the equivalent would be removing oneself from ever being able to see a child ever again.
“Do you think if Tucker had objected to the match, the Travises would have also?”
I cannot conceive of a scenario where Tucker would disagree with Wilson or where anyone else in the CREC would disagree with him. I know I’m not wrong on the former; I hope I’m wrong on the latter.
Setting that aside, if Tim Tucker had told the Travises: “That man is a fixated pedophile. Therefore, if you approve this marriage, then you shall force the church to discipline you, up to and including immediate excommunication, because this is possibly the cruelest form of generational child abuse imaginable”; then I believe he might have got their attention.
But I suspect Tucker was the deal closer. By this I mean that they already worshipped at the Wilson altar because they attended a Kirk CREC plant in Fallon, and Wilson gave it a green light. And they esteemed Ed Iverson for many years and he gave it a green light. So Tucker closed the deal: “Sitler’s the real thing. You can trust him.” It was a three-way hit job; Tucker was the last hit man.
Wilson would have had to sell the deal to Tucker on the phone. Probably took 7 or 8 minutes, maybe less. Probably took Tucker 10 minutes to explain to the Travises what pedophilia means and why they shouldn’t worry about it. That’s why there were all so giddy to meet him.
This is a horrible case of predatory pastors feeding on profoundly ignorant members in their care. Gonna need another circle in hell just for these monsters.
A lot of churches like Wilson’s have a belief that psychology is a scam, and that they have the ability to cure gays, and by inference (Steven Sitler), pedophiles. It looks like that is what happened here, and Katie and the child are the victims.
See, I didn’t know where Wilson stands on psychology and psychiatry in toto. If he were a graduate of John MacArthur’s outfit known as The Master’s Seminary, I would already know the answer. I predict serious problems in the years to come for the nouthetic counseling movement, and I hope the CREC is willing to reevaluate their claims.
Wayne is correct — but I would expand it significantly. Wilson holds all disciplines in contempt — from biblical hermeneutics to professional history and everything in between, including modern psychology and psychiatry. Wilson disdains these disciplines because he considers himself an expert in every field. Therefore, Sitler disdains these disciplines too, by default. Both men think that sitting down with a professional counselor does nothing, which is one more reason I believe Sitler is gaming the system. He tells these people what they want to hear so that they will give him positive evaluation reports, which is beside the point.
The point in this case is that I actually agree with Wilson in this particular instance. There is no cure for Steven Sitler. As the new court records reveal, he had over 100 counseling sessions with one doctor, and who knows how many with the other — yet all of it to no avail. Children still sexually arouse him. He still trolls looking for children (I don’t believe he was looking for “a woman in a bikini”). He wants to molest his own child. Etc.
If he had a proper understanding of his condition, which should be the first goal of any therapeutic treatment he undergoes, then he would have known that he should never have fathered a child. But he did it anyway. This leads me to conclude that he does not understand his condition and he does not understand that molesting children is morally wrong. Again, he is a psychopath — and I do not say this frivolously. Grown men who snatch 2-year-old children from their beds to sexually molest them (genitals to genitals) are beyond the help of man and I would say they crossed a line from which they cannot turn back. If a man must be told that it’s wrong to rape anyone — let alone helpless children — then he’s beyond help. Society can never trust him again because matters of conscience are beyond his nature, which is the fundamental point that every single person in authority refuses to acknowledge. Moreover, society should not have to pay for probation officers to babysit him or prosecutors to prosecute him or judges to adjudicate his crimes. He should be put down like a rabid dog — which does not mean punitively; it means mercifully, to protect society from him. Steven Sitler is beyond help — psychiatric, medical, professional, biblical, or any other kind. No one in any of these fields can install a conscience in Steven Sitler. A god-fearing pastor should take him by the hand and explain these things to him, and urge him to seek justice by asking Judge Stegner to incarcerate him for the remainder of his life, because as long as he prowls the streets, no child is safe.
It is important to understand the term “fixated” pedophile which is the psychiatric diagnosis applied to Steven Sitler. It was a term I did not know prior to reading it his court file. I urge readers to educate themselves and they will quickly understand the concern and urgency we feel about Steven’s access to children. Readers will also understand why after ten years plus of therapy Steven in no more trustworthy now then he was prior to treatment.
When Sitler “confessed” he was fixated on the woman (not likely) in a bikini and couldn’t get her out of his mind he was describing a fixation. A Google search will bring up a great deal of material on the topic. I prefer recent journal articles and law enforcement papers over older research. After reading the material it will clarify the concern our community has for the freedom (and the rank and file support led by pastor and head cheerleader Doug Wilson) that Steven Sitler enjoys.
Rose Huskey