[Vision2020] A letter to Doug Wilson . . .

Fri Sep 4 23:15:37 PDT 2015

Permit me to preface this posting with a personal comment.

I totally support the content of this letter and the intent for which It was written.  

As each of us matures, we must assume responsibility for our actions and inactions.

Perhaps Mr. Wilson should have heeded his own words of January 31, 3007 . . .

http://www.tomandrodna.com/Sounds/Doug_Wilson_013107.mp3

Courtesy of Keely Emerine Mix, a friend, . . .

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This is my letter to Doug Wilson, who officiated at the 2011 wedding of a young female congregant to Steven Sitler, a serial pedophile with whom she had a baby earlier this year. Steven, in what the Latah County Prosecutor called an instance of "the State's worst fears," was found to have unspecified "contact resulting in actual sexual stimulation" with the infant, causing the judge to require that an approved chaperone be present at all times -- "within his direct line of sight, at all times he is around his infant child." (Moscow-Pullman Daily News, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2015). The article DOES NOT state that Sitler molested the infant but experienced sexual arousal as a result of the unnamed contact; the article further states that the contact was disclosed in a lie-detector test, which the Prosecutor says he has never passed. In the prosecutor's words, "The actions that he has engaged in and disclosed are a compelling basis that he cannot have anything close to a normal parental relationship at this time with his child ... Everybody would love for Mr. Sitler to become a normal person, but the fact is he is not. He is a serial child sexual abuser." (Daily News, ibid). 
Wilson, who previously had argued that child molesters should be killed, then argued that his congregant and New St. Andrews student should receive "measured" civil penalties because he had "repented." Sitler was sentenced in to life in prison in Sept. 2006 under a plea agreement, serving less than a year before being granted lifelong probation. Terms of that probation require that he never be alone with any child under 18, even his own. According to the prosecutor, he "would not be able to reside with his wife and child," an outcome Christ Church lawyer Dean Wullenwaber said that was akin to "perform surgery with an ax ..."
Sitler's past offenses, the disturbing results of his deviancy assessments, and the bride's extreme preoccupation about being 23 and not having experienced "it" -- courtship, engagement, marriage -- led her to seek matchmaking with NSA Librarian Ed Iverson, who, in an example of arrogant stupidity you'll likely not see the likes of anytime soon, brought the two together. After a whirlwind courtship, they married in June 2011. Wilson presided.
You will hear that Wilson didn't know the full extent of Sitler's crimes and illness. 
That is a lie. He knew it all. And, some weeks after Sitler was caught molesting a toddler in the house in which he lived with a Christ Church family (2005), Wilson, at an all-male "Heads of Household" meeting, disclosed Sitler's offense, although accounts differ regarding how much information he gave them. He did not tell any mothers directly, relying on their husbands to discuss it. 
I believe Wilson has caused untold devastation to an immature but worthy young woman, her infant, who, at best, will never be able to bond one-on-one with his father, and to Sitler himself, who now has access to his own child and likely victim -- temptation not mitigated by a "line of sight" chaperone. And while Iverson is equally guilty, he is not a pastor, did not perform the wedding, and does not have the position and power Wilson had to inject some sanity into this. Instead, Wilson's stupefying arrogance guided his actions, and he must be held accountable. 
The letter:
September 4, 2015
Douglas Wilson, Pastor
Christ Church of Moscow, Idaho 
Dear Doug,
I wanted to wait until the end of the work week before I wrote to you, hoping that perhaps any vestige of conscience you have would spur you to announce that you will do what I am about to ask you to do. It’s now 6 p.m., and there’s no indication that you will do the right thing here. Therefore, I am forced, in light of your egregious contribution to the recent revelation that your congregant, Steven Sitler has had, as the Daily News reports, “contact resulting in actual sexual stimulation” in circumstances involving his infant child, to demand that you resign immediately as pastor of Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho. 
As you know, in May 2011 I charged you, through my blog, Prevailing Winds, with reckless, arrogant, damaging, and un-Godly conduct in supporting the Ed Iverson-arranged courtship between Sitler and Katie Fowler, and then, in June 2011, marrying them – despite the objections of his court-ordered sexual deviancy counselor and testing data indicating that he was at high risk of re-offending. Your hypocrisy in pleading for “measured” civil penalties for a man whose conduct was, as you had written before, worthy in your mind only of the death penalty, has been noted. 
You compounded your hypocrisy, however, by demonstrating a breathtaking absence of mature judgment and common sense when you married this serial pedophile to a presumably fertile young woman whose children, per the terms of his release, could never be left alone with him, their own father. Katie, whose startling immaturity was amply demonstrated before and during the courtship, was assigned by the State after their wedding as his primary chaperone.
However, you have taught Katie that her husband is her covenant head, leader of their family, and one she must obey, making a mockery of her legal responsibility to supervise him when he’s in the presence of any children, including his own. She was under the legal imperative to immediately report any signs of molestation or suspicious behavior, and it seemed a safe bet that she would not contradict or exercise authority over her husband. Indeed, she has now lost that position and will only regain it, according to the Daily News, after increased training by the State. 
Tragically, no amount of “man’s law” will triumph over what she believes to be her Biblical duty to support and submit to her husband – even when the well-being of her own baby is at risk, as is the case. I cannot imagine a less Biblical husband-and-wife relationship than one that requires that, because of the husband’s sexual pathology, she must never leave her child alone with him. Your blithe ignorance of the impossible position you have put her in is despicable. More reprehensible, though, is the contempt you heaped on this young woman when you married her to a man whose sexual attractions not only do not, by definition, include her, but, horrifically, would be focused on any children she bears to him. 
I would be hard-pressed to find another Christian pastor whose judgment is so poor and whose contempt is so profound. And while Iverson, whom Katie has breathlessly described as her matchmaker, sinned horribly by offering Steven as a suitable husband for the desperately lonely young woman who so looked up to him, he is not a pastor, and he did not perform the ceremony that sealed this woman’s fate, and that of her children, for the rest of her life. 
I have engaged with you for 13 years now, and I know that you regularly do and say shameful things, shamelessly. I do not, therefore, appeal to your sense of decency. I believe you have none. Because of what you have done to this woman – and to Steven by enabling him to be in a relationship wherein he is extremely likely to father his own victims – I am prayerfully committed to exposing you, until you publicly repent, as an object of such scorn and disapproval that your name will never again be uttered in any positive connection to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is this Gospel you have appropriated to put Katie, her child, and Steven in peril, and it is this Gospel you have made filthy in the eyes of your community. 
Therefore, it is for the sake of Christian witness locally and for what I believe to be the salvation of your soul that I insist you take responsibility and demonstrate repentance by resigning -- immediately, publicly and in humility. I will make this letter public three hours after I send it to you, and if you do not resign by 5 p.m. Tuesday, September 8, I will deliver copies of my May 2011 blogposts, this letter, and the Daily News article to every Christian pastor in Moscow. I will also organize peaceful efforts to expose your enabling of this tragedy, and I will never cease praying for your repentance.
If this seems harsh and unyielding to you, I would ask that you consider how harsh the life that you and Iverson designed for Katie is. Believe me when I say that just humiliation may follow you because you married them, and yet I’m certain that she would do anything in her power to have simple humiliation be the worst thing she must face, thanks to you two, every day of her life.
Sincerely,
Keely Emerine-Mix

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Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares" 
http://www.MoscowCares.com

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

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