Main Problems

● Mr. Wilson notified no one, including the members of Christ Church, that Mr. Sitler had been molesting children in Christ Church’s congregation until after Mr. Sitler was incarcerated.

● Mr. Wilson believes that Mr. Sitler has been and continues to be telling the truth despite the considerable evidence that he has been and continues to be lying to both the state and Mr. Wilson.

The morning after Mr. Sitler was discovered, he returned to his home in Colville, WA. That afternoon the father of the family that boarded Mr. Sitler met with Mr. Wilson and then went to the police. While awaiting trial, Mr. Sitler returned to Moscow half a dozen times to counsel with Mr. Wilson. A week after he arrived in Colville, the pastor of Mr. Sitler’s church there informed the congregation of what Steven had done, that he was back in town, that he had been suspended from the table, and referred to him as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” (That was Jack Bradley, the then pastor of Emmanuel Orthodox Presbyterian Church.) Since many of Mr. Sitler’s young victims were from within that church, this seems entirely appropriate and gave the members ample opportunity to talk to their own children if they thought it necessary and to cooperate with law enforcement during the time period in which that could make a difference in the outcome of the court case (no one did so, but the opportunity was open).

Despite the fact that Mr. Sitler had also been operating within the Christ Church body for the previous year and a half, Mr. Wilson did none of those things. Although he expelled Mr. Sitler from NSA immediately, he referred to the reason as “criminal activity” when announcing it to the student body. The next time anything at all about Mr. Sitler seems to be mentioned in either church documentation or the local community was when Wilson says he verbally discussed it at the private Head of Household meeting in November that year, which occurred two months after Mr. Sitler was remanded to prison.

During the time between Mr. Sitler’s guilty plea on July 7th and his sentencing from Judge Stegner in September, Mr. Wilson wrote this to Judge Stegner (Wilson’s Letter to Judge Stegner, 8/19/05):

I am grateful Steven was caught, and am grateful he has been brought to account for these actions so early in his life. I am grateful that he will be sentenced for his behavior, and that there will be hard consequences for him in real time. At the same time, I would urge that the civil penalties applied would be measured and limited. I have a good hope that Steven has genuinely repented, and that he will continue to deal with this to become a productive and contributing member of society.

Considering the sheer magnitude of victims involved, the egregious and opportunistic nature of Mr. Sitler’s crimes, and the speed at which he operated, I am at a loss as to why Mr. Wilson would consider the limited civil penalties he advocated here to be in the best service of justice and why he did not think it plausible enough that Mr. Sitler could have molested other children in the Christ Church congregation to notify the other parents as
soon as the case arose.

What is not obvious from the documentation until you read it multiple times is the fact that although Mr. Sitler had numerous victims in multiple states, the only victim families from Moscow were the two families who uncovered the abuse in the first place. The only person from Moscow to write in on Mr. Sitler’s behalf during sentencing was Mr. Wilson, although multiple people from other places wrote in. I can find no evidence at all implying that anyone other than those directly involved knew about Mr. Sitler’s case until after it had completed. Read more»

Rachel Shubin | “Analyzing Douglas Wilson’s Handling of the Steven Sitler and Jamin Wight Cases,” pp. 9–10.

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