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	Release on Hold for Former Calif. Priest The Guardian January 24, 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6368359,00.html Los Angeles (AP) - Authorities have postponed the release of a former Roman Catholic priest convicted of molesting one young boy - his lawyers said he abused 13 total - pending an evaluation of whether he is likely to offend again. Michael Wempe was due to get out of North Kern State Prison on Jan. 6. Initially charged with 42 counts, he was sentenced in May to three years after being convicted on one count of molestation, but received credit for time served, prison work and good behavior. He remains behind bars while undergoing 45 days of observation by the Department of Mental Health, said Tim Fowler, a spokesman for the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation. If Wempe is determined to be a risk, prosecutors could ask a jury to declare him a sexually violent predator and have him involuntarily committed to a mental health facility. "This is an attempt to punish him again for something that happened many, many years ago. He has not committed any crime since the 1990s," said his trial lawyer, Leonard Levine. Wempe's lawyers have acknowledged that he molested 13 boys in the 1970s and 1980s, but said he has not molested anyone since undergoing church-ordered treatment. Wempe was charged with 42 counts of child molestation in 2003, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the statute of limitations on the crimes and his case was dismissed. He is in prison now for molesting an 11-year-old boy in the 1990s. The statute of limitations on that case had not expired.
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