Wempe's Release Date Delayed
By Tom Kisken
Ventura County Star [California]
January 25, 2007
http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/county_news/article/0,1375,VCS_226_5303761,00.html
The release from prison of a former Roman Catholic priest who served in Ventura County and was convicted of molesting a young boy has been put on hold while state officials evaluate whether he is likely to offend again.
Michael Wempe was due to get out of North Kern State Prison near Bakersfield on Jan. 6. He was sentenced in May to serve three years after a jury found him guilty of a single count of molestation but received credit for time served, prison work and good behavior.
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Wempe's service as priest includes work at four Ventura County parishes from 1969 to 1987. He was at St. Rose of Lima in Simi Valley, St. Jude in Westlake Village, Sacred Heart in Ventura and St. Sebastian in Santa Paula.
Tim Fowler, a spokesman for the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation, said Wempe would remain behind bars while undergoing 45 days of observation. State officials said they are required by law to hold Wempe until the Department of Mental Health completes an evaluation.
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.
"Right now, he is in limbo," said Leonard Levine, who represented Wempe during the criminal trial. "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."
Wempe's lawyers have acknowledged that the priest molested 13 boys in the 1970s and 1980s but said he went into church-ordered treatment and returned a changed man, never molesting after that.
Wempe was charged with 42 counts of child molestation in 2003, and even spent a year in jail awaiting trial. However, 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 who is the youngest brother of two of Wempe's other alleged victims. The statute of limitations in that case, which dates to the 1990s, when Wempe was a chaplain at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, had not expired.
— Staff writer Tom Kisken contributed to this story.
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