Pretty Good Lutherans
February 1, 2010
http://www.prettygoodlutherans.com/?p=5801
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| ELCA Pastor Alan Wenrich |
A year ago, members of Zion Lutheran Church in Hummelstown, Pa., woke up to the news that their pastor had been arrested.
The Rev. Alan Curtis Wenrich was charged with “patronizing prostitutes” and for solicitation of prostitutes, according to the police report.
“He admitted his guilt to me,” Bishop B. Penrose Hoover recently told Pretty Good Lutherans. Hoover leads the ELCA’s Lower Susquehanna Synod in Pennsylvania.
Soon after his arrest, Wenrich, who is married, resigned his post at the Hummelstown church. Yet he remains on the ELCA clergy roster. His status is listed as “on leave.”
When asked why Wenrich is still a pastor, Hoover said: ”Because his misconduct did not rise to the level of sexual misconduct as we define it. It was solicitation, not the act of sex.”
Pretty Good Lutherans then asked: “So a woman has to allow a pastor to have sex with her before the ELCA considers his behavior sexual misconduct?”
The bishop responded: “I think this conversation needs to end.” Then he hung up the phone.
(CONTINUED)
Wenrich, 63, was unavailable for comment.
The victim was not a member of the church nor a prostitute, according to the district attorney and the bishop. She was a client at the private counseling practice that Wenrich ran out of his home.
Weinrich holds a doctorate in one of the counseling fields. His license to practice professional counseling was suspended last February by the Pennsylvania State Board of Social Workers, Marriage and Family Therapists, and Professional Counselors.
“The board finds the prosecuting attorney has alleged facts in the petition which, if taken as true, establish at each and every count that the respondent [Wenrich] presents an immediate and clear danger to public health and safety,” the suspension order said.
The suspension petition cited the criminal complaint against Weinrich, who was accused of soliciting “sexual activity in exchange for money from a female client he was treating in his capacity as a licensed professional counselor.”
Instead of being prosecuted, the district attorney allowed Wenrich to enter a state rehabilitation program known as ARD (Accelerated Rehabilitative Program).
“It’s a program generally used for first-time offenders rather than going through a trial leading to a conviction,” said James Koval, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania courts. “It usually lasts for a year.”
Francis Dharto of the Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office said Wenrich was only allowed to participate “because his victim is a very forgiving woman.”
Pastor Thomas McKee, an assistant to Bishop Hoover, said Wenrich is working toward having his counseling licensed restored.
Bishop Hoover told Pretty Good Lutherans that once Wenrich has “undergone all the proper steps, he could perform some pastoral duties under the supervision of another pastor.”
Experts on sexual abuse almost universally decried that approach during the height of the American Catholic sexual abuse crisis in 2002.
Rose Knepp, 58, a member of Zion Lutheran, said she was “appalled” by the bishop’s comments.
“I am dumbfounded that this pastor is still on the clergy roster,” she said. “We can forgive him, but that doesn’t mean putting him back in a spiritual leadership role. My God, I could never look to him as a spiritual authority again. I’m unhappy with how the synod handled the whole thing.”
George Riddle, a retiree who was Zion’s council president at the time of Wenrich’s arrest, had nothing but praise for the bishop.
“The bishop was phenemonal in getting the congregation through this,” he said. “As far as Pastor Wenrich, I leave the disciplinary matter up to the bishop.”
The victim’s name has never been made public. Police reports indicate that the case isn’t a matter of “he said versus she said.”
Reports indicated that she contacted police after Wenrich’s initial solicitation. Police then asked her to wear a hidden microphone and tape the conversation the next time she met Wenrich. At that meeting, Wenrich gave the woman money to have sex with him at a motel, police said.
At that point, Wenrich was arrested.
As a counselor, Wenrich must follow the ethics and laws of the Pennsylvania board that controls his license, which serves as a watchdog for vulnerable clients. As an ELCA pastor, he must meet the denomination’s standards of expectations for ministers.
“In the ELCA, the bishop has a great deal of authority and discretion,” said Pastor Lynne Silva-Breen, an ELCA pastor who is also a licensed marriage and family therapist in Minnesota.
“Bishops are to be pastors to the pastors,” she said. “That’s why their first reaction is often to protect the pastor. It can be a self-protective system.”
How cases are handled vary from bishop to bishop and synod to synod, she said.
“On the other hand, at times pastors feel that bishops act to protect congregations without seriously considering them.”
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