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	Ex-priest in Vatican Pedophile Case Had Truckee Ties By Frank X. Mullen Jr Reno Register-Journal April 12, 2010 http://www.rgj.com/article/20100412/NEWS/100412040/1321/news A defrocked Catholic priest now at the center of a Vatican pedophilia scandal is a former Truckee resident who in 2002 was investigated for possible connections to the 1988 disappearance of Amber Swartz — for whom Amber Alerts are named — and to the 1991 abduction of South Lake Tahoe resident Jaycee Lee Dugard. In March 2002, police with cadaver dogs, backhoes and ground-penetrating sonar twice searched the Truckee vacation property of Stephen Kiesle and found nothing to connect him to the two young girls. Those two cases have been closed and aren’t related to the ex-priest, but in 2004 Kiesle pleaded no contest to a felony for molesting a young girl in his Truckee home in 1995 and was sentenced to six years in state prison. Kiesle’s name was in the news this week after the Associated Press published a 1985 letter bearing the signature of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI. The letter shows Ratzinger resisted defrocking Kiesle, who had a record of sexually molesting children, after his case was referred to the Vatican four years earlier. A California diocese recommended removing Kiesle from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office that shared responsibility for disciplining priests. In his letter, the cardinal noted the arguments for removing Kiesle were of “grave significance,” but added that such actions required careful review and more time. He also urged Kiesle’s bishop to provide him with “as much paternal care as possible” The AP described the letter as “the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican’s insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church’s doctrinal watchdog office.” Records show Kiesle continued to do volunteer work with children through the church until he was officially defrocked in 1987. He then married and became a computer consultant, records show. Now retired, he lives in a gated community in Walnut Creek, Calif., and could not be reached for comment Monday. Property records show Kiesle was living part-time in a house on Sun Valley Road in Truckee from 1983 to 2002, when more child molestation allegations surfaced. In news reports, the house was described as a “Swiss-style chalet.” “We lived two doors away from him and I remember when (police) dug up the yard,” said James Hatch of Truckee. “I didn’t know him. I don’t think any (neighbors were) close to him.” Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years’ probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory. When his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted a request to Rome to defrock him. When Kiesle lived in Truckee there was no way for neighbors to be aware of his criminal record. The 1978 files had been sealed and even if they had been public there were no universally-available registries of sex offenders until the mid-1990s. In 2002, Kiesle was arrested and charged with 13 counts of child molestation from the 1970s. All but two were thrown out after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a California law extending the statute of limitations in such cases. Today, the California sex offender database shows Kiesle’s Truckee-related conviction from 2004, but not the 1978 convictions while he was a priest. Contact: fmullen@rgj.com
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