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	City Man Identifies Abuser on Steps of Florida Church By Annysa Johnson Milwaukee Journal Sentinel March 18, 2011 http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/118215939.html A Milwaukee man who was sexually abused by his choir director at St. Catherine's Parish as a young boy in the 1970s identified his abuser Thursday on the steps of an Orlando, Fla., cathedral, where the older man has served in music ministry for 25 years. "I did the right thing. It felt very freeing," said Billy Kirchen, a church musician who has composed a musical about the experience. "Maybe it will protect other children," he said. Robert Schaefer, who admitted the abuse to Orlando church officials on Thursday - and to the Milwaukee County district attorney's office in the 1970s - was fired from St. James Cathedral after the revelation. "It's a very sad day. I'm sure there's a lot of hurt on his part," Schaefer said. According to Kirchen, Schaefer was a music mentor who lured him into a four-to-five-year sexual relationship beginning when he was 10 or 11. Kirchen said he reported it when he was 16 or 17 to a Marquette High School counselor and it was turned over to the Milwaukee County district attorney's office. But no charges were ever filed. Kirchen went back to the DA's office in 2008 to see if Schaefer could be prosecuted, and asked to look at his file. It included, he said, no official documents, but two handwritten notes suggesting that Kirchen didn't want to prosecute and that the relationship was more of an "affair." "I never said that," Kirchen said. "Eleven year old boys don't have affairs with older men." Schaefer said Thursday that he believed he was not prosecuted because he had stopped the abuse and no other victims had come forward. Dan Blinka, now a professor at Marquette Law School, reviewed the case at the time and was out of the country Thursday and did not immediately respond to e-mail questions about the case. Efforts to reach then-Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann were not successful. McCann has been accused by clergy sex abuse victims of failing to aggressively pursue cases involving the Catholic Church during his tenure as DA. Wisconsin law allows a sex offender to be charged beyond the statute of limitations if the suspect fled the state to elude prosecution. McCann's successor, District Attorney John Chisholm, said Schaefer could not be charged under the provision because he left the state believing the case against him was closed. Part of Kirchen's motivation in going public, he said, was to invite others to come forward and pursue charges against Schaefer if they were abused. Chisholm declined to comment on Schaefer's original file or allow the Journal Sentinel to review it. He said Kirchen's assertion that he didn't want to file charges at the time was in dispute and suggested that prosecutors would not have been able to prove their case without his testimony. "We've come a long way in how we proceed without a victim's assistance," he said. Schaefer apologized in a letter to Kirchen last fall, saying he was much younger at the time of the abuse and didn't understand the impact his actions would have. Kirchen has composed a musical, "Mirrors of Desire," about his experiences as a sex abuse victim, that is expected to be staged in Germany next year.
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