By Emily Gurnon
Pioneer Press
November 9, 2011
http://www.twincities.com/ci_19300685
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| Christopher Wenthe, 46, was accused in 2005 of having sex with a woman who saw him for confession and guidance. |
A priest violated his vow of celibacy with a young, pretty, emotionally vulnerable parishioner.
But was it a crime?
That's the question a Ramsey County jury will have to answer in the case of Christopher Wenthe, a former Nativity of Our Lord priest who faces two felony charges of criminal sexual conduct. His trial began Wednesday.
The allegations came from a woman 17 years his junior who suffered from bulimia and had been sexually abused as a child.
Wenthe, 47, joined the pastoral staff at Nativity, in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood of St. Paul, in 2003. He met the woman that summer at a church event for new converts to Catholicism, which she was.
The relationship became a close one, said the woman, now 29, who testified Wednesday.
The Pioneer Press generally does not identify complainants of sex crimes.
"I felt like he was a safe person to talk to," said the woman, who was 21 at the time that her sexual relationship began with the priest. "He was a priest. For me, that meant he had a vow. I wasn't in danger of anything."
Wenthe's guilt in the eyes of the law depends on whether the sex occurred during "a period of time in which (she) was meeting on an ongoing basis with (him) to seek or receive religious or spiritual advice, aid or comfort in private."
The woman poured her heart out to him. They talked about theology and her passion for her newfound faith after growing up Lutheran. She felt he understood suffering, so she revealed secrets
she had told no one else.
She told him about the older cousin who had raped her beginning when she was 5 years old, she said. And about the bulimia that she fought daily - a disease she attributed to the earlier abuse.
"I felt cared for," she said.
The woman also asked Wenthe if he would be her personal confessor, a priest who would administer confession face to face. Wenthe agreed, and they met for the first time in his private quarters at the church rectory.
She had called him to say she was having a particularly bad day with her bulimia. Confession helped.
"At minimum," she said, she formally confessed to him three or four other times. They also prayed together - on one occasion walking through the neighborhood reciting the rosary.
Their first sexual encounter occurred in November 2003, after she had been to a therapy session in which she disclosed details of the sexual abuse.
"I was incredibly nervous," she said. She called him afterward, and he invited her to come to the rectory. (The defense maintains she insisted they meet there.)
"When he opened the door, he was standing in his boxers and a T-shirt, and I remember feeling really uncomfortable and very nervous," she said. She recalled that he was whispering.
"Why didn't you just leave?" prosecutor Karen Kugler asked.
"I ask myself that question all the time," the woman said. "I did not want him to feel uncomfortable."
Besides, she said, she wanted to talk with him. "I was relieved and excited to see the one person I knew would understand why my day was so difficult."
He asked her to scratch his legs, she said. When he lay on top of her, "I remember panicking and feeling, I don't know what to do."
Wenthe wanted oral sex. "He made me feel like I had started this and I had an obligation to finish what I started," she said.
The sexual relationship continued for some 15 months, even when the woman moved to Arizona and entered an eating-disorder clinic.
Their get-togethers were "always prompted by an offer of consolation or checking in to see 'how you're doing,' that sort of thing," she said.
During the last encounter, Wenthe wanted anal sex in the shower, and the woman said she couldn't do it because of digestive problems associated with her bulimia. She became weak with pain and collapsed, she said.
"He sat on the toilet and just stared at me," the woman said.
Wenthe's attorney, Paul Engh, characterized the relationship as not one between priest and penitent but of two people who loved each other.
"This was a mutual affection that went awry," Engh said.
He described the woman as an active and equal participant in the relationship, as someone who initiated much of the contact.
After a friend reported the relationship to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, "without my permission," the woman said, she met with then-Archbishop Harry Flynn.
She also wrote letters to officials with the archdiocese, detailing her allegations.
At that point, Flynn told her that things were in place to assure that Wenthe was getting the help he needed and that this "would not happen to anyone else."
The woman said she brought her allegations to police only when she found out the archdiocese had transferred Wenthe to another parish in Delano.
"I was mortified," she said. The new archbishop, the Rev. John Nienstedt, wrote to her, saying she should "trust the shepherds of the church." Wenthe had been "fully rehabilitated," he wrote.
"I didn't want this to happen," the woman said, referring to the criminal charges and the resulting trial. "This is my worst nightmare. I just wanted to make sure this wouldn't happen to anyone else."
Contact: egurnon@pioneerpress.com
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