By Richard Chin
Pioneer Press
November 11, 2011
http://www.twincities.com/ci_19310249
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| Christopher Wenthe |
The sexual encounters between a 21-year-old woman who had just converted to Catholicism and the 39-year-old priest in his first job after ordination wracked both of them with guilt.
The sex occurred at her apartment, in his apartment at a St. Paul church rectory and in a room in the church itself where priests prepare to celebrate Mass, they testified.
"I could see the cross where the incident occurred and remembered feeling horrible at the time," the woman said.
"I actually began to cry because I had broken my vow," the priest said of their first sexual encounter. "She leaned over to me and said, 'It's OK. Just give it to the Lord.' "
The young woman and the priest both agreed Thursday on the witness stand in Ramsey County District Court that they had sinned.
But did he commit a crime?
Ramsey County prosecutors say he did.
They've charged Christopher Thomas Wenthe with two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct for violating laws forbidding a member of a clergy from having sex with a person seeking or receiving religious or spiritual advice, aid or comfort in private.
The incidents started in November 2003 while Wenthe was a new priest at Nativity of Our Lord Catholic Church in St. Paul and the woman was a new parishioner, according to a criminal complaint.
Wenthe's lawyer, Paul Engh, has characterized the relationship between the priest and the woman as friendship that turned into an ill-fated, forbidden love affair.
But during her testimony Thursday, the woman, now 29, said, "He was always my priest."
"A friendship developed only because he was my priest," she said. "He was the person I was confiding in."
She said she didn't initiate any of the sexual encounters, which included oral and anal sex.
The Pioneer Press generally does not identify complainants in sex crime cases.
During his testimony, Wenthe, now 47, said the relationship began as priest and penitent, but it turned into a friendship that became sexual.
Wenthe said that after college, he spent nine years working as an electrical engineer before he became a priest and found his first church assignment at Nativity daunting. He said the job had long hours, and he was introverted and anxious about delivering homilies and remembering names of members of the large congregation.
He said he had trouble sleeping, was frequently sick and felt "lonely and alone."
"Living a life of celibacy was much harder than I anticipated," he said.
Wenthe said the woman, previously a Lutheran who had recently converted to Catholicism, asked him to be her regular confessor. When they met for a confession on the evening of Oct. 5, 2003, she asked if she could go up to the sitting room in his apartment at the church rectory, Wenthe said.
"I paused," Wenthe said. "It felt a little uncomfortable. I didn't know quite how to respond."
But he said priests are trained to make confessions as comfortable and convenient as possible, so they went to his quarters.
In the following weeks, Wenthe said, they began to talk to each other with greater frequency on the phone. She met his relatives, he said. She brought him soup when he was sick, and they watched a movie together. She gave him a book for a birthday gift and invited him to her apartment for dinner, he said.
"We felt comfortable from early on," Wenthe said. "There was a real connection, a real ease in which we spoke."
He said he warned her at one point that they needed to be careful about their relationship. He said at first he thought they could be affectionate yet still chaste.
"I believed it could be managed," he said.
But in mid-November 2003, the two had an all-night conversation on the phone, Wenthe said, that began with a discussion related to "theology of the body" but turned into "the type of sexual behavior that might interest one another."
The next evening, Wenthe said, "We agreed to hang out that night."
He testified that the woman came to his apartment, saw him in a T-shirt and shorts and asked if he had more comfortable clothes that she could borrow to change into.
The relationship became physical that night.
"I was laying on top of her, and we were kissing," Wenthe said "She had a couple sexual orgasms."
He said they didn't have intercourse, but "she asked me, 'What can I do for you?' "
"She performed oral sex on me," he said.
Wenthe said their relationship had become "a friendship that had become disordered."
He said she never gave another face-to-face confession to him. He said he wouldn't know if she gave a confession to him anonymously through a screen in a confessional booth.
But he said both would later end up at the same church - Church of St. Louis, King of France, in St. Paul - to confess their sins.
In her testimony, the woman said Wenthe asked her up to his apartment and initiated physical contact with her.
"I didn't invite myself over," she said.
"I remember being struck and not wanting to make him uncomfortable and not knowing what to do," she said. She said she did not recall being aroused during that first sexual encounter or having an orgasm or asking, "What do you want me to do?" She said she did not seek to change her clothing.
She said Wenthe asked her to give him oral sex.
"I begged him to stop. I said the degree of sex mattered," she said.
"I didn't initiate any sexual contact between us," she said. "It was always initiated by Father Wenthe."
The woman said Wenthe described their interactions as an "addiction." But she also said, "He stated it had been about two people falling in love, and at that point, I realized he was not, in my opinion, well."
The woman ended up talking to church officials about the sexual contact, but when she was asked why she did not report the incident to police until 2010, the woman testified, "Because I didn't want to end up here."
Testimony is slated to resume Monday.
Richard Chin can be reached at 651-228-5560 or rchin@pioneerpress.com
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