Cowboy Preacher Sentenced to up to 25 Years in Prison on Sexual Abuse Charges

By Derek Sullivan
Daily Nonpareil
May 5, 2016

http://www.nonpareilonline.com/news/local/cowboy-paster-sentence-to-up-to-years-in-prison-on/article_164dfac8-d5ee-554f-9c65-61c339dd6e6b.html


A former head of the Sidney Cowboy Church is heading to prison.

On Thursday afternoon, Roger Kissel, 68, of Sidney, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on sexual abuse charges.

Before being arrested in February of 2014, Kissel was head of the Sidney Cowboy Church, located in the town that boasts Iowa’s oldest continuously operating rodeo. The church is listed as a member of the International Cowboy Church Alliance Network, which combine a love of “Jesus and the cowboy way,” according to the alliance’s website. Kissel had been in a pastor in southwestern Iowa for at least 25 years.

On March 7, a jury after four days of testimony and three hours of deliberation found Kissel guilty of second-degree sexual abuse and two counts of felony lascivious acts with a child. The charges stemmed from a trio of criminal complaints, which accused Kissel of performing sex acts with the child on multiple occasions, touching or fondling a 5-year-old child and exposing himself to the child from January of 2013 through September of that year.

On Thursday, Fourth Judicial District Judge Susan Christensen sentenced Kissel to 25 years in prison on the second-degree sexual abuse charge as well as 10 years in prison on each of the lascivious acts with a child convictions. The sentences will run concurrently for a total of up to 25 years.

Christensen also overruled a motion by Kissel’s lawyer Michael J. Murphy for a new trial.

Kissel will begin his sentence at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center in Coralville.