MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation
11/18/2014
Jennifer Haselberger
Yesterday, Emily Gurnon of the Pioneer Press reported that Father Curtis Wehmeyer was charged in Chippewa County, WI, with second-degree sexual assault arising from contact with an unconscious boy while on a camping trip in 2011. I was not surprised to learn that additional charges had been filed against Father Wehmeyer, who pleaded guilty in 2012 to charges related to his molestation of two minor males, as well as to seventeen counts of possession of child pornography. It has long been anticipated that additional victims would come forward.
I was not even surprised to learn that the new charges involved sexual contact alleged to have occurred during the time in which the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis was supposedly monitoring Father Wehmeyer’s behavior, and at approximately the same time that Father Kevin McDonough was opining that Father Wehmeyer was ‘not really all that interested in an actual sexual encounter’.
What I did find surprising, however, was the final paragraph of the article, which stated,
‘The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has requested that
he [Father Wehmeyer] be defrocked. Local leaders are awaiting
a decision from the Vatican.’
This, I find mind-boggling. How can it be possible that this case has been languishing in Rome for two years, without a determination?
It is not as though there is an unresolved question as to his guilt. Father Wehmeyer pleaded guilty- with a straight plea- and the transcript of his plea allocution was included in the materials sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in November of 2012. At that court appearance, which occurred earlier in the same month, Father Wehmeyer admitted to the acts of which he had been accused, the criminal nature of those acts, and acknowledged that the victims were minors at the time that the abuse occurred. Furthermore, he denied that there were any mitigating circumstances that might have impacted his culpability.
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