KANSAS
Shawnee Mission Post
[with court document]
POSTED BY JAY SENTER JUNE 9, 2016
Claiming that church leaders knew about his history of sexual misconduct and allowed him unsupervised access to minors anyway, the family of the latest victims of former SM East student Kessler Lichtenegger have sued Westside Family Church in Lenexa.
The civil petition, filed in Johnson County District Court Wednesday afternoon, says that church officials were well aware Lichtenegger, who lived in Prairie Village, had “an extensive and shocking history of committing sexual abuse against children” and consequently made the constant accompaniment of Lichtenegger’s father a condition of his presence at the church. But, according to the lawsuit, the church did not follow its own guidelines, and eventually allowed Lichtenegger to “interact with and supervise young children” at Westside. During a Westside children’s program in the summer of 2014, Lichtenegger, then 17, had a sexual interaction with one of the defendants, then 13, in a van on church property “while a children’s church service was going on,” according to the suit.
(KidsGIG, Westside’s annual summer vacation bible school program, is currently under way at the church).
“All key church leaders admitted to law enforcement officers that the Church did not enforce its own protocols meant to prevent Lichtenegger from gaining access to children,” reads the petition.
As a result of the charges stemming from that incident and subsequent criminal conduct he had with the first victim and her sister in the following weeks, Lichtenegger was sentenced to 17 years in prison. He is currently housed in the Ellsworth Correctional Facility.
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