Two Priests Plead Guilty to Sexually Abusing Boys

By Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post
August 5, 1995

Two longtime Roman Catholic priests pleaded guilty yesterday to sexually abusing boys at parishes in Prince George's County during the 1970s and 1980s. Prosecutors said they will ask that each man be sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The Rev. Thomas Sebastian Schaefer, 69, pleaded guilty to four counts of child abuse involving four boys. The Rev. Alphonsus Michael Smith, 70, pleaded guilty to abusing two youths and entered an Alford plea on charges involving two others, meaning he acknowledged there was evidence to prove he committed the crimes. Prosecutors said Smith told them he could not recall abusing the two other youths.

Looking worn and tired, the priests shut their eyes and dropped their heads as Assistant State's Attorney Fran Longwell read the allegations in Prince George's County Circuit Court: fondling young boys as they answered phones in the rectory, summoning them to the pastor's bedroom -- in one case via the parish intercom -- and forcing them to engage in mutual masturbation and oral sodomy.

Schaefer will be sentenced by Circuit Court Judge William B. Spellbring Sept. 18, and Smith will follow Oct. 2.

State sentencing guidelines suggest probation to three years in prison for each count. But prosecutors said they will recommend that both priests receive five years per charge, or 20 years total. They could receive anything from probation to the maximum allowed under the statute: 60 years in prison.

"I hope he gives them the maximum," said the 34-year-old Baltimore area man who prompted the criminal investigation by telling church officials in January that Schaefer, Smith and two other priests had molested him when he was an altar boy at St. Matthias the Apostle Church in Lanham.

"It's almost too bad," the man said of the pleas, which came three days before Schaefer was to stand trial. "As much as I didn't want it to go to trial, just simply because of the publicity, I would have liked to have seen . . . him go through the public humiliation."

The man, who spoke by phone from his office, has asked not to be named in the newspaper.

In addition to the Lanham incident, Schaefer's guilty pleas yesterday included the molestation of three boys at St. John the Evangelist Church in Clinton between 1978 and 1982. Schaefer also has been charged in St. Mary's County with abusing a youth from Sacred Heart Parish in Bushwood around 1970. Schaefer's relationship with that boy continued after Schaefer went to St. Matthias in 1972, prosecutors said.

Schaefer "wanted to take responsibility," said his attorney, Martin Hertz. "He wanted to save the victims from the embarrassment of . . . testifying, and he wanted to get the matter disposed of quickly for the benefit of everyone, including the church."

Bertell Nelson Jr., one of Schaefer's victims from St. John the Evangelist, was in the courtroom yesterday. He said "it was good to hear" the priest "admit that he had committed a crime."

Nelson, 30, said he hoped Schaefer would get a lengthy sentence. "I just think it's time that he be kept away from children and that he be punished for his wrongdoing."

Smith pleaded guilty to molesting the Baltimore area man when he was a St. Matthias altar boy between 1975 and 1978 and to molesting an altar boy at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Takoma Park for five years, starting in 1982.

Smith entered Alford pleas on charges of fondling the brother of the St. Matthias altar boy on one occasion, after calling him to the bedroom on an intercom, and of twice fondling a teenager who worked answering phones at St. John.

When the Baltimore area man accused the priests in January, the Archdiocese of Washington removed Schaefer from his post as chaplain of a Hyattsville nursing home and dismissed the other three priests from their parish positions.

The Revs. Edward B. Pritchard and Edward T. Hartel are scheduled for trial later this year. Pritchard, 51, is charged with molesting three boys at St. Matthias. Hartel, 59, is accused of orally sodomizing the former St. Matthias altar boy once.