Kleinsmith sentenced to 5 years for sexual abuse

By David Unze
St. Cloud Times
June 26, 2017

http://www.sctimes.com/story/news/local/2017/06/26/kleinsmith-sentenced-5-years-sexual-abuse/428248001/

A Sartell man who volunteered at a local church was sentenced Monday to five years in prison for sexually abusing a teenager who was an altar boy at a St. Cloud church.

Douglas Gerard Kleinsmith, 56, previously pleaded guilty to two counts of felony criminal sexual conduct on the day his trial was supposed to begin.

Kleinsmith volunteered to train altar boys and trained the teenage boy he would abuse, according to a criminal complaint charging him. The complaint says the boy met Kleinsmith at church when he was 15 years old, and that year also began working for Kleinsmith outside church hours.

Kleinsmith was part of a Latin Mass group that met at St. John Cantius Church, according to the Diocese of St. Cloud. The Latin Mass group for which Kleinsmith volunteered rented the church from the parish; its activities were not a function of the parish.

The complaint mentions multiple incidents of Kleinsmith sexually abusing the boy, including once while they were alone at church and three other times away from the church. Kleinsmith pleaded guilty to abusing the boy in Albany and at church.

Kleinsmith previously was convicted in Idaho in 1991 of sexually abusing a child younger than 16. 

Stearns County District Court Judge Kris Davick-Halfen sentenced Kleinsmith to 48 months on one count and 60 months on the other, running the sentences concurrently,