MINNESOTA
Grand Forks Herald
By: Sarah Smith, Forum Communications
Editor’s note: This story is excerpted from a two-part series that appeared last week in the Park Rapids (Minn.) Enterprise.
PARK RAPIDS, Minn. — A former Lutheran pastor in Lake George, Minn., southwest of Bemidji near Itasca State Park, faces an omnibus court hearing today in Park Rapids on 15 counts of criminal sexual conduct involving a minor.
Now, questions have been raised about how much officials of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod knew of Schauer’s previous conviction for sexually abusing a pre-teen minor and whether his parishioners in Trinity Lutheran at Lake George knew of his criminal past at all.
Darwin Schauer was a trained lay pastor since 1990, first at Immanuel Lutheran in Cass Lake, Minn., then at Trinity at Lake George when the two parishes merged in 2000.
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