ST. LOUIS (MO)
Belleville News-Democrat
BY JIM SALTER
Associated Press
July 28, 2014
ST. LOUIS — A minister is taking his own denomination to task, claiming in a lawsuit that the Presbyterian Church was partly responsible for sexual abuse he suffered as a teenager.
The Rev. Kris Schondelmeyer, a youth minister in Toledo, Ohio, is seeking unspecified damages in a lawsuit he filed against Louisville, Kentucky-based Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); the First Presbyterian Church of Fulton, Missouri; the Missouri Union Presbytery in Jefferson City; and his alleged abuser, Jack Wayne Rogers.
Schondelmeyer, 31, a native of Sedalia, Missouri, said he was sexually abused at a youth conference in Maryland in 2000. At the time, Rogers was a lay pastor in Montgomery County, Missouri. The suit alleges Presbyterian officials allowed Rogers to work as a chaperone despite Rogers’ 1992 conviction for child pornography.
An attorney for the denomination declined comment, citing the pending litigation. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Aug. 18 in Fulton. Rogers, 69, does not have a lawyer in Schondelmeyer’s lawsuit.
Rogers has a long criminal history. In 2004, he pleaded guilty in Missouri for practicing medicine without a license and assault for cutting off a man’s penis as part of a makeshift gender reassignment surgery at a hotel in Columbia, Missouri. That same year, he was convicted of federal child pornography and obscenity charges.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.