MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press
By Anne Millerbernd
amillerbernd@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 10/27/2014
A 56-year-old Golden Valley man went online last year and lured someone he thought was a 15-year-old boy to meet him for sex, a Ramsey County prosecutor told a jury Monday.
Stephen Joseph Schulz posted more than 10 personal ads on Craigslist, posing as males of different ages, but only one got a response, said defense attorney Paul Engh. The reply was from a St. Paul police officer who was posing as a minor.
But Engh argued that Schulz actually was trying to spare another child from the type of abuse and pain he experienced at a young age, when he says he was molested by a priest.
Schulz, who is being tried in Ramsey County District Court on charges of sexual solicitation of a child via the Internet, was arrested in April 2013 after the undercover officer arranged a meeting in St. Paul. …
But Engh said the past abuse Schulz suffered affected his decision to try to arrange the meeting. He said Schulz was the victim of sexual abuse perpetrated by the Rev. Franklyn Becker and was hoping to protect the “boy” from experiencing similar abuse.
Engh told the jury that after Schulz’s father left his family when he was a child, his mother became active in the Roman Catholic Church. Becker, a priest in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, became close to the family. When Schulz was 13 or 14 years old, Becker took Schulz and a friend on a trip to Geneva, Wis., where he shared a bed with the two boys and molested them, Engh said.
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