MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press
By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 10/28/2014
A Golden Valley man charged with soliciting someone he thought was a 15-year-old boy for sex broke down on the witness stand Tuesday as he described molestation he said he suffered at the hands of a priest.
Stephen Joseph Schulz, 56, testified at his trial that he drove to meet the boy — who turned out to be an undercover St. Paul police sergeant — to warn him away from the fate he had suffered.
He has been charged with felony online solicitation of a minor for sex. Testimony in the Ramsey County District Court trial began Monday.
Schulz was 13 when the Rev. Franklyn Becker became pastor at Holy Family Church in Whitefish Bay, Wis., where Schulz lived with his mother and two younger siblings.
His father “walked out” on the family when he was 7, Schulz testified. He mother, a devout Catholic, felt the new priest was the kind of father figure her children needed, he said.
So when Becker proposed an overnight trip to Lake Geneva, Wis., in the summer of 1972 for Schulz and another teenage boy, Schulz’s mother readily consented.
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