Doug Schallenberger, Republican, has no business running for or, God
forbid, getting elected as a Ravalli County Commissioner. Why? Because he
does the bidding of the Mormon Church and he used his position as a Bishop
to protect a known pedophile and help him escape prosecution.
How do I know? Because the pedophile, Robert A. Shatzer, was a member of
the Mormon ward that I attended with my young daughter and, when she
was 3, Robert molested her within the church building. The newspaper
printing this letter wants to keep my identity hidden in order to protect the
identity of my daughter and Robert’s other victim who are both still minors
but I challenge Doug Schallenberger to deny anything that is in this letter. If
he does, I will provide the evidence that everything I am writing is true.
In December 2005, on a Sunday, I let my daughter go into what I thought
was an empty nursery room at the church while I checked the job board.
Within 5 minutes she came running down the hall towards me saying that
someone had pulled her pants down. I immediately summoned help and
very quickly most everyone in the church was aware of what had happened.
The first person I saw after I discovered my daughter had been hurt was a
woman that I knew well. I showed her the man my daughter had pointed to
when I asked who had touched her and this woman identified him as Robert
Shatzer and then she said that “he’s done this before.”
I then took my daughter to the emergency room at Marcus Daly Hospital.
After I arrived at the ER, Doug Schallenberger, along with another member
of the church, actually confronted me in the ER parking lot. He told me that
I should not make trouble and not to call the police [something that was
done by the ER staff as required by law] and he demanded that I back off
from pursuing this any further. Of course, I did not do what he was
pressuring me to do and I proceeded to assist law enforcement and the
County prosecutor, Geoff Mahar, as much as I could.
It turns out that, as the woman at church had said, Robert Shatzer had
indeed “done this before” and had been arrested 4 years earlier for
sodomizing a 3‐year‐old child. This took place at the same Mormon church
where my daughter was hurt. He was let off with a deferred prosecution
because he was a juvenile at the time and because the Mormon church
leaders agreed to keep an eye on him. According to a Ravalli Republic
article [Jan. 13, 2006] written when Robert Shatzer was arrested for hurting
my daughter, “church leaders were aware of the first incident and had taken
‘informal steps’ to keep him away from children, according to court papers.”
These same church leaders then tried to persuade both myself and the
parents of the first victim to stay quiet. Both Doug Schallenberger and Stake
President Wishmeyer (sp?) were present at this meeting and they both
admitted that mistakes had been because they were supposed to have been
watching Robert Shatzer more closely but then asked that we “not make a
big deal about this” and said that we really needed to keep this within the
church family.
At this point, I was really angry with these supposed “spiritual leaders” and
their attempt to coerce me into silence and I wanted to proceed to trial.
Robert Shatzer was arrested in December 2005 and charged with a felony
after confessing to “accidentally” pulling down my daughter’s pants. The
first victim, who was by then 8 years old or so, was supposed to testify as was
the woman to whom I had first spoken to at church. However, by the time
the trial rolled around [it took a year because the trial couldn’t start until the
arresting officer returned from Afghanistan], both witnesses had been
spoken to by church leaders and now would not testify. Geoff Mahar said
he could have treated them as hostile witnesses but he felt that it wouldn’t
turn out well if he did. The case was then remanded to Justice Court and,
again, Robert Shatzer got off with a slap on the wrist.
Not long after the trial was over, I tried several times to contact Doug
Schallenberger to plead with him to make sure, before he was no longer the
Bishop, that the members of the church knew that a pedophile was in the
group so that parents could protect their children. Finally, Doug called me
back as I was driving home from work. It wasn’t the concerned, caring
phone call that I would have hoped to have received from a church elder.
Instead, Doug screamed at me that I had ruined the lives of the Shatzer
family and that they had to leave town because of me. After several more
minutes of yelling at me, he hung up.
So, why am I talking about this after all this time? Because when I saw that
Doug Schallenberger was running for Ravalli County Commissioner, I knew
that I had to let people know about him. And also because our children
deserve better than to have a Commissioner who has covered up a crime and
has protected a pedophile and who, no matter what he says, will always put
the will of the Mormon Church ahead of his constituents.
Letter writer verified by Bitterroot Star but name withheld to protect children