Priest accused of sexually abusing minor at Wichita church will return to work: bishop

A priest accused of sexually abusing a minor at a Wichita church in the 1990s will return to work, Bishop Carl A. Kemme with the Catholic Diocese of Wichita said Tuesday.

Rev. Michael Schemm will go back to work at Church of the Resurrection, 4910 N. Woodlawn in Bel Aire.

Schemm was placed on administrative leave on Nov. 1 after allegations surfaced about the sexual abuse of a minor. The allegations were from between June 1993 and July 1996, when Schemm worked at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.

The alleged victim was between 12 and 15 years old at the time and is now 40.

The Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office said too much time had passed to prosecute the case under state law. The diocese also did its own investigation. The findings were then presented to the diocese’s Charter Review Board, Kemme said in a news release.

“The CRB reviewed this entire matter, including investigative materials and other information relating to Rev. Schemm’s 28 years of service to this diocese,” Kemme said. “The majority of CRB members, which is composed mostly of lay persons, determined that there was insufficient evidence to corroborate Father Schemm’s involvement in this matter and therefore, recommended to me that Rev. Michael Schemm should be returned to ministry.”

Kemme said based on the CRB’s recommendation and his “own independent review of the matter” that Schemm should be reinstated into ministry.

“We are currently working with Father Schemm and staff at Church of the Resurrection to reintegrate him into ministry,” Kemme said.

The CRB was created by Catholic leaders nationwide following The Boston Globe’s 2002 Pulitzer-prize winning stories on the Archdiocese of Boston covering up years of sexual abuse of children.

This isn’t the first time a priest in the diocese has been accused of crimes against a child.

In fall 2019, Kemme apologized to victims in a seven-minute YouTube video that was released along with a list of 15 priests with “substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor.”

Nine of the priests had allegations that occurred in the diocese. The other six served in the diocese but had allegations in other dioceses.

Of the 15 priests in the Wichita diocese, only one had been charged, a diocese spokesperson said at the time. Rev. Robert K. Larson, who died in 2014, pleaded guilty in 2001 in Harvey County District Court to abusing three altar boys and a 19-year-old man while he was pastor at St. Mary Catholic Church in Newton in the mid-1980s. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

This story was originally published March 8, 2022 at 11:26 AM.