Second Update - What Is Child Pornography?
Third Update - Synod President Claimed Uncertainty
Confession on Tuesday, Fired on Friday
Survivors Network (SNAP) Issued Statement to WELS
Terms of Bond
Warning to WELS
Failure To Supervise, Failure To Report
Episcopalian Parallel to Hochmuth Case
WAUKESHA, Wis. -- A Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod employee was arrested Tuesday on child pornography charges, according to Waukesha police.
Investigators said the FBI Cyber Crimes Task Force provided them with evidence that child pornography was distributed from a home in the 1900 block of Hunter Court. Police searched the home and arrested Joel Hochmuth after they found numerous images of child pornography, according to a police report. Hochmuth, 52, is the director of communications for the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. He was in the Waukesha County Jail Tuesday night and was expected in court on Wednesday.
12 News spoke with the group's president, Mark Schroeder, by phone. He said he is hopeful the allegations prove to be a false alarm or a mistake. He said Hochmuth's job does not involve direct contact with children.
The WELS are the third largest Lutheran church body in America with 390,000 members. The national headquarters are in Milwaukee.
Read more: http://www.wisn.com/news/29790392/detail.html#ixzz1dvtvW1i5
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Joel Hochmuth
Director of Communications at Wisconsin Ev. Lutheran Synod
- Greater Milwaukee Area
- Religious Institutions
- Current
- Past
- Education
http://www.wels.net/streams/podcasts/series/witness-this
http://www.uwec.edu/wels/bios/hochmuth.html
Joel Hochmuth
Joel Hochmuth currently serves as WELS director of communications, a position he has held since 2007. As director of communications, he oversees and coordinates all communication coming from synod administration, both to internal and external WELS audiences. Before coming to Milwaukee, Hochmuth was a professor of journalism and communication at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. The bulk of his professional career was spent at CNN in Atlanta where he worked from 1987 to 2002. There he had numerous positions including correspondent, writer and copy editor. Hochmuth was raised in California, the son of WELS Pastor Robert Hochmuth. He earned a B.A. in communication studies from California State University, Sacramento and an M.A. in radio and television from San Francisco State University. He has been married to his wife Heidi for 15 years. They have a son, Adam, 13, and attend Trinity Ev. Lutheran Church in Waukesha, WI.
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Convention wrap-up
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Michele Bachman story - waffling on the Antichrist
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Video of Hochmuth and Schroeder.
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Hochmuth is Facebook friends with Aaron Frey, another recent WELS embarrassment. Frey is trying to start some business - PearlVault - ""PearlVault is creating a permanent, digital margin in which to write your lifetime of Bible notes." How far can he go?
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WELS HIRES COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR
In an effort to fully coordinate communications and provide messages effectively and efficiently to various constituents, WELS has hired Joel Hochmuth to be its full-time director of communications.
In this position, Hochmuth will be responsible for strategic planning, communication coordination, WELS publications, marketing efforts, and public relations for WELS.
“We have the rock-solid truth, but keeping it to ourselves doesn’t do anybody any good . . .,” says Hochmuth. “Our ultimate mission is to communicate the gospel.”
A member at Beautiful Savior, Marietta, Ga., Hochmuth worked for 15 years at Cable News Network (CNN) in Atlanta, Ga., where he produced hundreds of network-quality, long-form video reports and series. He also taught communication courses at Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Ga.
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From SpenerQuest:
This from WISN Channel 12 in Milwaukee:
"12 News spoke with the group's president, Mark Schroeder, by phone. He said he is hopeful the allegations prove to be a false alarm or a mistake. He said Hochmuth's job does not involve direct contact with children."
Call me daft, but how is having child porn on your PC a 'false alarm'? "A mistake"? ('oops, I meant for those photos to be loaded on my iPad'). How about a sin - and a heinous one at that?
And another comment:
Indeed, President Schroeder's statement is quite disengenuous. Even a "We take these allegations seriously and will deal with them accordingly" is better than a "Hopefully, this is all a mistake," which gives a public impression that they do not take the allegations seriously and even that they are circling the wagons to defend Hochmuth. And I agree- I have no idea what he means by "false alarm"! Who cares whether "Hochmuth's job does not involve direct contact with children." A statement that Hochmuth is no longer an employee of the WELS should have been issued immediately.
How denominational entities can stumble so badly, especially on that level, is baffling. Perhaps, in this case, it's because their communications director is in jail?!
