Opposing Bennison, Church attorney Larry White argued that the sentence was just and that the victim could have been spared 17 months of additional abuse had Charles Bennison alerted his bishop and the victim's parents.
"Bennison stumbled in on the two engaged in sexual relations and then did nothing, later telling his brother to 'get out', but not forcing him from the church and not reporting his conduct even to the point of saying nothing when his brother John was presented for ordination to their own father an Episcopal bishop", said White.
"At John's ordination he vouched for John's fitness. Out of concern for his career and to avoid embarrassment and scandal he failed to protect the victim. He wanted to bring a curtain of silence over these events."
White said Bennison suffered that abuse to continue to protect his own career. In earlier testimony, Bennison said he would have acted exactly as he did to protect the girl's privacy and her parents pain and to prevent scandal in the church.
Bennison failed to tell the search committee when he was a candidate for bishop, even until the trial of this case he did not once inquire of the victim even at the trial. He failed to comprehend the nature of his conduct, said White. "Bennison did not want to risk his own career."
Source - Virtue Online
[Yes, the great bishop, now restored to his throne, caught his own brother engaged in sex with a minor girl and did nothing about it, maintaining silence and allowing her to be abused another 17 months. Moreover, he said nothing about it before his brother was ordained.]
In 2008 Bennison was found guilty of covering up a sexual relationship that his younger brother, John, a youth leader in the church, began with a 14-year-old girl while Bennison was rector of St. Mark's Church in Upland, California in the Diocese of Los Angeles. Bennison appealed and lost. This is his final stand.
John Bennison was deposed in 1977 when his sexual relationship came to light, but was reinstated two years later. In 1993, he survived a church investigation by Bishop Williams Swing of California, whose diocese John Bennison was currently in. Bennison resigned in 2006 after Swing and other officials were pressured by the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), which had began protesting outside John Bennison's church in Clayton, Calif.
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GJ - Parallels in WELS:
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GJ - Parallels in WELS:
- DP Robert Mueller, VP Kuske, Mission Board Chairman Wallie Oelhafen, and others knew all about Floyd Luther Stolzenburg being kicked out of the LCMS for multiple offenses. The ELS Thoughts of Faith knew just as much when Jay Webber, John Shep, and Roger Kovaciny gathered money from Stolzenburg's new Masonic parish in Columbus. They named a Ukraine parish after Stolzenburg's. Awww.
- The district pastors knew all about their DP Ed Werner before he was arrested and convicted, after decades of molesting minor girls in his parish.
- Scott Zerbe went to the Big House for his affair with a minor girl while serving as Fred Adrian's vicar. Adrian knew or he did not know. Both stories have been offered. The Michigan Good Ol' Boy network got Adrian back into the parish. Adrian was chair of the District Mission Board, another Fuller-trained Shrinker like Wallie. And boy did the Michigan District grow under them guys. Whew!
- William Tabor was a known sex offender when he was welcomed into WELS and given several calls, the second one where he erased evidence by having his mistress shoot down his wife.
- Likewise, Al Just was carrying on with his children's babysitter when he was convicted of murdering his wife with a knife. WELS jumped up to defend Al. Some of the dumber clergy still claim Al was innocent. Al married the babysitter while in prison but she divorced him.
