Bishop Put on Leave After Sex Revelation : Clergy: Episcopal leader acts against the prelate two years after learning of the misconduct with a teen-age boy. The issue is forced by an angry deacon’s action.

Amid revelations of sexual misconduct with a minor, the Episcopal bishop of the Navajos has been barred from all priestly duties and placed on a one-year leave of absence.

The sanctions against Bishop Steven T. Plummer, announced Friday by Presiding Bishop Edmund L. Browning in New York, came two years after Browning learned of Plummer’s sexual conduct with a teen-age boy--and only after an angry deacon forced the issue into the open earlier this month.

The deacon, Gary Sosa, said the disciplinary action was far overdue. “My feeling is that they buried this,” Sosa said Friday in a telephone interview from Bluff, Utah. “If Steven had been a social service worker or counselor or school teacher and engaged in this kind of behavior he would not be working with people who were at risk for his kind of behavior,” Sosa said. In a further twist to the story, Sosa has been suspended by Plummer for breaking conditions of a self-imposed leave.

In a May 26 letter to the church’s bishops made public Friday, Browning said that Plummer told him in 1991 that he had been involved in sexual misconduct with the boy over “a period of time” ending in 1989. Bishop Harold Hopkins, director of the Office of Pastoral Development, told The Times that the sexual activity took place over a 1 1/2- to 2-year period.

Although Browning has acknowledged that he kept Plummer’s disclosure secret and allowed him to continue functioning as a bishop, Browning said he promptly requested a thorough medical and psychological evaluation. The five-day evaluation indicated, Browning said, that Plummer was not “at risk” for repeating the behavior. Plummer has remained in therapy since then.

Browning also said that the victim, who had become an adult by the time the church was informed, did not want a public disclosure. Browning also said the victim has refused offers of therapy and other help.

The information was kept even from the church’s local diocesan council and standing committee until May 8, when Sosa went before them in Farmington, N.M. Two weeks later, the council met again and voted 20 to 0 to ask Browning to place Plummer on a leave of absence.

But the council also asked that Plummer be restored as bishop after that leave. The council said that although it was concerned about the victim and the sexual misconduct, Plummer had “confessed his sin to the appropriate people, and has done all in his power to make amends.” The church’s House of Bishops, which Browning heads, will decide later whether to return Plummer to his duties.

Browning appointed the Rt. Rev. William Wantland, bishop of Eau Claire, Wis., as interim bishop of the Navajoland Area Mission, which includes the states of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

Versions of how the church first learned of Plummer’s misconduct differ. Browning and Bishop Harold Hopkins, director of the Office of Pastoral Development, said Plummer reported the activity himself.

But Sosa said that Plummer went to Browning two years ago only after Sosa first informed national church authorities in March, 1991. The local church council, however, was not informed until this month when Sosa went to them directly.

Sosa said Plummer disclosed his sexual encounters with the teen-age boy in November, 1990, while they drove to a meeting. Later, Sosa said, Plummer used “sexually loaded” language with him that rekindled disturbing memories of Sosa’s own sexual victimization as a child.

Hopkins said Plummer categorically denied Sosa’s charge. Sosa, who is married, said he is on voluntary leave of absence and re-evaluating whether to seek ordination to the priesthood.

Sosa said he was later suspended from duties as a deacon by Plummer, reportedly on grounds that Sosa broke conditions of a his leave by reading the Gospel in a church service without the bishop’s permission.

Plummer, 49, was ordained a deacon in 1975 after graduating from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. The following year he was made a priest. He was elevated to the episcopacy in March, 1990. He is married and has four children.