Priest Is Sought on 33 Counts of Molestation

Orange County prosecutors issued an arrest warrant Monday for a priest formerly of Orange County, charging him with 33 felony counts of child molestation involving four boys from 1978 to 1985.

Sigfried Frank Widera has been a fugitive since May, when Milwaukee authorities filed nine felony sexual abuse charges against him for acts allegedly committed in the early 1970s.

Authorities said they don’t know where Widera is but said they would seek bail of $1 million if they capture him.

The priest was moved from Milwaukee to Orange County in 1976 even though he had been convicted of child molestation.

The Diocese of Orange insists it was not aware of the conviction when it hired Widera. The Milwaukee archdiocese did tell Orange County church officials in a letter that Widera “had a moral problem having to do with a boy in school” years earlier and that “more recently ... there has been a repetition.”

Widera is the fourth Southern California priest or former cleric to be criminally charged with molesting children since September.

According to court documents filed Monday, the Orange County molestations took place when Widera was a priest at St. Justin Martyr Church in Anaheim and St. Martin de Porres Church in Yorba Linda.

Brea Police Det. Kortney Dodd, the lead investigator in the Orange County cases, said she has been working on leads and interviewing witnesses since May, when the first of the two alleged Yorba Linda victims came forward. She informed one of the alleged victims about the charges Monday.

“He was happy,” she said. The legal action represented a turning point, Dodd said, for Widera’s alleged victims “who’ve lived with hell for all these years. Their final closure will be when he stands before a judge. But just getting this far helps.”

The alleged victims are listed as “John Does” in the criminal complaint; The Times has a policy not to identify victims of molestation unless given permission by the accusers.

To track down Widera, Dodd is working with her counterparts in the Police Department in West Allis, Wis., a suburban of Milwaukee. She is also asking that anyone with information about Widera’s whereabouts, including Widera’s family, come forward. His last known address was in Tucson, where he has family. He also has relatives in Orange County.

Widera’s flight also has frustrated the alleged victims and church officials.

“From the victims’ point of view, the arrest and conviction really means more to them than the civil suit,” said Irvine attorney Katherine K. Freberg, who represents four men, including one from Milwaukee, who say they were molested as boys by Widera. “I wish I could literally go out and see the police handcuff the guy. That will give us some sense of satisfaction.”

Said Maria Schinderlev, a spokeswoman for the Orange diocese: “We’re sickened and saddened at the pain caused to the victims. We have absolutely no idea where he is, and we would certainly cooperate with law enforcement.”

Widera was stripped of his ability to function as a priest in 1986, shortly after a boy’s mother complained to the Orange diocese about an alleged molestation. Widera was sent to a New Mexico treatment center for eight months. He has not been defrocked; he still is a priest.

Widera is the second priest in the 31-year history of the Orange diocese to rack up multiple felony molestation charges.

In 1986, Andrew Christian Anderson was convicted on 26 counts of sexual abuse while a priest at St. Bonaventure Church in Huntington Beach. He received a suspended six-year prison sentence and was placed on five years’ probation. However, the sentence was reinstated in 1990 when Albuquerque police arrested Anderson for allegedly forcing a teenage boy into his car, assaulting him and attempting to sodomize him.

Last month, a former Dana Point priest was arrested for allegedly molesting a teenage girl who sang in the church choir.

The latest felony charges further entangle the Orange and Milwaukee dioceses.

Both defendants are named in a suit filed in May by an Orange man who said he was sexually abused as a boy by Widera in 1985. He is one of the alleged victims in the criminal case filed Monday. His civil suit also accuses the bishops of Milwaukee and Orange, both now deceased, of conspiring to move Widera, a convicted child molester, to Orange County.

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Siegfried Widera is the correct spelling, not “Sigfried Widera” as reported in this story.

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