UPDATED::The Silence of the Lambs | New Republic

UPDATE::  Missionary doctor won't face sex assault trial

A former Baptist missionary doctor from Wyoming accused of molesting nearly two dozen girls and women in Bangladesh, along with a girl in Allendale, won't face trial.

An Ottawa County judge ruled that Donn Ketcham, now 87, is incompetent to stand trial because he suffers from dementia.

Prosecutors told 24 Hour News 8 they don't plan to appeal, which means the charge against him will be dismissed.
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Ketcham, who also suffers from Parkinson's disease, was never charged over the allegations in Bangladesh decades ago, in part because his missionary group covered up the alleged crimes.

In his decision filed last week, Ottawa County Circuit Court Judge Jon Hulsing cited Ketcham's age, the fact he suffers from Parkinson's disease and his failing memory.

He is "unable to recall his attorney's name, is unable to identify his medications, is unable to identify the date, has gotten lost when walking, obsesses over certain issues, forgets significant events, and becomes agitated," the judge wrote in his opinion.

A state psychologist testified July 20 that Ketcham was competent to stand trial.

This is an older narrative that fell through the cracks during my recuperation.  While many of the cases and lawsuits primarily deal with the RCC, the story of Donn Ketcham highlights that it is  not "just" a Catholic problem.  Not that I ever believed that it was, as this blog highlights

Donn, the pastor would soon learn, was not really Kim’s uncle. He was Donn Ketcham, the 58-year-old chief doctor at the mission hospital in Bangladesh. His father had co-founded the Baptist denomination that sponsored the missionary group, the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism; its goal was to create a “militant, missionary-minded, Biblically separate haven of Fundamentalism.” Little known outside the world of Christian fundamentalists, ABWE is among the largest missionary groups in the United States, deploying more than 900 Baptists to 70 countries. His father’s legacy made Ketcham a sort of prince within the world of ABWE: the doctor with the “magical name,” as one missionary later put it, much beloved by the family of churches that supported the group. He’d been the undisputed patriarch of the Bangladesh mission for almost three decades.
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Kim’s confusion only grew. “My body likes it,” she thought, “so either I’m a bad person or it’s OK.” The biblical teachings she’d grown up with, in a culture that preached abstinence and the sinfulness of sex, told her it was wrong. But Uncle Donn was a close friend of her parents, and the holiest man she knew. He wouldn’t do anything that’s not right, she thought. Ketcham told her God was using him to help her. If she told her parents, he warned, her entire family would be banished from the mission, “where God wanted them to be.” Kim was old enough to understand the implicit threat: By speaking up, she would be ruining God’s purpose for her family. And the blame would be no one’s but hers.

The Silence of the Lambs | New Republic