United States: retired priest Frederick Lutz charged with forcible sodomy after Missouri attorney general's clergy probe
Request a correction or replyRecord class
Core record
Evidence status
Charged
Authority role
parish priest, St. Joseph Parish, Advance, Missouri
Organization
Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
The victim was a minor attending parish religion classes under Lutz's pastoral authority as priest of St. Joseph Parish; the diocese's own admitted 2002 knowledge of the allegation, left unreported to civil authorities for 18 years, is the institutional mechanism that let the statute of limitations run before the 2019 state investigation surfaced the case at all.
- Pastoral or clerical authority
Evidence structure
Proceedings
2020-02-19 · arrest, arraignment and grand jury indictment
Stoddard County, Missouri (venue later changed to Cape Girardeau County). Frederick Lutz, 76, retired in 2011, was arrested in Springfield, Missouri on a Stoddard County warrant charging forcible sodomy, two counts of second-degree statutory sodomy and felony sexual abuse, arising from the Missouri Attorney General's church-personnel-records investigation. Prosecutors alleged Lutz assaulted a 17-year-old who attended religion classes at St. Joseph Parish, Advance, in 2000; the diocese acknowledged it had known of the allegation since 2002. Lutz pleaded not guilty at arraignment. A grand jury indicted him on March 3, 2020 on two counts of forcible sodomy and two counts of deviate sexual assault, and venue was changed to Cape Girardeau County.
Documented coercion mechanisms
- clerical and pastoral authority
- access to a minor through parish religion classes
- diocesan knowledge of the allegation withheld from law enforcement from 2002 until the 2019 state investigation
Cited record
Sources
- regional broadcast news contemporaneous reporting KFVS12, 'Retired Catholic priest in southeast Mo. pleaded not guilty on child sex abuse charges' (Feb. 19, 2020).
Reports the arrest, charges (forcible sodomy, second-degree statutory sodomy, felony sexual abuse), bond, and not-guilty plea; states the diocese acknowledged 2002 knowledge of the allegation.
- alt weekly investigative press contemporaneous reporting Danny Wicentowski, 'Attorney General's Priest Abuse Probe Yields First Charges,' Riverfront Times (Feb. 21, 2020), archived at BishopAccountability.org.
Identifies the Lutz case as the first prosecution to emerge from the Missouri Attorney General's statewide clergy investigation.
- regional broadcast news contemporaneous reporting KY3, 'Grand jury indicts ex-Springfield, Mo. area priest on several charges' (Mar. 2020).
Reports the March 3, 2020 grand jury indictment on two counts of forcible sodomy and two counts of deviate sexual assault, and the change of venue to Cape Girardeau County.
- national catholic press status update Catholic World Report, 'Two lawsuits accuse Missouri dioceses of "shameless cover-up" of sexual abuse' (Sept. 20, 2024).
States that, as of September 2024, individuals named in the 2019 Missouri attorney general report had still not been prosecuted — the basis for this record's 'charged' rather than 'convicted' evidenceStatus and its needs-follow-up audit flag.
Source provenance
Source access and integrity log
This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.
- Source and tier basis
- https://www.kfvs12.com/2020/02/19/retired-catholic-priest-southeast-mo-charged-with-multiple-counts-child-sex-abuse/ Corpus classification: regional-broadcast-news; evidentiary role: contemporaneous-reporting. SHA-256 c9e96ba478fd99b731e893f98e5bbb5a1dc2e4fcfa81196af01b960b561782a0
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
- Source and tier basis
- https://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2020/01_02/2020_02_21_Wicentowski_AttorneyGenerals.htm Corpus classification: alt-weekly-investigative-press; evidentiary role: contemporaneous-reporting. SHA-256 879538a77fa771bbc7d644c329c5476a02e09acbebd0c8b4751f0b3a8e7aae20
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
- Source and tier basis
- https://www.ky3.com/content/news/Grand-jury-indicts-ex-Springfield-Mo-area-priest-on-several-charges-568714801.html Corpus classification: regional-broadcast-news; evidentiary role: contemporaneous-reporting. SHA-256 5629a27fda1c60f3992ad2e2e8a2a82ceb94d88874f44f5cacdc2f7ce2805353
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
- Source and tier basis
- https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/09/20/two-lawsuits-accuse-missouri-dioceses-of-shameless-cover-up-of-sexual-abuse/ Corpus classification: national-catholic-press; evidentiary role: status-update. SHA-256 a5d5bc512626f06084f383293797a1b6b7216984504eedf3818f259476e36f98
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
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Related record
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