By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
The former pastor of a Randle church won his appeal for being wrongly sentenced after he was convicted of sending sexual emails to a teenage member of his congregation.
Frederick C. Haack, the minister of the Family Worship Center in Randle, was sentenced to the maximum of five years in prison for communication with a minor for immoral purposes but an appeals court found the offense was actually a gross misdemeanor, something which should have gotten him locked up for no more than a year.
The Washington State Court of Appeals in an opinion filed late last month remanded the case for resentencing in Lewis County Superior Court.
It’s not clear from the opinion if Haack was actually incarcerated or remained free during the pending appeal. A phone call yesterday to his attorney was not returned.
The 49-year-old was charged in early 2008 for exchanges that occurred in December 2005 with a then-16-year-old Randle girl. A Lewis County jury found him guilty in 2009 of all six counts of communication with a minor for immoral purposes.
In his appeal, filed May 1, 2009, Haack’s attorney pointed out the judge erred in sentencing him for class C felonies because the offenses at the time committed were gross misdemeanors, according to the opinion.
The state legislature had increased the penalty for the crime effective in June 2006.
The Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office conceded the error.
Haack’s attorney also argued the conviction based on insufficient evidence but the appeals court rejected those claims.
A three-member panel of the state Court of Appeals Division Two agreed with the Oct. 26 finding of the sentencing error.
The allegations arose after the girl disclosed to her mother the events which had occurred two years earlier when she was 16. She had returned to Randle to live with her mother and contacted the pastor for soccer lessons.
By the end of the year, Haack, a married father of three, had moved away from Randle and was no longer a minister of any congregation.
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Read the Appeals Court decision here.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter