Convicted of child sexual abuse in the East Bay, a priest quietly served at a Sonoma County parish. Advocates ask if other survivors exist

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In spring of 1979, a priest living in the East Bay got a call from the Rev. James Corley, the administrator at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Windsor. Corley — essentially an interim pastor — needed someone to fill in while he traveled to Mexico on diocesan business, and then to Rome for an ordination ceremony.

The priest Corley recruited, Stephen Kiesle, accepted the offer and soon notified the Oakland diocese in a letter.

“I hope the experience in Windsor will be a happy one for you,” Oakland Bishop John Cummins wrote back, in a letter reviewed by The Press Democrat. 

But Kiesle wasn’t supposed to be there.

Just a year earlier, he was arrested for sexually abusing six boys at Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Union City. He pleaded no contest to two of those crimes. At the time of his temporary assignment in Windsor, he was serving a three-year probation sentence and, according to church restrictions, was prohibited from performing ministry in any parish.

But Kiesle acknowledged in a 2005 court deposition that he worked at the Windsor church “off and on for a year” — sometimes for weekends, sometimes for weeks at a time. It’s unclear whether either his probation officer or the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa authorized him to serve there.

Kiesle’s presence in Windsor has never been publicly reported.

No one has accused him of abuse at Our Lady of Guadalupe. But advocates say documenting he worked there matters, in case there are survivors in Sonoma County who might recognize his name and choose to come forward.

One survivor is certain they exist.

“He never stopped,” said Kathie Thompson, 65, of Pinole, who says Kiesle abused her between 1972 and 1975. “He got caught in Pinole, and they moved him to Union City. He got caught there and they moved him again. Someone in Windsor was molested.”

Rick Simons — the liaison attorney for hundreds of Catholic sexual abuse plaintiffs in a consolidated proceeding in Alameda County Superior Court — said he represents clients who say they were abused by Kiesle at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park and at a parish in Fremont.

Survivors of childhood sexual abuse are often reluctant to come forward without some assurance they’ll be believed. And lawyers can balk at taking cases when there’s no corroboration, said Dan McNevin, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who serves on the board of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“Many of these people are damaged, and not confident,” McNevin said. “(A published story) would be validation.”

Robert Vasa, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa, leafed through Windsor parish files from the late 1970s and early 1980s as he spoke to a reporter by phone.

“There is absolutely nothing in the file to give us any indication we had any knowledge at any time of Kiesle’s possible presence in the diocese,” Vasa finally said.

Kiesle has one of the most extensive abuse records among California priests — with “more convictions, more cases and more prison time than probably all of them put together,” said Simons, who questioned Kiesle in the 2005 deposition.

“This guy’s just evil,” he added.

Kiesle’s 1978 crimes resulted only in probation. But it was not a nuanced case, according to McNevin, the advocate. Kiesle tied up the two boys at the church in Union City, where he was assigned at the time, and molested them. And yet, McNevin noted, he was permitted to work in Windsor the following year.

When police showed up to arrest him in 1978, Kiesle was on a trip with an altar boy, Robbie Rosson.

“He used to have me come over and stay at the sanctuary,” Rosson recounted in “I Am a Survivor,” a 2017 documentary short. “And he would tell me stories about the monster outside the window. And he would proceed to molest me. Hour after hour.”

Rosson’s sister, Teresa, also accused Kiesle of molesting her for years, and wound up suing him. Kiesle later married the siblings’ mother.

Kiesle’s legal troubles continued decades after his removal from ministry. He was charged in 2002 with 13 counts of child molestation, though all but two were dismissed after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed California’s temporary statute of limitations extensions. In 2004, he pleaded no contest to molesting a young girl in 1995 at his Truckee vacation home and received a six-year prison sentence.

When California opened a three-year “lookback window” in 2020 — temporarily lifting the statute of limitations for sexual abuse claims against Catholic clergy — Kiesle was named in roughly 60 claims, all in the Oakland diocese.

Now 78, he is incarcerated at California Medical Facility in Vacaville for a 2022 felony DUI that killed a pedestrian in Walnut Creek. The Press Democrat mailed him a request for comment; none was received before publication. His most recent attorneys have retired. The law firm where they worked did not respond to inquiries.

Thompson said she is relieved he is imprisoned. Years ago, she unexpectedly ran into Kiesle in a grocery store while shopping with her infant daughter. She recalled Kiesle walking toward them as if he didn’t recognize her, and saying “Oh, Sweetie” when he saw the baby. She yelled at him to get away and rushed out of the store.

“It’s a good thing he’s locked up now, because he can’t harm anyone else,” she said.

After his 1978 conviction, Kiesle petitioned to be released from the priesthood — a process known as laicization. Bishop Cummins supported the request and forwarded it to Rome. But the Vatican dragged its feet. The case went to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office responsible for reviewing serious disciplinary matters involving clergy, and it would be nearly a decade before that office formally approved the request. At the time, it was led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI.

To advocates like McNevin, allowing Kiesle to work in Windsor while under both criminal probation and church restriction is indefensible.

Vasa, Santa Rosa’s bishop, called the news distressing, but defended the church’s overall efforts.

“People have been hurt so badly,” he said. “It generates an anger toward the church. But we’re not omniscient. We don’t have knowledge of each person’s propensities or tendencies. The argument is that the church had an obligation to be aware of these priests. But how do we know that we’re supposed to know (about someone)?”

McNevin said Kiesle’s name should be added to the list the Santa Rosa Diocese released in 2019 — a list of 39 men, almost all ordained priests, who were found to have “well-founded and credible” allegations of sexual abuse.

“We believe that any place a dangerous priest has worked, that parish should publish the name,” McNevin said. “We’re still not getting the entire story from an institution that claims it’s being transparent.”

Vasa said the Santa Rosa diocese has worked hard to compile a thorough list of clergy with credible abuse findings. But he said he would be reluctant to add a priest like Kiesle who only visited the parish. If an accused priest merely passed through town and stayed in a hotel for a night, he asked, would that warrant inclusion? A threshold that low, he argued, would be unworkable and of limited value.

“It’s a loose strand that would unravel everywhere,” he said.

One name not currently on that list: the Rev. James Corley, the same priest who arranged Kiesle’s Windsor service. Corley was later accused by four people during California’s most recent legal window for abuse claims. One accuser said Corley assaulted him twice in 1977 at Our Lady of Guadalupe, when he was 7.

Corley spent his entire career as a priest in the Santa Rosa diocese, including his final six years at Our Lady Queen of Peace in Clearlake. He died of AIDS in 1990. Vasa confirmed he will be added to the list once the diocese’s bankruptcy case reaches more stability — likely in 2026.

The push to document abusers is tied to diocesan bankruptcies across the country, including in Santa Rosa and Oakland, filed as lawsuits surged.

If survivors of Kiesle in Sonoma County were to come forward now, they would face steep legal obstacles. Because California’s lookback window has closed, they would have to show that they only recently discovered their adult trauma was directly connected to abuse.

“If they were in counseling for the last 10 years and talking about these things, or had reported it to the diocese 20 years ago, or were getting support from an assistance program, they won’t qualify,” said Simons, the attorney. “But some people don’t really connect their alcoholism, drug abuse or depression to what they suffered as kids.”

Even so, he said, the act of naming an abuser publicly can be crucial.

“If it helps one person come forward, even if it’s not with legal recourse but just to make their experience known, it’s a good day’s work,” Simons said.