Man committed for multiple sexual assaults

By Mia Simpson (Contact) | Austin Daily Herald

Published Tuesday, June 24, 2008

An Iowa man convicted of sexually assaulting multiple underage females in churches across southeastern Minnesota has been committed for institutionalized treatment as a sexually dangerous person and/or sexual psychopathic personality.

Scott Ronald Schmitz, 38, has been remanded to correctional treatment programs in St. Peter or Lino Lakes, the latter of which he’d been serving a three-year prison term for a probation violation until January 2008.

According to court documents, since his first conviction for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old Preston, Minn. girl in 1993, Schmitz has victimized about 15 known girls, ranging in age from 7 to 17 years old. He was convicted and sentenced for several crimes against four young Austin victims, in which he sexually assaulted a 17-year-old at St. Augustine Catholic Church and an 11-year-old at St. Olaf Lutheran Church, and later propositioned two 8-year-olds outside of the YMCA.

All four crimes occurred on the same day.

“Schmitz is a sexual predator who, given an available victim, available means and available circumstance, is unable to control his sexual impulses,” states a court document signed June 13 by Mower County District Court Judge Fred Wellmann.

During a polygraph test in 2003, Schmitz also allegedly admitted to sexually assaulting 15 unidentified women who he said he dated; five unidentified heavily intoxicated females, ages 18 to 20, which he said he assaulted after providing them alcohol; and 25 unidentified juvenile girls, court documents state.

Records say that Schmitz denied to all of those incidents during commitment proceedings Jan. 30-Feb. 1.

Schmitz’s criminal history also includes presenting pornographic materials to young females, theft and assault in Iowa and Minnesota. He will receive a review hearing 60-90 days from now, where a judge will decide whether the defendant should be indefinitely committed.

Under Minnesota state law, a “sexually dangerous person” engages in habitual misconduct in sexual matters, exhibits an utter lack of self control over sexual impulses and, as a result, is dangerous to others. A sexual psychopathic personality has engaged in harmful sexual conduct likely to cause serious physical or emotional harm, has a sexual or mental disorder and is likely to reoffend.

Schmitz is the fourth to be committed in Mower County District Court under this statute. A fifth — 46-year-old Henry John Wilson — underwent a two-day commitment hearing June 9-10. No decision has been rendered.