SEWARD — There wasn’t much room to question their credentials.

Panelists at a Hope and Healing Seminar at St. John Lutheran Church on Saturday included Barb Rebentisch, who remembered curling up under her bed at Concordia University before telling a college friend she had been the victim of incest as a child.

They included Len Rotherham, who stumbled drunk into his darkened bedroom late one night to tell his wife he had been a victim of child sexual abuse 20 years earlier at school.

And they included Cathie Van Domelen, wife of Saturday’s featured speaker, Bob Van Domelen, who had to explain to their three school-age children 20 years ago that their father had been arrested for sexually abusing teenage boys.

Cathie Van Domelen recalled how she stood with her back to the kitchen sink. “And I told them their father had done some very bad things, and he would have to pay for it … but I made sure that they understood that we were blameless.”

Saturday’s seminar was part of the latest effort by Seward’s largest church to come to grips with its past.

In 2001, School Principal David Mannigel committed suicide after he was confronted with allegations that he had sexually abused students.

In 2002, St. John teacher Arlen Meyer was similarly accused.

Although neither was criminally prosecuted, a church investigation found “a consistent pattern of sexual misconduct” by Mannigel involving at least six students.

Meyer was excommunicated but then reinstated earlier this year as the church leadership and a congregation of about 2,800 struggled to resolve his membership standing.

As Larry Oetting stood before an audience of about 60 people Saturday for introductory remarks, the former congregational president and former head football coach at Concordia said the membership had been “rocked and shocked” by a series of events that continues to divide many people in the pews.

More than four hours later, congregation member Marian Faszholz was asked to assess the effect of an agenda that she helped organize.

“I think it was a very sincere presentation,” Faszholz said, “and I think we will just see what God causes to happen.”

She saw it as “a breakthrough” and “a coming together” among people with sympathy for both victims and perpetrators and said “only God could bring that to happen.”

The seminar also offered perspective from the Child Advocacy Center in Lincoln, child counselors from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Project SAFE, and an hour-long presentation by Bob Van Domelen.

Van Domelen was a Wisconsin school teacher at the time of his arrest in 1985. He eventually admitted to molesting 27 adolescent boys and was sentenced to five years in prison.

“My arrest was the answer to my prayers,” he said.

Van Domelen, now 59, is based in Waukesha, Wis., as executive director of Broken Yoke Ministries, which offers guidance on same-gender attractions.

“When my arrest hit the paper,” Van Domelen said, “it literally tore the church in half in terms of what people felt.”

Twenty years later, he said, he’s sometimes asked whether he could guarantee that he would never succumb to the same sexual addiction again.

No, he could not. “Healing isn’t defined by the absence of temptation,” he said. “It’s by our response to temptation.”

He wasn’t expecting universal acceptance from his audience. “Some of you definitely need to deal with how you feel about me,” he said. “I know that.”

Perhaps the most powerful moments for those gathered in the St. John Parish Hall came during the panel discussion. Both speakers and listeners wiped their eyes at various points.

“If God had forgiven him,” Cathie Van Domelen said of her husband, “who was I not to do likewise?”

As she thought about whether to stay in her marriage, she struggled with another question: “What good would it do any of us if I would turn and run?”

Barb Rebentisch said she was an elementary student, folding laundry with her mother, when she told her mother about her brother’s sexual advances.

Her mother said she would talk to him and then asked her several days later whether his behavior was improving.

“I didn’t want to break her heart. I didn’t want to make her sad. So I said, ‘yeah.’ But it wasn’t.”

Years of emotional turmoil followed. “Faith is the only reason I’m alive. I was very preoccupied with the idea of suicide.”

Rebentisch eventually told a college friend what had happened, even as she worried about losing that friendship. “It took about three days of ‘she did not run away, she did not run away, she did not run away’ before I realized that she was not going to run away.”

Rotherham, the subject of earlier Journal Star coverage, eventually admitted to his wife that he had been sexually abused by both Mannigel and Meyer.

Not everyone in the church’s ranks reacted with compassion, Rotherham said. “Probably the most hurtful responses are the minimalization of the whole deal. First, that I’m 32 years old, I should have gotten over it by now.”

Van Domelen said it was faith in God that allowed him to get treatment for his problem as a perpetrator.

“This isn’t false bravado,” he said at one point. “Do you think anybody with a sane mind wants to stand up here and talk to you about things like this?”

Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net.