North Liberty man who used his church position to molest children sentenced to probation

Aimee Breaux | Press Citizen

A church volunteer accused of sexually abusing children in his Iowa City congregation has been sentenced to two years of probation and 10 years on the Sex Offender Registry.

As part of a plea deal, Benjamin C. Tweedt, 33, pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent contact with a child in exchange for prosecutors dropping seven other charges.

Judge Ian Thornhill approved the plea deal at a sentencing hearing Monday afternoon at the Johnson County Courthouse. If Tweedt breaks the parameters of probation, which include sex offender treatment, Tweedt will face a four-year prison sentence. Tweet is also banned from contacting victims and required to pay the minimum fine of $625 for each of the two charges.

Tweedt, of North Liberty, was arrested in April 2017 on charges of inappropriate sexual contact with at least four children, ages 11 to 13, between 2006 and 2013. According to police reports, Tweedt had one-on-one meetings with the children as a volunteer with the student ministry at Parkview Church in Iowa City. The church, which reported the allegations to police in February 2017, said Tweedt was a volunteer but was never an employee.

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The various allegations against Tweedt included incidents of Tweedt touching children above their clothes, spooning a child during a church retreat, and instructing two preteen boys on separate occasions to masturbate and measure their penises before Tweedt did the same.

North Liberty Police Chief Diane Venenga told the Press-Citizen last year that all the victims and witnesses had a connection to Parkview Church.

On Monday, the small courtroom was filled with people who attended in support of the defendant. Mike Ringle, lawyer for the state, said Tweedt's victims and their supporters opted not to attend the sentencing hearing.

Based on conversations with the victims, Ringle said they wanted three things out of the plea deal: supervision, placement on the Sex Offender Registry and sex offender treatment.

"The agreement that's been reached achieved those goals and is consistent with the the victims that I was able to speak with," Ringle told the judge.

Though it was denied, Tweedt's lawyer, Phil Mears, asked that the judge leave the no-contact order up to the discretion of the victims. Some of the teenagers wanted to re-establish a relationship with Tweedt, Mears said.

“I'm not going to put the onus on the victim to request a no-contact order,” the judge said, adding that the court will revisit a no-contact order if the victim requests so.