On Wed, 02-21-07 9:43 pm
Michael Spencer has a post at The Barth’s Head Tavern about sex abuse scandals in the Southern Baptist Convention. He says, in part:
The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination and it has little or no interest in admitting that a percentage of the many adults who work with its children and youth are dangerous predators. Now the victim’s groups are coming for the SBC churches and leaders who have looked the other way. It’s not an RCC [Roman Catholic Church] thing, and the cover ups by pastors are just as bad.”
Michael is correct about what he says – this is a scandal of horrid proportions – but doesn’t mention (perhaps because it wasn’t his point) a more damning scandal lurking in the shadows. But neither scandal is limited to any particular denomination, theology, or division of Christendom.
The other scandal involves institutional blindness and paralysis. Or worse.
When I was in seminary in the early 1980s, I did some research on sex abuse: its prevalence, nature, origins, etc. Even then it was approaching epidemic proportions: one of the popular books on the matter was entitled The Common Secret. It hasn’t gotten any better in the last couple of decades.
The statistics on such abuse are readily available online: a simple search will return millions of sites having information on the subject. One report says that in a seven-year period (1986-1993) sexual abuse doubled in the United States. How much of that is due to an actual increase and how much stems from increased reporting is impossible to determine. One conclusion is probably pretty safe: the problem isn’t going away.
The not-so-secret scandal in churches is that, as my own research showed, this is not something new: we – the Christian community – have known about this problem for a long time. We have also known that the sexual abuse of children crosses all sorts of lines, whether socio-economic, ethnic, or denominational. Being in a Christian home or a Christian church does not guarantee the safety of our children.
Some churches, including many in the SBC, have begun to screen individuals working with children and to implement policies that greatly reduce the opportunities sexual predators might have. The problem can never be completely eradicated or controlled, but much can be done to make it more difficult for perpetrators and the church much safer for our children.
Given the information available to churches for years and years, however, it must be asked why it has taken the church so long to protect children. Some churches, sadly, only begin to protect after the fact: someone has been caught, a lawsuit has been brought, criminal charges are filed, and now the church acts because it has to act.
I don’t know all the reasons for the blindness and inactivity that have inflicted local churches. Perhaps it is a false sense of security, some naëve ideas about the trustworthiness of people in church, or a preoccupation with missions and building projects that siphons money off for such things. Maybe it’s just that they don’t want to admit the problem or spend money to fix the porous holes of the sheep pen.
Whatever the causes might be, however, the time passed long ago for the church to make sure its own house is not only clean, but safe. Those in positions of responsibility, which includes all of us to some extent, will have to answer to the Great Shepherd one day. Given His devotion to children and the helpless, the matter of sexual abuse in the church is likely to be one of the first things He asks us.
Mike,
This is slightly off topic, but our church supports http://www.asiashope.com/ which starts orphanages in Cambodia and Thailand. Orphans in these country are at a very high risk of ending up in the sex trade. These orphanages provide an escape from a bleak future. Anyone interested can check the prior mentioned web site.
Thanks,
Mark K
I fully agree. I am an art educator in Pennsylvania, and we are required by law to maintain current Act 33/34 clearances (child abuse and criminal background checks). The powers-that-be complete the process in a timely fashion and usually an applicant has his or her verification paperwork within two weeks. Every church should require something similar – the cost of not doing so is too high.
I\’ve volunteered in a couple of organizations that work with youth: Boy Scouts and CAP. Both require youth protection training for those who would work with youth. The single most important factor is two-deep leadership: no single adult leader is ever to be alone with children without another adult leader (and not a spouse) present. So very many problems would be avoided if more churches implemented such a simple policy. Thanks for addressing a neglected issue.
I fully agree. As a parent, I would personally hold the leadership of the church responsible if they allowed a sexual predator to work in a ministry granting them access to my children (I have five). It’s scary to think that we assume that just because someone says they are a Christian that they would never prey upon our children, but sexual predators know just what to say and just how to earn the trust of the naive. Sexual abuse can change a persons life forever. To not do everything possible to prevent such an act of violence from happening within the church is both ignorant and irresponsible. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this.