Monday, April 23, 2012

Christianity Today on Sex Abuse: “Monsters Among Us”


Just to show that I’m an equal-opportunity reporter of child sex abuse in churches, Christianity Today published an article entitled “The ‘Monsters’ Among Us: Child Sex Abusers in Our Midst“.

The man and his wife had parented 75 foster kids in their suburban home encircled by a white picket fence. He worked in marketing for three Chicago ministries, going on to establish a support network for foster-care families.

“Long before we got married ... we agreed we wanted to have large families,” the man told a Christian publisher in 2009. “We thought it would be fun to have a lot of children.”

And then, the man was arrested and held on charges of sexually assaulting two of his foster children, one 6, the other 12 at the time. This winter, he confessed to police of many nights spent drinking before coming home to commit literally unspeakable violations against these and likely other children.

We at Christianity Today recognized the mug shot. For nine years, he was our coworker in a non-editorial role.

The story came to us right before another: a Wheaton College Christian education professor arrested for hoarding and trading thousands of child porn images.

And now today comes another tragedy, with the news that Voice of the Martyrs executive director Tom White, a source, partner, and friend to several of us here, apparently committed suicide to avoid an investigation into an accusation that he had molested a young girl.

These events brought a sickening dose of reality to our hallways.

So, Christianity Today gets sick at “three”. For those keeping score, this is now three among Evangelical Christians reported (I’m sure the Roman Catholics who are keeping score will be able to find a few others), and 6,115 accused priests and 16,324 “survivors”. I haven’t calculated the percentages for the Evangelicals, but for Roman Catholics, that’s The 6,115 priests [a count provided by the U.S. bishops] as accused comprise 5.6% of the 109,694 priests in ministry 1950-2002. As As BishopAccountability.org notes notes:

The 6,115 priests who are now counted by the U.S. bishops as accused comprise 5.6% of the 109,694 priests in ministry 1950-2002. Yet as recently as November 2002, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, stated in an interview: “In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1% of priests are guilty of acts of this type.”

So the pope wasn’t elected for his Math skills. Or do you think maybe he was intentionally lying so as to minimize the problem in people’s minds? And note that he barely seemed to be sickened at 1%. Much less 5.6%.

Consider, we are talking about 5.6% of all priests between 1950-2002. One out of every 20. One out of 20 every Catholic parishes – one out of a smaller number, if you consider the parishes with multiple priests – had a sex abuser as Pastor or Assistant Pastor. (I know mine had one).


What to do, then, if you know of a sex abuser in your church or ministry?

The Roman Catholic method for handling sex abuse was, as recently as a 2011 Grand Jury report, “to prevent or delay reports of sexual assaults, to the point where applicable statutes of limitations expired. And Archdiocese officials, by burying those reports they did receive and covering up the conduct, similarly managed to outlast any statutes of limitation”. As a result of these policies, “these priests and officials will necessarily escape criminal prosecution”.

The Christianity Today way to handle sex abusers: “certainly means jail time, psychological testing, and an intensive recovery program. It should mean complete barring from children’s ministry”.

Yes, nobody’s playing favorites here. 

5 comments:

  1. Pedophilia, NAMBLA, Clergy Pedophilia... makes one want to retch.

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  2. The most sickening aspect of ANY abuse scandal is not so much that it happened, although that IS sickening, but rather that there are those that aid, abet, and make excuses for the perpetrators. To my mind there is a qualitative difference between the RCC sexual abuse scandal and other scandals and that is the institutional cover-up that was in operation for decades.

    The Pope's math isn't faulty, it just hinges on a legal term of art. Less than 1% of priests are guilty of these acts. That's because of a conspiracy and coverup that kept "these acts" secret until priests were dead or the statute of limitations had run out.

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  3. I'm hardly a supporter of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, but according to statistics, the actual rates of child sexual abuse in America among the general population are shockingly high.

    "Dr. Gene Abel estimates that between 1% and 5% of our population molest children." CNN Specials Transcript #454-Thieves of Childhood.

    "There are 400,000 registered sex offenders in the United States, and an estimated 80 to 100,000 of them are missing. They're supposed to be registered, but we don't know where they are and we don't know where they're living."
    - Ernie Allen, President of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

    "Like rape, child molestation is one of the most underreported crimes: only 1-10% are ever disclosed." FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin.

    The incidence of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy is probably somewhat close to that of the general population, it seems.

    There will always be predators. More disconcerting is why these men were allowed to continue to remain in close proximity to children by being shuttled from one parish to another by the hierarchy and men who were probably not themselves abusers.

    Was this merely a matter of naivete and ignorance when these issues were rarely discussed in the broader culture at large or is it evidence of something much darker?

    I'm not willing to assert that the RCC is little more than an organized pedophile ring, and we must be careful not to paint the entire priesthood with too broad a brush lest we defame genuinely decent men.

    I will say that this does seem to disprove the notion that the RCC is somehow uniquely attuned to the transformative power of a Higher Truth if their members are, net-net, no better in terms of virtue than the general populace.

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  4. James, for the umpteenth time, here is the kicker:

    Archdiocese officials, by burying those reports they did receive and covering up the conduct, similarly managed to outlast any statutes of limitation.

    The abuse is bad; the cover-up of the abuse is uniquely Roman Catholic.

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  5. "The abuse is bad; the cover-up of the abuse is uniquely Roman Catholic."

    That's because the reputation of The Church must be maintained at all costs.

    If a Roman Catholic apologist engages this thread they will undoubtedly complain that we are ignoring all the good that the church has done. And that's exactly what those engaged in the coverup would say as well; the "good" that the church does can't be risked by the "few bad apples".

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