Category: Protecting Our Kids

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Why Child Rapists are Treated Far Better than Their Victims In the Church

Recently, my friends over at GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) shared a Facebook post asking, “What are reasons why sexual assault survivors don’t feel safe sharing about their abuse to professing Christians?” The responses are all things that I hear often from survivors of abuse. Survivors are often hurt by these cliches and church leaders, ironically, think they are helping survivors by using them. It’s a shame that sexual assault survivors have survived their abuse only to be forced to survive churches. It’s akin to someone showing up at a hospital with critical gunshot wounds only to be shamed, lectured, told to forgive the shooter, or turned away by the trauma doctor for being too disruptive to the hospital. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s exactly how spiritual wounds are (mis)treated in many churches. Pastors are spiritual doctors, so why do so many of them verbally assault the wounded and protect the ones who caused the wounds? Here are some of the most common cliches abuse survivors hear from church leaders and other Christians:

You need to forgive and move on
Forgive and forget.
A sin is a sin, so what your abuser did is no worse than any of your sins.
This is too ugly/inappropriate so please don’t discuss it again.
I understand exactly how you feel.
Why didn’t you scream if you didn’t want this to happen?
If you knew that sex was wrong, why didn’t you stop it?
What did you do/wear to “tempt” the perpetrator?

Because I’m a minister, I know many intricacies of church leadership and routinely witness bad theology breeding bad practices. The overwhelming majority of churches I’ve personally interacted with are sympathetic to the abuser and rarely mention victims of abuse. Here are some of the most common questions I’ve been asked by church leaders, in order of frequency:

How do we keep the offender involved in the life of the church?
Please tell us that you believe they (the offenders) can repent.
He was really remorseful, don’t you think asking us to set these boundaries is unfair?
How can we keep the offender here and still keep kids safe?
Do you think the offender was sexually abused as a child?
Isn’t it unfair to ask probing questions about his past?

In addition to these questions (some of them rhetorical), here are some of the most common statements church leaders give about the abusers:

He is one of my best friends.
He’s a good, good man and just got caught up in sin.
He did so much good and is well respected by the whole church and community.
He has so many struggles in his own life.
We love this brother and want to restore him gently.

What’s become blatantly obvious to me is that churches are incredibly good at telling survivors what they must do to “get right with God” and are even better at defending the offenders whom they assume are already right with God. It’s troubling that we go to such great lengths to ensure abusers remain active in the life of the church while their victims are told to just move on. When we place blame on victims of oppression while defending the oppressor, we fail to hate the things God hates and love the things God loves. There is no excuse for leaders who take the above approach.

I am a full time minister. I also happen to have turned my own father in when I learned that he had performed sex acts against children. Rather than just get angry with church leaders, though, I want to understand why they almost always defend a child rapist over the innocent children who’ve been raped by them. If we understand why, perhaps we can give them a more accurate view of God’s position. The very foundation of God’s throne is righteousness and justice (Psalm 89:14). We cannot understand God’s love unless we understand that God’s core foundation is righteousness (doing what’s right and fair) and justice (doing what is deserved). If we strip away God’s righteousness and justice, love becomes twisted and it ceases to be love. A neighbor once told me her boyfriend was cheating on her and beating her. She was crying and said, “He loves me.” I told her that he, in fact, did not love her. When she asked how I was so certain I said, “Because he’s cheating on you and beating you.” I submit to you that, by very definition, love cannot protect a predator while ignoring or ridiculing the wounded. So why are so many church leaders doing it? I offer some reasons below:

1. Our theology doesn’t allow us to believe that this level of wickedness exists, especially in the church–Most of the time when I’m invited to speak places, I’m asked to ensure that I won’t say anything too graphic or that will offend someone. Christians sanitize the Bible. God doesn’t. Read Judges 19. It’s graphic. Very graphic. A kind woman was thrown out like a piece of trash to be gang raped all night long. Literally. In the morning her fingers were embedded in the threshold of the very house she was thrown from because she was trying to claw her way back to safety. The abuse was so violent that at some point she died. As she lay there lifeless, her master said these chilling words to her corpse, “Get up.” She didn’t move because she was dead. Those of you who’ve been repeatedly raped, molested, and humiliated from the time you were young children don’t want people like me to use “nice” words because what happened to you was not nice. Neither was the person who did those things. I hear the following phrase almost every time a church leader is tiptoeing around telling me that there is a predator in their church: “I don’t want to believe that he is capable of this.” Frankly, I don’t want to believe that church leaders embrace, protect, and harbor felons. But they do. I didn’t want to believe that my dad molested dozens of children in horrible, humiliating ways. But he did. My not wanting to believe it doesn’t make the abuse any less real. Some people we love and respect are capable of secretly and intentionally inflicting harm on God’s most innocent creatures for their own twisted pleasure. If we deny it, we’ll never be able to hear the pleas of victims.

2. Church leaders prefer cardboard testimonies and oftentimes confuse them with reality–Remember the wildly popular cardboard testimonies? People are paraded across the church stage holding a cardboard sign that says what they used to be then they turn it around and it says who they are now in Christ. Soft music is played and, admittedly, like many of you, I get teary eyed watching them. As a minister, I sometimes get caught up in the western idea that conversions are quick, easy, and lasting. But then I remember that life is messy. My own life is a mess. Most of the people who attend my church are a mess. We don’t have fairy tale endings to our stories.

It’s been almost 6 years since I found out that my childhood hero is a serial pedophile. I still have days where I don’t want to get out of bed. And I wasn’t sexually abused. Many survivors are struggling every. Single. Day. Some battle depression. Some have recurring nightmares. Some are medicated for severe anxiety. Some are battling eating disorders. Many have thought of or attempted suicide. The sad reality is that your story doesn’t fit nicely onto a piece of cardboard. For the millions of you who are struggling every day, who wants to see the backside of your cardboard? Your name won’t be selected to write a cardboard testimony. What in the world would you write? Your ending just doesn’t fit. Ministers aren’t comfortable with your story because a messy life to them indicates that either somehow Christ hasn’t transformed you or you’re resistant to his grace. This is a lie, of course, but it’s what they believe. This is why they tell you things like, “Forgive and move on.” Or, “Just have more faith and God will heal you.” What they really mean is, “Your story makes me uncomfortable and makes Jesus look weak.”

And I’ll give you one guess as to who has the perfect cardboard testimony. That’s right…the sex offender who spent time in prison and who now can waltz into the church professing that he had a prison epiphany. Predators give church leaders precisely what survivors can’t. There is no ongoing therapy. There are no relapses with drug addiction. They don’t have to be told to “move on.” The sex offender can be paraded before the church (and sometimes they are)–here is someone who was once lost but is now found, which leads me to my next point.

3. We no longer require evidence of repentance. . . unless you’re a survivor–John the Baptist was clear. “Bear fruit in keeping with your repentance.” All of us who claim to be repentant must bear fruit in keeping with that repentance. What are the deeds that back our words? A repentant alcoholic isn’t found at a bar. A repentant adulterer isn’t found alone in the homes of other people’s spouses. A repentant swindler doesn’t become the church treasurer. And a repentant child molester doesn’t suggest that it’s “unfair, unChristian, or unforgiving” to ask that he or she not be in the mixed company of children. Yet time and time again we witness Christians caving to the offender’s demands who claim that it is unChristian to keep them from being near children. It’s as if God looks at adult-only worship as blasphemous. Yet churches have adult-only Bible studies all the time. It’s only when we ask child rapists to participate in adult-only Bible studies that suddenly we’re being unfair.

So if churches continually cave to the demands of the offender, why do they do the opposite to their victims? At the same time churches cave to the offenders’ demands, they heap their own demands on the shoulders of victims. You need to forgive. Why don’t you move on? Don’t bring this up again.

I think we can do better. I think we must do better. There are 100 reasons why child rapists are treated better than their victims, but it all boils down to bad theology (protecting the oppressor while hurting the oppressed) and the bad theology is exasperated by the charisma of the offenders. They are incredibly convincing and are good at getting others to look anywhere but at the actual sin and crimes they committed. As long as they can divert our focus, the darkness will never be exposed and we will never be able to resist the devil.

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A Peek Behind the Catholic Veil in the Pennsylvania Sex Abuse Cover-Up

Last week Pennsylvania was in the national spotlight for another big sex abuse scandal. This time it involves over 50 Catholic priests and other leaders who sexually abused hundreds of children in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown. The investigation began 2 years ago in Johnstown, less than 20 miles from my home. I am currently working my way through the Grand Jury’s 147 page report, which I will post below. I highly recommend reading this report in its entirety after reading my thoughts on how cover-ups of this magnitude still happen regularly. But first, we need to remember that these are real victims with real names, real families, and lasting struggles. Many of the hundreds of victims in this report thought about or attempted suicide, and these hundreds of victims only account for an 8-county radius around my home. This kind of abuse is going on every single day all over the country. There is an estimated 42 million living people just in the US who have suffered sexual assault by an adult when they were a child. This 147 page report is significant.

The late Father Joseph Bender became angry with young boys who refused his advances. “Bender would lash out in anger when the children rebuffed his advances. In a particular incident Bender grabbed a boy by the neck and asked ‘don’t you love me anymore” when the child insisted on wearing underwear to bed. . . The challenge after being Bender’s victims wasn’t to attempt to live well, but to attempt to simply live.” One of Bender’s victims from the 70s wrote an anonymous letter to Bishop Joseph Adamec in 1991 giving details of forced foreplay, masturbation, and oral sex. The victim wrote, “Because I respected his position, and feared the consequences of disobeying him, I would remain silent. I would estimate that I was abused approximately one hundred times.” That letter was stored along with scores of others in the secret archive of the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

As I read through this report about priests abusing in the name of God, forcing 8 year old children to perform oral sex on them hundreds of times, forcing them to get drunk, anally raping them, and inflicting unfathomable mental abuse on top of the sexual abuse, I get angry. But my anger is not only reserved for the pedophiles who were relentless in their abuse of helpless children. It’s also aimed at the deadbeat bishops and law enforcement officials who knew about the abuse and chose to shuffle these pedophiles from church to church while remaining silent. But my righteous anger doesn’t stop there. While the Catholics get their share of justified finger pointing, they are not alone–not by a long shot. We at Church Protect regularly hear stories about churches of every stripe who chose to invite pedophiles into their ranks and grant them access to children. In our experience, church leaders routinely allow even convicted pedophiles to waltz back into their churches, “redeemed” by the blood of the lamb and with very few restrictions. One desperate message to me chronicled a group of elders who gave their blessing to a convicted pedophile who had recently been released from prison. The registered sex offender offered to house a struggling youth in his basement under the guise of offering moral support and being a positive role model. Not surprisingly, he attempted to rape the young church girl. Surely an attempted rape of a young troubled youth from their church by a convicted child predator would cause the elders to ban him from that congregation, right? Nope. The girl was told to sit elsewhere if this man made her feel uncomfortable.

I would not experience daily anger if I didn’t daily hear these same stories time and time again. My guess is that people reading this post are getting angry that this kind of thing goes on in churches regularly. I also imagine that anyone who actually takes the time to read the Grand Jury’s report will get angry reading it. But here’s my question–why do people get angry at stories about child predators but turn completely passive when actually interacting with them in real life? All of a sudden we move from the facts of raping young children to shoddy theologies of sin, grace, and assimilation. “Well, they seem genuinely remorseful,” the argument goes, “so I’m sure they’ll never harm a child again.” But they do. Again and again and again. Read the report. It’s full of records of rehab, confessions, promises to change, victim blaming, and minimizing the abuse. The sad thing is that it works and pedophiles know it.

In his book Child Sexual Abuse and the Churches, Patrick Parkinson has a short but excellent section on repentance. Here’s what he says:
Forgiveness can have little meaning if the offender has no intention of stopping the abuse. . . In the area of child sexual abuse, repentance has often been confused with remorse. Remorse is what happens in the back of a police car. Repentance means taking full responsibility for the offending and walking the painful road of lasting change. . . The offender may well feel devastated by the prospect of losing these things. Such deep remorse may well be taken for repentance, but the signs of true repentance are in deeds, not in tears. . . The repentant offender ought to be willing to acknowledge to the police and the courts that he has done wrong, that he has committed criminal offences of the utmost gravity and deserves to be punished.

Parkinson also argues that a repentant abuser will take every step to make reparation. Just as we learned as children that an apology for a broken window must be accompanied with an offer to pay for the window, so there must be reparation as adults. The abuser will at very least voluntarily pay for counseling bills of all of his or her victims. In more significant cases, Parkinson rightly argues that the offender may have “to sell his house, or his car. It is costly, but it is also just.” I have argued, and continue to argue, that a repentant child molester will insist on being removed from the presence of children precisely because they have proved time and time again that they cannot be near children without fondling, massaging, raping, and performing oral sex on them. This response does not mean that the church “has it out” for pedophiles. Rather, they have the safety of children as their top priority. A repentant offender will be more than happy to be part of a church with strong accountability–where he or she is still free to worship with other adults and not be near children.

But sadly, this biblical stance of repentance and accountability is viewed as inhumane, cruel, and unjust. And so, like the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, churches of all denominations in 2016 continue to mistake remorse for repentance and they routinely let pedophiles join their worship, preach, lead children’s programs, all while keeping their congregants in the dark about the abuser’s past. So why do churches enable (and thereby bless) abuse to take place in practice while condemning it in theory?

If we peel back the veil in the Pennsylvania Catholic abuse case, I believe we would find two bishops who covered up the abuse not because they hate children and like to know that they’re being abused, but because they mistook remorse for repentance. In the report, they did confront accused clergy time and time again. But every single time they allowed them to continue in ministry. Why? Unfortunately, the power of persuasion by an offender is a louder voice than the cries of abused children. The best leverage an abuser can get (and they may even request it!) is face time with church authorities. Abusers know how easy it is to use emotion to minimize abuse, explain details away, rewrite children’s memories, and plead for mercy. And it works. This is one reason we recommend churches never investigate allegations of abuse themselves. Church leaders need to remove themselves from the abuser emotionally and look at the facts. They need to listen to the cries of children and vow to lay down their lives to protect them. They need to always report allegations of abuse to authorities and not speak to the accused about it. Trust us that you will always leave those meetings second guessing yourself, having sympathy for the abuser, and wondering how such a good child could be so mistaken as to what happened to them.

Church leaders have a very long way to go. Churches continue to be ripe for abusers. The harvest is plentiful and the workers are naive. My prayer is that, for the sake of our children, we wise up and learn from cases like the PA Catholic scandal.

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Tips For Protecting Kids

It’s a question that all of us parents (should) want to know–How do I keep my kids safe from predators? I get asked this question on a regular basis, and I’m glad. The fact that parents and church leaders are asking means that they take seriously the charge to protect the kids who are in their care. I wish I could say that abuse in the church is rare. It is not. Not by a longshot. In my opinion, we do not do nearly good enough a job preparing our church leaders on how to handle this issue.

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus prepared his disciples by saying, “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16 ESV). What comes out of the Son of God’s mouth next is riveting: flogging in the synagogues. Beatings. Hatred. Murder. Fathers killing children. Children killing parents. Persecution. Fleeing. After 9 years of college and graduate school I can honestly say that there was nothing even remotely similar to this in discussions meant to prepare us for ministry. Sadly, these things are going on in our churches today, here in the USA. It is out of my personal experience of living among a wolf that I share these tips for protecting your children.

#1 Educate Kids–I understand the need to shield our children from certain things. But keeping them completely sheltered is a mistake. And it’s costing our kids big time. The number one thing we can do to help keep our kids safe from predators is to teach them what abuse really is and how to say no. We teach them fire safety and have firemen come to the schools. We do fire drills. We teach them to cross the road safely. We do tornado drills in Pennsylvania, for crying out loud! They learn the safest places to be in lightning storms. So why are we not teaching them how to say “NO!” to a predator? My e-mail is backed up with requests from people to speak with me about their children being sexually abused. I’ve received dozens and dozens just in the past few months, and these are all just within the Churches of Christ. Child molesters will not mess with a child who they think is going to tell on them. So teach your child to tell.

#2 Create Boundaries/Policies–It’s astounding how many churches, schools, and daycares don’t have any written policies. These places are easy targets because there are lots of children, accessibility is unrestricted, accountability is non-existent, they are desperate for volunteers, most people are automatically trusting, and many Christians are naïve. We have created the perfect place for abusers and a nightmare of a place for children. My father wrote me from prison before and said, “Churches and Christian daycares are the easiest places to sexually offend children. It’s so easy to gain the trust of people and they just hand you their kids.” If you want to see a discussion on boundaries, see my articles on boundaries.

#3 Educate Adults–As I mentioned, we ministers are ill-equipped to detect, prevent, report, and deal with the aftermath of abuse. This is not a knock on our schools. I think of where I was prior to finding out that my own father was an abuser–I didn’t want to believe that this went on in the church. But it does. A lot. Paul says to expose the deeds of darkness, not to pretend that they don’t exist or ignore them altogether. For every incident of abuse in the church that I hear, I hear just as many incidents of cover-ups by church leaders. This is not only illegal, it’s immoral. We’ve got to educate our adults on how to detect abuse, how to prevent it, how to report it, and how to bring healing to victims of abuse. Shame on the churches who cover it up and pretend like it didn’t happen.

#4 Accept Reality–When we fail to accept the reality that some of the most trusted, respected, productive people in our churches are perpetrators themselves, we help them to multiply their victims, as I will demonstrate later. I speak from experience. I never in a million years dreamed that my own father, a minister himself, was capable of abusing children. It never crossed my mind. He was one of my best friends. Maybe I didn’t want to believe it. But worse, his crimes are crimes that are incredibly easy to hide. Gavin de Becker once wrote, “The solution to sexual violence in America is not more laws, more guns, more police, or more prisons. The solution to sexual violence is acceptance of reality“ (quoted in foreword of Anna Salter’s Predators, Pedophiles, Rapists, & Other Sex Offenders, pg. xi.)

#5 Keep Records and Do Something–In Carla van Dam’s The Socially Skilled Child Molester, she talks about a “trail of slime” that molesters leave behind. After someone is arrested, we can all recount things that didn’t “seem right.” It’s amazing how many people have since told me how uncomfortable they felt around my dad when he was with children. Yet nobody, including myself, ever talked about it with anyone else. Van Dam recommends that, if you see an adult interacting with children in an inappropriate way, you should start talking to other parents and see if they have similar feelings. Then she recommends documenting specific interactions. I’ve called police on several occasions just to inform them of things that I’ve seen with individuals. Though the acts were not illegal per se, the police have a running tab on certain individuals. I reported one man to the police this summer and said, “This man will have a rape victim very soon if he is not caught.” Sadly, my words turned prophetic about a month ago. He is in jail for sexual assault.

Many people argue with me that abuse is not common in the Churches of Christ. Spend one day facing my computer screen and read the daily e-mails I get from victims just within the Churches of Christ. Your perspective will quickly change. It is an epidemic. Here are just a few cases within the Churches of Christ in the past few years:

December 16, 2014–Former preacher of Elm and Hudson Church of Christ in OK, Tommy Lynn Bailey, 56, was arrested yesterday for having sex with a minor beginning when she was 14 and lasting 7 years. She lived in his home and was under his direct care. Bailey also worked at Open Arms Behavioral Health counseling center in Lawton.

September 11, 2014–A 14 year old church member had her own 9/11 tragedy when her preacher of Palisades Family Church of Christ, 55 year old Glenn VanZandt, was caught by a cop in a vacant city park parking lot raping and sodomizing the young girl. He had been doing this for months to this young victim.

July 2012–At Pennsylvania Christian Camp at nearby Blue Knob State Park, a Churches of Christ camp, a camp counselor forced 9 year old boys to get on all fours and play a “whipping game,” where crying kids were forced to whip each other while the counselor watched.

August 2011–On August 1st, 2011, I reported my father John Hinton, 62, former preacher of Somerset Church of Christ to local authorities. He was initially charged with 150 counts, including producing child pornography with his victims, which were as young as 4 years old. He is currently serving a 30-60 year sentence.

September 2011–86 year old long-time preacher Clarence Caldwell Arquitt, Jr. is arrested and released on $30,000 bond for molesting and sodomizing a girl over an 8 year period. She was 3 when the alleged abuse began and 11 when it stopped. The abuse occurred at his homes in Wood Stock and Sandy Springs. Arquitt helped found North Cobb Church of Christ in GA and is the founder and initial director of Georgia School of Preaching and Biblical Studies. He has preached at North Cobb Church of Christ, Olive Street Church of Christ, Piedmont Church of Christ, and Wood Stock Church of Christ.

October 10, 2011–70 year old trusted church member Paul Buckman murders my good friend Les Ferguson, Jr.’s wife, Karen, and 21 year old disabled son, Cole, after raping and sodomizing Cole for a period of months. Les was the preacher at Orange Grove Church of Christ in Gulfport, MS at the time. Karen and Cole were murdered while Les was at a preacher’s meeting. It was their 24th wedding anniversary that day, and exactly 1 year later to the day, my son Cameron was born.

November 12, 2010–Matthew Jordan, 51, was fired from Center Road Church of Christ in Saginaw, MI in January 2010 for “performance issues.” In November, family members tipped police off that Jordan may have sexually abused a 12 year old boy from his church. Jordan pleaded guilty and investigators recovered pictures and videos of Jordan sexually molesting the boy in the basement of Jordan’s home. Jordan was convicted in TN in 1987 with assault with intent to commit rape of a minor. Yet, he freely traveled around preaching in our churches, free to abuse more children.

2010–Skillman Church of Christ near Dallas, TX hires then 50 year old registered sex offender and person from America’s Most Wanted, Chuck Adair as to oversee a prison ministry and as leader of ministry and coordination. Adair still serves today as one of their ministers. Adair had an affair with a college girl years ago, has moved from youth ministry position to other youth ministry positions. And in 1992, he landed a job as a youth minister at Golf Course Road Church of Christ in Midland, TX, where he began a sexual relationship with a 13 year old girl who would roller blade over to his house for “counseling.” Adair married that same girl from prison the day after her 18th birthday. They divorced 2 years later and Adair is now married for the 3rd time. Adair has his supporters, like long-time church member Billy Faye Curtis, who said in an interview, “The girls would just throw themselves in his lap,” she said. “They loved him so much.” Others aren’t as convinced, like former church member Robin Kintz who said as a teen, Adair named her breasts, “Bip” and “Bop.” The article says of Adair’s current elders: “Dishman said elders haven’t restricted Adair because he limits himself.” Adair said he also abides by the church’s policy and sets his own boundaries. This isn’t too reassuring to me, since previous church leaders asked him to set boundaries, to which Adair reflected, “I set some, then violated them.”

July 2005–Then 55 year old Dr. Bert Thompson was fired from Apologetics Press for inappropriate sexual misconduct with several minor boys. Several victims came forward only to be met by church leaders who opted to protect Thompson’s “good” name. Sadly, there was a trail of slime that was blatantly obvious and could have prevented Thompson from rubbing his grimy fingers on more victims. A year and a half prior Thompson stood before a grand jury for allegations of sex with a 17 year old boy. “We had information about the allegations,” said Ted Norton, an Eastern Meadows elder. “We were not in a position to know whether they were true or not. We as individuals had our own personal feelings, but we did not have evidence so to speak.” Well, now we do.

I could go on and on. These are just ones that I found in the matter of a few minutes. There are more. . . many more. And these are just the ones involving people who got caught. I’ve worked with at least a dozen Churches of Christ where there are known incidents of abuse going on in the church and churches are either covering it up, or the perpetrators’ attorneys are able to find loop holes and get their clients off. In one case, an adolescent raped a very young boy in the church building. There was plenty of evidence (including blood and semen). There was a plea deal and that perpetrator still attends the church, minus any charges.

It is vital that we work together to protect our children. Their lives and souls depend on it.

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I Teach My Kids to Hate (And You Should Too)

The Bible, through the words of Jesus, instructs us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44). If your enemy is hungry, we are told to feed him. If he is thirsty, we should give him drink (Romans 12:20). Point well taken. But the Bible also gives us another vital instruction. It’s one that we don’t take seriously enough, in my opinion. We don’t even like the word. Yes it’s true; we are told to hate. We’re not instructed to hate people, but to hate what is evil. Romans 12:9 (NIV) says, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” This particular word for hate appears only here in all of the Bible. It is the strongest word for hate. It literally means “to have a vehement dislike for something.” It is likened to a state of rage. In contrast, we are to “cling” to what is good. That word means something like “being glued to; to be inseparable.”

Do we have a vehement hatred for evil? I mean, really–does the thought of evil make us rage inside? I’m not so convinced that it does. Neither am I convinced that we’re teaching our kids to hate evil. Let me give a little backdrop for why I hate evil. When I read story after endless story of abuse, especially abuse of children, something snaps inside of me. After hearing stories of shame, humiliation, and torture, Evil is no longer an abstract concept. It becomes personal. Extremely personal. People sometimes ask me, “Why do you subject yourself to all these stories of abuse and surround yourself with people who have been abused?” My answer is, “Why do you not?” Avoidance makes abuse no less real to the people it’s actually happening to. The vast majority of people in our nation choose to ignore this evil, and so it continues.

In my frequent travels, I hear lots of gut-wrenching stories of young children being sexualized and used for pervert predators’ own little sex experiments. Let me be clear–this is not an “attraction” or “addiction.” It is evil. Pure wickedness. Attraction means exactly that–someone is attracted, for whatever reason (I’m not arguing causality here), to children. Attraction turns evil when there is intent to act out. The word “addiction” does not properly explain child molestation either. There is a vast difference between addiction and abuse. Addiction is a craving for something. Abuse is a craving to act out on someone. Children are not drugs. They are humans. They have a soul. They are precious. When they are used, manipulated, sexualized, tortured, emotionally screwed with, brought to orgasm, forced to perform sex acts on adults, and thrown out, we cannot ethically say, “Boy, Eric was addicted to Jennifer.” Let’s not cheapen the child by referring to molestation as an “addiction.” Acting out on a child is always evil because every time molestation happens, an innocent child is harmed.

I am very cautiously optimistic about the epidemic of child sex abuse. The optimistic part comes from shaking hands with people like myself who are speaking out against abuse on a national (and some an international) level. Many people are listening and are willing to take strong measures to prevent abuse. This is commendable and hopeful. The very cautiously part comes from my experience speaking at churches. Church leaders are generally still naïve and are way too willing to give people the benefit of doubt. This reduces the likelihood of church leaders reporting suspected abuse in a timely manner. In fact, I’ve witnessed on several occasions strong resistance by church leaders to report alleged abusers because “they just don’t seem like the kind of guy who would do something like that.” I often tell people who respond this way not to confuse their desire for people to be pure and innocent with them actually being pure and innocent. I could wish all day long that my own father had not committed atrocities against multiple children. But that doesn’t change the fact that he actually did. We’ve got to stop pretending like evil is not around us. We can’t cower in fear, either.

Ephesians 5:11 says, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” And so we unapologetically expose the works of darkness and shed light on the people who are abusing children in the dark. But more than exposing this darkness, we hate the evil. And we should have no embarrassment or apology for teaching our children to hate what is evil and cling to what is good. Let’s start raising up the next generation to be kind, loving, and opposed to evil.

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Tenancingo: Home Grown Sexual Abusers

Trucking had always been a dream of mine. I’ve always liked operating heavy machinery and traveling, so trucking was a natural fit. I drove truck coast to coast for one year in between college and seminary, while I was still single. My first time across the Rockies was in a bad snow storm. Dropping down a hill in a semi truck from 11,000 feet when it’s hammering snow is quite an experience! What makes it more adventurous is looking down and seeing other tractor trailers that have careened off the interstate to the bottom of ravines from years past. It’s an eerie feeling to see multiple unrecovered trucks at the bottom of a mountain. Once a truck has fallen so far, it’s impossible to tow it back up to the top of a mountain, so many of them end up being left there permanently.

I believe evil is the same way. Once someone has fallen so far down, it becomes impossible to tow them back to the top. I had a Bible professor who has another helpful analogy called the “chained dog” theory. Evil is like a dog that’s chained up. It has boundaries set by God. Evil still exists, but the chain restricts evil’s reach. We can either stay outside of evil’s reach, or we can taunt it and risk it latching on to us and dragging us deeper into its territory. Have any of you ever been to a place that is so dark, you can “feel” the evil?
chained dog

God warned the Israelites, “But be sure to fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you. Yet if you persist in doing evil, both you and your king will be swept away” (1 Samuel 12:24-25 NIV). Romans 12:21 says, “Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.” The Bible mentions evil and its variants (evils, evildoer, etc.) just shy of 500 times. There is a consistent message throughout the Bible that many Christians deny. . . there is a level of evil that creates a suction point, a trap, a point of no return.

The small town of Tenancingo, Mexico is one of these places. It is the breeding ground for a major pedophile ring and sex trafficking to the United States. Young children are saying that they want to be like their dads and sell women for sex. There is no remorse, and darkness plagues the town. Psychologists are divided on what “makes” a perpetrator act out on very young children. Is it psychological factors, environmental, genetic, addictions to pornography, etc.? To be fair, nobody really knows for sure. If we are honest, we would admit that there are many hidden factors, both in the brain and in the home, that we will probably never figure out as far as causality. But one thing we can probably all agree on is that perpetrators who sexually act out on children are committing an evil. And once you begin messing with the dog, eventually it’s going to bite. And in Tenancingo, the dog has claimed its territory and is dragging people all over the place. I highly recommend watching this documentary on Tanancingo’s trafficking of sex slaves to the US. It is worth every minute.
****WARNING: We need people to watch this and raise awareness that this stuff happens all the time****

So what’s my point? Or rather, what’s God’s point? At the top of the list, remember the old saying, “If you play with fire you’re bound to get burned?” Well, if you play with evil, you’re bound to get bit. According to Scripture, we’ve all done evil. But it’s the perpetual toying with it that leads to the point of no return. There is, however, great news in all of this. For those who struggle with pedophilic thoughts at a younger age, rehabilitation is quite successful. I’d encourage parents who have allegations come against their children to not be so quick to defend them. Rather, get them the help they need.

I’ve received several phone calls with similar scenarios–a 13-15 year old boy was inappropriately saying things, doing things, or was infatuated with young children. And in all the cases (so far), the parents or guardians defended the perpetrator, not the alleged victims. Folks, if you see your child getting too close to a chained dog, don’t tell everyone else to buzz off. Help pull your child from that evil. Seek professional guidance from a sex-specific therapist. Help your child get out before it is too late. The more children learn to keep this a secret, the more they will be emboldened to act out. Help them get out. Help them find a way to deal with their attraction and aggression toward younger children. Love does not defend evil. It helps pull people from it before they become so debased that they cannot stop.

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Commentary on Dottie Sandusky’s Interview

Yesterday I watched the full 50 minute Dottie Sandusky interview. Dottie maintains her husband Jerry’s full innocence. Many people were outraged by what she had to say. Admittedly, I wasn’t too pleased myself and I think she did a lot to revictimize Jerry’s victims. But instead of having a knee jerk reaction, I want to offer a perspective from someone whose father is a pedophile and who was, ironically, sentenced the same week of Jerry Sandusky’s trial in 2012. Stranger yet, dad was transferred from Camp Hill to Bellefonte the same exact day that Jerry Sandusky was transferred from Bellefonte to Camp Hill.

First of all, I get asked the question a lot. . . “Did anyone in the family know that your dad was sexually abusing little children?” I can assure you that none of us had any idea whatsoever. We all had a very close relationship with dad, yet we had no idea that he was sexually assaulting children. Had any of us known, he would have been reported immediately. I can also assure you firsthand that it is extremely easy for sex offenders to abuse children for years right under the nose of others and get away with it. Dr. Gene Abel estimates that child molesters only have a 3% chance of getting caught for any one instance of abuse. Let’s flip that number. This means that 97% of the time, a perpetrator successfully violates a child without anyone ever knowing about it. I asked Dr. Anna Salter, a top sex crimes expert, about this. She has interviewed and counseled sex offenders for over 20 years. She said, “In my experience, 3% is probably high. They just don’t get caught.”

Second, I want to sate that I firmly believe (1) that Jerry Sandusky is guilty of sex crimes against children and (2) I believe that Dottie is fully convinced in her own mind that Jerry is innocent. In other words, she’s not delusional–she just doesn’t know how pedophiles think and therefore is easily manipulated by her husband. I want to offer some commentary on a few key points of the Dottie Sandusky interview that I believe will be helpful for most people who read this. Dottie’s perspective is not unique. I don’t know an exact number off hand, but there are studies that show a significant number of victims are never believed. Subsequently, the idea of someone actually being a pedophile is quickly dismissed, enabling them to continue to abuse children unhindered. Here are just a few key points in the interview that jumped out at me:

“He would have admitted to this if he had done it.”
Both Dottie and John Ziegler were adamant about this in the interview. In fact, Ziegler said, “If he did this, why no confession? The closest thing I got to a confession from Jerry was, ‘I may have crossed some boundaries.'” This premise is to assume two things–(1)that pedophiles are truthful and (2) that they would admit that what they did was wrong. The foundations of abuse are secrecy, deception (lies), and misdirection (grooming). Assuming that Jerry would all of a sudden feel remorse and be honest about abusing kids is a dangerous assumption. In fact, Dr. Salter recalled this conversation when she was counseling a convicted pedophile: “You don’t get this, Anna, do you?. . .You think that when I’m asked, ‘Did I do it?’ that’s when I lie. But I’ve been lying every day for the past twenty-five years.” (Salter 42) We also know that Jerry admitted to showering with boys, wrestling with them nude, and having soap battles (throwing balls of liquid soap at the kids then rubbing the soap all over their bodies). It may well be that Jerry is a child molester in denial. Drs. Gene Abel and Judith Becker did an extensive five year study on a sub-group of child molesters–people who had sexual fantasies of children but never offended. In a city of 7 million, they finally found only 8 who fit this category. This is what Abel says, “However, when I talked with these men, I found that all of them were actual child molesters. . . These men made up their own private definition of child molestation. Some would say they had never molested a child because they only sexually fondled a child. As fantastic as it may seem, a few even claimed that, although they had vaginal or anal sex with a child, they had never molested the child because they had not used force” (Abel & Harlow, 97). Assuming that Jerry would have confessed or admitted to the crimes if he had actually done it just does not work.

“Jerry viewed him as a son and that’s why he was showering with him. . . he’s not someone Jerry viewed as a stranger.”
Dottie insisted several times that yes, Jerry showered repeatedly with minors but “that’s the generation he grew up in.” I’ve encountered hundreds of men from “Jerry’s generation” in my life. Anyone want to have a stab at how many of them insisted on showering with me? You guessed it! NONE! It’s not normal. Period. I’ve read a few hundred pages of court transcripts from the trial. Here’s part of an interview with “Victim #4,” who was 13-14 at the time of the abuse.
Q–“Can you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury approximately how many times the defendant in either the East Area Locker Room or the Lasch Building shower or the Lasch Building sauna put his penis in your mouth?”
A–“It would have to be 40 times at least”
Q–“Did you want him to do it–”
A–“No.”
Q–“–On any of those occasions?”
A–“No.”1

Dottie’s insistence that Jerry showered with these boys only because he knew them and loved them assumes the “stranger danger” myth–that sexual predators abuse strangers, not people they know. In fact, just the opposite is true. Around 90% or more of victims are known by their perpetrator (Snyder, 2000).

“Our son Matt is a liar. He stole from us. . .sold Jerry’s rings. . .he flat-out lied. Money was a motive”
Professionals in this field will tell you that underprivileged children are often hand selected by perpetrators precisely because they are starved for love and attention and they have a history of not being believed. Put another way, kids from bad homes often lie and get into trouble. When a perpetrator is questioned, a typical response is, “Who are you going to believe? Me or that kid who constantly lies about everything?” It’s a grooming technique that, unfortunately, works really well. Is their son Matt a liar? Did he steal from them? Was he, or is he troubled? I don’t know him, but it’s quite possible. But that doesn’t mean he made up the abuse.

It’s hard to believe that all of these people came forward and fabricated elaborate stories with great detail of the abuse. I’ve read manuscripts. The techniques that Jerry allegedly used are so common to pedophiles that they’re downright predictable. . . blowing on their bare stomachs, giving inappropriate back massages, putting his hand on their thighs and caressing the genitals while driving his car, showering with them, oral sex, etc. The detail that the victims gave under oath could not have been fabricated by someone who is not intimate with the patterns of pedophiles. And what would they have to gain by subjecting themselves to this kind of public shame?

I could write a lot more on Dottie’s interview, but I will stop here. It’s easy to deceive and be deceived. I only write this because my family and I were, for our entire lives, deceived. Fortunately, dad confessed and did not force his victims to stand trial. I hope to raise awareness in people who are approached by children who disclose abuse. The first thing you should do is, despite what your “gut” tells you, believe the child. Report the alleged abuse and allow professional investigators find out who is telling the truth. Never assume that children are lying or just misinterpreted a physical encounter.

And don’t assume that, just because someone waits until they are an adult to disclose abuse, that the abuse didn’t happen. It is more common than not for someone to disclose the abuse for the first time as an adult. Feel free to watch the interview and let me know what your thoughts are.

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