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Being in the same room as children does not prevent abuse: Part 2

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In a previous post, I wrote about the myth that being in the same room as children will keep the children safe from abuse. As I read posts by survivors, there is an eerie trend where they discuss being abused while other adults are in the same room. This happens far more often than we’d like to think.

Yet when I speak places, people bank on the false notion that “keeping an eye out” will keep children from being abused. Most of us feel secure in our ability to watch for signs of abuse, but the reality is that our brain is hardwired to not see things that we don’t expect to see. Inattentional blindness, or perception blindness, occurs when we fail to see things that are unexpected. Change blindness is when we fail to see changes in visual stimulus. There can be blatant changes that take place right in front of us but, again, because we do not expect to see certain changes, our brain fails to notice.

Narrative is an important tool in the belt of both magicians and abusers. Narrative is just one more layer of controlling the spotlight of attention. But don’t take my word for it. See for yourself. . .

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Not So Fast: Being in the same room as children doesn’t prevent abuse and here’s why

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Not all abuse happens in isolation. In fact, believe it or not, much of it happens directly in front of us. Consider the most recent public account with Dr. Larry Nassar. He abused many of his hundreds of victims as he casually carried on conversations with their parents. Rachael Denhollander, the first victim of Nassar’s to publicly come forward by name, recently described what was going on in that doctor’s office:

She reviewed Nassar’s training videos and PowerPoints with MSU investigators, pointing out where “Nassar would have the same hand placement during her appointments with him so [her mother] would have been able to see the external massage but … [not] that Nassar’s other hand was under the towel penetrating her vagina and/or rectum,” the report says.(1).

What Nassar did was not unique or uncommon to abusers. I’ve personally spoken with hundreds of survivors who have told me that they were abused in the same room as adults, and often while their abuser was speaking with some of those adults. Most of us falsely believe that this is impossible, or that somehow these adults are oblivious, ignorant, or negligent. Experts in the field of abuse speak about the abuse of children in front of others in terms of “control and power.” But that’s only a fraction of the equation and it tells us nothing about how they actually successfully pull it off time after time.

Getting away with abuse in plain sight has to do with how our human brains are wired and how abusers, like magicians, learn to hack them. According to neuroscientists Dr. Susana Martinez-Conde and Dr. Stephen Macknik, our “reality” is based on what we expect to see, hear, feel, and think. Whether it is intuitive or learned by some other method, abusers know this and they are masters at shaping–even creating–our reality through multiple layers of their specific techniques.

I had the honor of sitting at the feet of Drs. Macknik and Marinez-Conde while they presented demonstrations of how our brains miss seeing actions that happen directly in front of our eyes. For the first time, we will be peering deeper into the human brain to understand better how and why abusers develop these sophisticated techniques.

Too often organizations are confident they are doing a good job of preventing abuse by increasing awareness, conducting background checks, and by implementing the “two deep” rule, where at least two adults are present with children at all times. The problem with this is that it doesn’t matter whether there are two or two hundred adults in the same room as children. Abusers know what to look for in us and they routinely abuse children and other adults in plain sight.

The following video is part 1 of a 2 part series in understanding what it is about us that makes us blind to abusive actions that are happening within inches of us. Part 2 will be released very soon.

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5 Things church leaders should do to treat the wounds of survivors

In my last post, I gave 5 reasons why church leaders don’t treat the wounds of abuse survivors. It’s one thing to continually point to the deficiencies of the church (which could go on forever!), but I like to instead offer tangible solutions. Really, God offers the solutions. We just have to put them into practice. That’s it. Jesus offered very real solutions to some very real problems. There are two things that will cause harm to people who turn to the church for help–inactivity and the wrong activity. I used a hospital metaphor the last time, so I’ll use it again here. We should be aware that there are some hospitals that are in decline. They will continue to fail until someone takes the lead and begins offering tangible solutions and actually follows through! The church is no different. We need to talk solutions and actually find people willing to lead the charge and make changes. If the church is really going to be a hospital for sinners and if we are serious about healing, then we must have a clear plan. Here are my top 5, in no particular order of significance.

#1 Leaders need to know that triage is essential for people who are hurting
Every emergency room has triage nurses. They are trained to assess and assign, and are the first point of contact when a patient comes in. They assess the degree of urgency the minute a patient comes through the door. Every single patient’s needs are assessed and from there they are assigned to the proper specialist at the proper time. Certain patients are given priority over others due to the severity of their illness or injury. There is good reason for this. I’ve been in full time ministry for nearly a decade and have rarely seen this done in the church. In fact, rather than assess and assign, we most often assume and avoid. We assume everyone either is in their happy place or they should be and we avoid the people with the deepest wounds. Even if desperate people are lucky enough to find someone who will listen to them, it could be days until a scheduled appointment takes place. This is unacceptable for people in crisis.

Jesus and his disciples assessed and assigned constantly. Think about it. When they fed 5,000, they didn’t just happen to find a group of thousands hanging out one day. No, the reason they crossed the Sea of Galilee was because so many people came and went that the disciples couldn’t even find time to eat (Mark 6:31). They crossed the sea to escape people and find a desolate place to rest and recover. According to Matthew, this was right after John the Baptist was murdered and Jesus wanted to get away. But the crowds figured out where they were going and beat them there by foot (Mark 6:33). Exhausted from sleep deprivation and hunger, they saw a crowd of thousands waiting on the shore. Jesus “had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” He taught them and fed them that same day. When Peter and John went to the Temple after Jesus ascended, a beggar who was lame from birth cried out to them. Peter stopped, looked intently at the man, and said three words that changed his life forever: “Look at us” (Acts 3:4). Probably for the first time ever, someone was intentional about making eye contact with this man. Many of you know the significance of what Peter did for this man by uttering these three words in that moment. They didn’t give him money that day. But they gave him something far more significant. Peter and John let him know that they saw him. And they healed him. Not everyone received this level of care, and not everyone was treated immediately. Jesus taught us how to triage–to assess and assign.

#2 Leaders need to use discernment
The seeker friendly movement, in my opinion, has removed discernment from church leaders who once upon a time had common sense. Suppose a woman comes into the hospital with severe bruises. An intoxicated man is beside her yelling and cursing at her. Trained staff know how to read signs and act accordingly and immediately. The woman is immediately shielded from the man, police are called, and she is prioritized for treatment. Every hospital has procedures for how to protect people from abusers. Rethink this scenario. The battered woman comes in and the nurse begins asking her, “What did you do to provoke him?” “You really need to forgive him if you’re going to find healing for these wounds.” The man says he is sorry, that it was all a big misunderstanding. He is now prioritized, brought back to a room, and nurses begin looking at the cuts on his knuckles. They hug him and say how wonderful it is that he apologized to his wife out in the waiting room. He displayed what the model patient should look like. He took the “high road” when his wife was yelling and screaming about how he’s to blame.

This sounds ridiculous but I’ve seen this scenario play out over and over and over again. All the hundreds of biblical references to protecting the oppressed, caring for the needy, and ferreting out the wolves in sheep’s clothing get tossed aside in the name of cheap grace. We proudly proclaim, “All are welcome. . . come as you are.” That’s fine, but where is the discernment in this process? Not all sins are equal. Nor is the treatment of people who commit the sins. Sometimes Jesus flipped tables and made whips of cords. Other times he talks about it being better for people to have massive rock tied around their necks and to be drowned in the depth of the sea compared to what’s in store for them. Still other times, he is defensive and compassionate to prostitutes who scrub his feet with tears and hair, women who are caught in the act of adultery, and Samaritans who have had five failed marriages. Why? Because Jesus showed us how to use discernment and know the difference between oppressors and the oppressed.

#3 Leaders need to sit on the ash heap with people
Spending time with friends in crisis is not something that can be outsourced. I don’t know of a church leader who has not outsourced a church member to a professional therapist. While it’s wise to know our limitations and expertise, this needs to stop being the catch all response for every person in crisis. Not every person needs or is willing to see a therapist. Many people have been badly burned by therapists and are coming to church leaders because they need someone who will just simply listen. Let the words resonate from Job. He literally lost everything. . . everything. Then he gets painful boils all over his body. Listen closely: “And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes” (Job 2:8). While he’s sitting on the ashen remains of what once was his successful life, his wife told him to curse God and die. When Job’s friends showed up, they didn’t recognize him. “And they sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw his suffering was very great” (Job 2:13).

His friends were great companions until they opened their mouths. When Job was on his ash heap, he didn’t need advice. He needed to feel the presence of his friends. He needed silence. We cannot sprinkle some encouraging Bible verses on people who are on their ash heap and expect them to feel better. When people are in the middle of their ash heap, they don’t need Bible verses. They need comforters. They need someone who has the wisdom and willingness to drop everything, drive over to their house, and check on them. And leaders need to be sensitive and accountable. They need to know when showing up alone is a bad idea.

#4 Leaders need to know when to prescribe home time
Jesus often sent people away to be with their families. Many people were called to follow him and others were sent home instead. To the woman caught in adultery, he said, “Go in peace.” To the demoniac named Legion who begged to follow Jesus, he said, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you” (Mk. 5:19). He often prescribed time at home for hurting people. Home is where some people need to be for healing to take place. Jesus spent lots of time in people’s homes. He was teaching in a home when the paralytic was lowered through the roof. He prayed in people’s homes, ate in them, taught in them, worshiped in them, and often just sent people back home even when they wanted to follow him. I feel like we’re so focused on “getting people to church” that we’ve lost sight of the ones who need to be with their family in their own home. Time and time again I hear survivors explain how they are shamed for not going to church. Many were sexually abused in the church buildings. For some, setting foot inside triggers them in all kinds of ways. Others have been spiritually abused. To shame them into “coming to church” or to speak of their lack of faith or lack of commitment when they are not able to come into a church building stands counter to Jesus’ example he gave us.

#5 Leaders should seek to improve the world, not just the church
Church leaders can easily experience mission drift. Mission drift is when we no longer know what our mission (purpose) is as a church. It’s always troubled me when I see churches pump millions of dollars into a building that gets used a few hours a week, but don’t have much time or money for helping the needy. Some church leaders are obsessed with improving the local church to the point that they fail to see that it’s the world that needs improving. The church should lead the way in changing the way the wounded are cared for. I’ve asked local churches what they are doing to help victims of abuse in our community. The typical response is, “Don’t you know that we have different child services? That’s what they’re here for.” I’m working closely with one of those services and was told that I’m the only minister in town who has volunteered to work with them. We have a great relationship and we envision together what it will take to make the world a brighter place. That’s a conversation that I don’t want to have with just my church. We need to network and join hands with others who have a heart for caring and nurturing others who are hurting.

I’m calling other church leaders to move into action. It’s time we start offering success stories for the oppressed. They need to know that church is a safe community where people care for their neighbors.

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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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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.