Tag: Child Molestation

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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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Child Sex Trafficking In the Church

Amber Lyon did a great documentary a few years back called Child Sex Trafficking on the Internet–“Selling the Girl Next Door.” Take time to watch it. This is a must watch. She talks firsthand with the Johns who were caught buying underage girls for sex. She also speaks with young girls being trafficked. Underage girls are being sold for sex every day by the thousands on backpage.com. I’ve checked out backpage.com myself and there is no hiding it. It took me less than 30 seconds to find hundreds of young girls for sale.

The internet has accelerated the sex slave industry in more than a few ways. First of all, instant accessibility to thousands of children being sold online has made it too easy for predators to offend. In the documentary, Amber posted a picture of her in her 2 piece when she was 14 along with an ad for sex. Within 4 minutes of posting the ad she began getting bombarded with calls from men wanting sex, knowing she was (though only posing as) underage. Second, social networking has provided unlimited access of public pictures of young children, allowing predators to troll for the children of their choice so that they can feed their fantasy. See my Facebook: Playground for Pedophiles to see how prevalent this is. Finally, the internet provides an “escape,” a place where people can hide dirty little secrets and remain completely anonymous.

In Amber’s documentary, you’ll find what should be common sense to us all–prostitutes don’t enjoy doing what they do! As she interviews hookers at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel in Nevada, it becomes apparent through the tears that it’s a less than desirable “job.” As one prostitute weeps, she recounts her childhood molestation, “Virginity wasn’t an option where I came from. It was taken from me. When you get in the game and someone wants to sleep with you for money, and you’ve already lost your virginity, it’s like, ‘Why not?. . . Why not?’. . . . . Sex is not as sacred as it once was.” Dennis Hof, owner of the brothel, tells Amber why pimps seek young children to be trafficked–“They’re easily manipulated.” I interviewed former porn star Crissy Moran last year and asked her if she believed that the statistics are true that up to 90% of women in the sex industry have been sexually abused as children. Crissy said, “I definitely believe it’s true. The women in this industry are very broken.” Crissy herself had been sexually abused multiple times as a very young child. Living in a Christian home, virginity was idolized. When that was taken from Crissy at a young age, she too thought this of the idea of selling her body for money–“Why not?”

The maddening thing for me is that many of (if not the majority of) these women who were sexually abused as children were abused by trusted church members. This makes church one of the largest sex trafficking vehicles in the country. You may think I’m exaggerating, but everywhere I travel I’m told countless stories from survivors whose virginity was stolen from them at a young, young age. Heck, I don’t even have to travel to hear stories of sex abuse in the church. Several of my friends locally tell me story after story of sex abuse that has happened in their churches. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to make people fearful of churches or paint the idea that Christians are creeps. I’m a minister myself and I believe it’s the faith community that should be stepping up to turn this problem around. But to live in denial is the best way to ensure that the church’s trafficking of children continues. I can’t emphasize enough how prevalent abuse is in the church. And believe me, it’s not just Catholics.

I hope that I can shed a light on this atrocious evil that is being done in secret in the name of God. It’s not funny. It’s not something that happens every once in a while. It’s not something to take lightly. I leave in 2 days to conduct a seminar on abuse at a church in Michigan. I’ve already heard stories of saddening abuse from people who will be there and I will hear several more from people in my audience. It happens everywhere I speak. It is our job as Christians to “have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible” (Ephesians 5:11-14 NIV). Folks, it’s time we get out the spotlights! Tell your church leaders that this problem is real, that it happens all the time, and that we won’t stand for the church being silent on the sex trafficking of our young children.

Be sure to check out Amber’s video:

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I Am Legion, For We Are Many

Every day my news feed is bombarded with stories of pedophiles preying on, and attacking innocent children. When you allow your eyes to be opened, it becomes evident that this is beyond epidemic status. There are an estimated over 40,000,000 survivors of child sex abuse in the US alone. Wrap your mind around that number, if you can. I recently wrote about child molesters hiding in plain site. But there is another dimension I’d like to add to abusers–there are a lot of them. Unfortunately, most child molesters will never get caught. While this is a grim fact, I believe we can turn it around.

We’re reminded of the story when Jesus and his disciples get off the boat in the country of the Gerasenes. There was a demon possessed man who met them “in the tombs.” I have to wonder why evil spirits were lurking in the tombs. My best guess is that graveyards are a place of great pain for living family members. Visiting gravesites is a solemn and reverent occasion. For many people, the grave is a reminder that the person we love and held so dear is no longer with us. Evil exists to disrupt the very places where people go to try and make sense of, and overcome tragedy. Imagine the scene at the Gerasene tombs–anyone who wanted to bury or visit their deceased loved ones couldn’t because this violent man was screaming and shouting obscenities at the gravesite. It was an added insult to the injury of death.

Another thing that’s striking about this story is the power and persistence of evil–“And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him” (Mark 5:3-4 ESV). People who are familiar with abuse know the lengths that perpetrators go to in order to continue abusing. Hiding, secrecy, shame, and manipulation all allow abuse to continue right under our very noses–in our churches, schools, daycares, sports events, and homes. Confronting a child molester and telling them to stop does not work. It has never worked. Evil is persistent. It doesn’t care about you, children, or God.

Night and day this man was back and forth between the tombs and mountain tops, blatantly causing fear and disruption. I have to wonder if the residents of the town were so used to his presence that they learned to ignore his actions. The thing that grips me most is his eerie response when Jesus asks his name: “My name is Legion, for we are many” (Mark 5:9). A Roman legion was a military term and could be up to 6,000 men. I’m not trying to create fear here, but this is the only category that fits for how many child sex abusers are living among us. They are everywhere, in plain view of us. And my experience tells me that we have, for various reasons, chosen to run and hide from them or have ignored that there are legions of them among us.

In his 2001 book Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography On the Internet, Philip Jenkins entered chat rooms of pedophile rings to observe their secret community. He placed filters so that no images could be viewed, since the viewing of child pornography is highly illegal. What he found was astounding and shocking to him. There literally was such a large community of pedophiles sharing stories and pictures of the hundreds of victims they each were abusing, that Jenkins’ conclusion is that child pornography is not police-able. Keep in mind, this was 2001 when the internet wasn’t even close to being as accessible as it is today. As one pedophile in a chat room put it:
“When you think about it, just how many lola lovers
do we have here, maybe? 10,000 15,000 visit this
board, what about the other boards, and what of the
others that can not find this and the other boards? I
have seen some of the log files from some of the
net’s search engines, and the top search is childporn
and all the Lola lovers that don’t have a computer,
there must be millions out there some where ;)”

I think of Elijah Fernandez who, just last month, raped his girlfriend’s 4 month old baby then punched her in the head twice, rendering the child brain dead. The baby died shortly after at the hospital in Albuquerque. Here is a statement from the police department: “And I literally cannot explain to you what happened because it’s so graphic, you would not be able to air the charges,” said Simon Drobik of the Albuquerque Police Department. “Calls like this always effect officers and the unsung heroes of this department are the Crimes Against Children Unit. They see this all the time, day in, day out.”

They see this all the time, day in, day out. Talk to any police department. Give your local department a call. Ask them if this statement is accurate. I assure you that you’ll find this same response whether you live in a village or metropolis, in a satanic gathering or orthodox church. Do a search on “4 month old baby raped.” This story is not unique. It. Happens. All. The. Time. It’s time that we’re honest with ourselves and admit that this beyond the status of being a problem. We’ve got to stand up and face evil. Let’s call evil what it is. I remember when President Bush was mocked for his famous term “evil doers.” Are we going to mock people who call evil what it is? Is it funny? As I type this, I’m not laughing.

The interesting thing about the story of this demon possessed man is that Jesus didn’t allow evil to go on. He confronted the legion and cast them out. They were no longer welcome to terrorize the village, enter the tombs, or scream on the mountain top. Jesus didn’t say, “Karma will eventually get them.” No! He stood up against evil and essentially said, “You’re not welcome here any longer.” This is called justice. Can you imagine if our churches and communities unified and said, “This evil is no longer welcome in our town”? I believe we can, and we should be doing it. Let’s all join efforts to free the innocent of the effects of this evil.

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Would You Pull Your Kid From School If This Happened?

lomaglio_matthewPublic school is supposed to be a place where children feel safe. There has been a lot of focus on school shootings lately and, while they are tragic crimes, there is a much bigger epidemic than gun crime in our schools. Take a look at the news. Every day at least a few schools are in the news for sexual assault against young children. . . literally. Does anyone else get as mad as I do that this is happening on a daily basis? Does anyone else feel that it’s long past time that we become vocal, march into our schools, and demand they tell us what steps they are doing to protect our children? If you’re not at that point, you should be. It’s well known that the vast majority of sex crimes against children never get reported. There are an estimated over 40 million survivors of child sex abuse in the US alone. That’s more than the entire state of California, our most populated sate. Or, we could pack NYC at its 8.337 million capacity almost 5 times. Since that’s the case, how much sexual abuse is actually going on in the schools? Brian Palmer may be spot on when he says, “Probably millions.”

Let me add another depressing fact. The majority of teachers will never report suspected abuse, and they are even less likely to report it if a colleague is suspected of abusing a child. To further complicate the issue, several states have unclear laws describing who mandated reporters are and what the process should be for reporting suspected abuse. Here is a clip of Rep. George Miller, CA discussing his surprise at this:

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No offense to Mr. Miller, but these are the kind of uninformed people running our country. It is their job to stay informed and to do something to make reporting easier. And let me make something clear to my readers: you don’t have to be a mandated reporter to report a crime! Anyone can (and should) report suspected crimes against children. Which leads me to my next story.

A New York prosecutor who recently put a gym teacher in prison for sexually assaulting an 8 year old boy “was stunned by the lack of cooperation he got from the Matthew LoMaglio’s colleagues, 22 of whom wrote letters to the judge supporting him.”1 It gets worse. The assistant principal, Susan Hasenaur-Curtis, had the boy and his mother in her office as the mother explained the fear her son was living in. Susan Hasenaur-Curtis did not report it to Children Protective Services as is required, because she felt the allegations were not credible. This happened in 2006. It wasn’t until 2012 that this boy had the courage to write a letter to his older brother describing the sexual assault. Though he wrote the letter, he kept it hidden in his bedroom where his younger brother found it and gave it to their parents. LoMaglio, like many pedophiles do, maintained his innocence throughout the trial until he finally confessed to a counselor upon sentencing. By forcing it to go to trial, this boy (now 15) had to testify in court while LoMaglio had his posse of 22 supporters on his side. At one point in the investigation, the prosecutor found out there was talk among teachers at Rochester School 19 that went like this: “Are you for the teacher or the student?”

According to statistics, it is very unlikely that this boy was LoMaglio’s only victim. Not by a long shot. I tell you this story because it happens all the time. Ask any prosecutor of sex crimes against children. They will all tell you similar stories of support for the perpetrator, not the victim. My question is, “Would you pull your kid from school if this happened?” My answer is an unequivocal YES! Not only would I pull my kid from a slimy school like Rochester 19, I’d pay for a lengthy article in my local newspaper to let the world know that they are protecting the name of the abusers, not the victims. I would publish the 22 teachers’ names in the newspaper who wrote letters of support for the man who robbed the innocence of an 8 year old. I would demand that they resign. I would let everyone know that assistant principal Susan Hasenaur-Curtis has 0 interest in protecting your kids. She had an opportunity to report a crime and chose not to do it, even though the law requires it. I would ask for her resignation, demand an apology, and ask that she have nothing to do with any organization where children need to be protected.

This story is personal to me. I was asked by my dad to write a letter of support in order for him to get a reduced sentence. I could not. I would not. To do so would have been the hugest slap in the face to every child whose innocence was taken away by that man. I love my dad and still communicate with him, but support he will not find.

I’m a firm believer that silence is another way to support the abusers. By the public remaining silent and not demanding answers from these schools, we are allowing these crud ball teachers, principals, and super intendants to keep doing this without consequence. If you have children in school, go there this week and ask to have a printed copy of their child protection plan. If they give you a hard time or tell you that you can’t see it, go to your local news and let the public know about it. My wife was a teacher in the public schools and I know that teachers are not well informed about policies and reporting procedures. Pennsylvania is getting better because of the recent passing of Act 126. But we are light years ahead of other states in this area, and that’s not saying much. Find out what policies and plans are in place at you kids’ schools. Demand answers and don’t tolerate schools who protect the guilty.

“I broke the fangs of the unrighteous and made him drop his prey from his teeth” (Job 29:17 ESV)

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Protecting Your Kids: Preventive Tools For Parents

There’s an irony that comes with technology, convenience, and efficiency–the more “advanced” we become, the more fragmented our knowledge is and the more socially isolated we become. Unfortunately, isolation of children makes them vulnerable targets for abusers, and it certainly doesn’t make for healthy relationships within the family structure. Here’s a great video to illustrate how social media actually makes us more isolated:

A professor once told our counseling class that being BUSY is an acronym for Being Under Satan’s Yoke. It would take me a few years to find out just how prophetic that statement was. Ecclesiastes 5:3 says, “For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words” (yes, it does say business, not busyness. . . but much business creates much busyness!). In a time-crunched environment, I’ve found that busyness is something that keeps many of us educators from finding the time to network our resources for protecting children. I get asked a lot, “What are some resources that you can point us to?” To be honest, I find myself asking that same question. The frustration at the lack of a clear pooling of resources has actually been motivating. I’d like to work on a project to create a network of resources–from prevention of abuse to what constitutes good organizational policies, to what steps to take for finding and funding victim counseling, etc. The good news is that there are a lot of resources out there. The bad news is that, for now, there’s no good networking of these resources that I’m aware of. I’d like to change that.

As for now, I don’t have such a tool developed. Therefore, when I come across valuable resources, I will highlight them via my blog. Today I’d like to highlight the work of Lauren Book. She is a survivor of child sex abuse and I just finished her memoir on abuse titled It’s OK to Tell: A Story of Hope And Recovery. The book is excellent and I highly recommend it. Lauren took the worst imaginable experience and has turned it into an opportunity to arm children with the tools to prevent abuse from happening to them. She is the founder of Lauren’s Kids. Their mission is “To prevent sexual abuse through awareness and education, and to help survivors heal with guidance and support.” She and her dad have successfully lobbied for funding to keep counseling centers for the sexually abused opened in Florida.

I’m also impressed with the curriculum that Lauren has gotten into the schools in Florida. I checked out her Safer, Smarter Kids for parents and was really impressed. I highly, highly recommend spending some time on Lauren’s site, viewing the curriculum, and going over it with your children. When I speak places, a question that always arises comes from parents of young children. They want to know to know what they should be teaching their kids and how they can arm their kids with knowledge to prevent abuse. Fortunately, now I can point them to another great resource!

If any of you know of other great resources out there, please let me know via the comments section.