#ChurchToo Archives - JimmyHinton.org

August 10, 2018August 10, 2018

Take it from someone who reported abuse in the church: Get outside help

Since #MeToo and #ChurchToo have taken off, more and more abusers are being outed. Many of those abusers are in positions of power at their churches. The most recent story is with Willow Creek Community Church. Just this week Steve Carter resigned, followed by lead pastor Heather Larson and the entire board of elders. To say that the elders handled this whole process poorly from the beginning is an understatement. They radically defended founder Bill Hybels from the first allegations, which did unspeakable damage to victims everywhere. Frankly, abuse victims are fed up with churches that continually miss opportunities to side with the oppressed and instead choose to publicly defend and support the oppressors. Survivors, both Christian and not, were watching and waiting, hoping Willow Creek would get this right. Willow Creek failed and millions of survivors felt the sting all over again. Elder Missy Rasmussen issued an overdue apology this week to the brave survivors who came forward, stating in part, “We have no reason to not believe any of you. We are sorry that our initial statements were so insensitive, defensive and reflexively protective of Bill.”

This post is not meant to critique the church’s initial and subsequent poor responses that led to all these resignations. There are a number of reasons why well-intended churches keep getting their response wrong time and time again. Nor is this post meant to gloat and say, “we told you so” when we see an entire leadership crumble like it did this week. There are no wins when churches get it wrong. When churches fail, survivors are hurt. Victims who are currently being abused are invalidated, pushed further into the margins, and are almost guaranteed not to speak up for fear of being shamed or not believed. And, tragically, genuine defenders of justice like Steve Carter and Heather Larson step down when they are exactly the ones who survivors need to stay. I really just want to humbly share my experience seven years ago as a new minister who had to report an unlikely abuser in my church–my own father. I did’t get everything right, but my decision to put my pride aside and listen to the voice of the victim who sat across from my desk was vital for her healing and for the protection of many more victims.

It was a sunny July Friday in 2011 and I was only 2 short years into my role as a full time minister when I got the call asking if I could meet with a young woman whom I deeply respect and admire. She handed me a piece of paper and broke down in tears. I was holding in my hands a piece of paper that described her abuse at the hands of my father from when she was just a young child. That single piece of paper changed the course of my life forever. I have always had a very close relationship with my father. In fact, he preached at the same church I’m at for 27 years. I went into ministry because of his example. We’ve officiated weddings together, talked for hours at a time about the church, shared ideas about reaching out to our community, and I’ve always had the utmost respect for him. Make no mistake, based on who I thought my father was up the point of that Friday meeting, her allegations came as a shocking and devastating blow. Never had I suspected my own flesh and blood–my childhood hero–of molesting very young children.

Yet there I sat with a sobbing victim and a piece of paper with clear allegations of abuse. My entire life flashed in an instant. He was the man who held my mother’s hand when I was born. He was the man who taught me about God and life. He was the one who encouraged me when everyone else told me I was stupid for going into ministry. He taught me how to drive and brought me to take my exam. Twice. He was the one who gently informed me when one of my best friends was in an accident and passed away. Everything I knew about the man was good and I could have easily chosen to believe that she was mistaken and he was innocent. But I couldn’t ignore her cries and she had no reason to make up false allegations of that magnitude. I remember attempting to gain my composure. I took a deep breath, looked her in the eye, and said, “I believe you. I have no idea what any of this is going to look like. But one thing I know for sure–it stops now.”

There was nothing inside of me that wanted to believe, though. Believing meant that I had to report my own father to the police. It meant that there was a strong possibility that there would be more victims in my church. It meant that the innocent, happy days of ministering to a joyful, innocent church were short lived. It meant that there would be a possibility of my dad spending the rest of his life in prison. The questions without answers were endless. Hope seemed like an ambiguous fairy tale. The fear of what awaited my family and my church was crippling. I was grasping to know who my real father was. I was angry at my God for not protecting his little children. I had every emotion known to man hit me in a span of about ten minutes. It’s impossible to put into adequate words what was going on inside my mind and body at that moment.

An hour after receiving the worst news of my life, I was at a wedding rehearsal for one of our church members whose wedding I was officiating. I felt like I’d been swept along by a tsunami only to emerge into a parallel universe where people were celebrating the happiest day of their life. The next day I struggled through the wedding, which my dad attended. The following day I preached to my congregation, which my dad also attended. The next day my mom and I were in the police station reporting my father. It probably sounds strange, but at the time I felt like a Judas. As dumb as it sounds now, there was a part of me then that felt like somehow I was ruining his life. I wanted so badly to wake up and find out that it had all been a dream. But each new morning brought with it the reality that this was in fact more of a living nightmare.

My religious tribe does not have a governing body like most denominations. Each church is autonomous in its leadership structure. Because my congregation was small, we had no elders or deacons at the time so I really didn’t have any other leaders to share this burden with. I was the only person in an official leadership position. My wife and I had endless conversations about who we would tell and when. We found out quickly that he’d confessed to many victims and the worst was yet to come. My dad, not knowing I was the one who turned him in, told me the names of his victims a few days before his arrest. Several of them were young children from my church. In a feeble attempt to step into the shoes of the families, my wife and I decided that, if it was our child, we would want to hear about it from our minister before the police knocked on our door. I happened to be their minister and the abuser happened to be my own father. My wife and I made the short drive to their house and, through tears and audible gasps for breath, I told them that their children had been molested by my father.

It was a few weeks later until he was arrested. Every agonizing day that passed meant we were one day closer to announcing to my church that their former minister, my father, was being arrested for molesting dozens of children. It was a Friday when the detective called me. The call was short, to the point, and she graciously gave me the call as a courtesy: “Jimmy, we have your dad in custody. It will be in the papers Monday and the story won’t be nice. Now is the time to tell your church. Protect your family the best you can. I’m so sorry.”

My wife and I prepared a written statement that I would read to my church that Sunday. Though I did not save that letter, I remember the content fairly well.

Dear brothers and sisters,
This weekend my dad was arrested for molesting dozens of children. Initially a victim disclosed to me and my mom and I made a police report. He has since confessed to molesting dozens of children over a span of several decades. We are working with police to ensure we are certain who all of his victims are. I know what every parent is asking right now and I beg you all not to speculate or gossip for the sake of his victims. If you have any questions, please talk to me or the police directly. There is no question that is off limits to ask me at this point. I may not have answers to those questions immediately, but I will do my very best to find out. This has been a devastating blow to this church and my family. I’m so sorry for the pain that my father has caused us all. I promise to continue to minister to this congregation as long as I am able, but I ask for your patience and grace as we wade through this. I also ask that we all work together as a family to bring healing to those who’ve been injured and to figure this out so that it never happens again.

Were it not for my incredible wife, my mom, family members, and a few close friends who offered advice and support from the very beginning, things would have turned out differently. I spent countless hours weeping, praying, and seeking advice from the people closest to me. I never shut people out or acted as if I could turn a few Bible pages to get a clear answer for how to handle these allegations. Church leaders, hear me loud and clear–when allegations of abuse arise seek outside help. Seek the wisdom from people who have it. Don’t rally around the accused because you are friends with him or her and you think you know them well. Don’t minimize the allegations even if they don’t sound very serious at the time. Unlike seven years ago, there are invaluable resources out there today. There is no excuse not to seek outside help from people who specialize in cases of sexual or physical abuse. There are resources out there. Find them and don’t be stingy with your time or financial resources when it comes to getting help.

There are several of us who offer specialized consulting. Sometimes you may have to seek an independent investigation. Never investigate abuse internally. Know mandated reporting laws. Be prepared to go against the rest of your leadership group. They may decide not to report a case of abuse or to tell the church about an abusive person. If you’re mandated to report, report it anyway regardless of whether the rest of the leaders want you to or not. If it means you will lose your position or job, be prepared to lose it. I once responded to a minister who did not want to report his “very best friend” for fear of losing his job: “Jesus tells us to lay down our lives for one another. You’re not even willing to lay down your job.” Until we have people who stand up and do the right thing no matter the personal cost, the cesspool of abuse will continue in the church and the devil will win. Take it from someone who’s been there–reporting someone you love is terrible. There is no glamour in protecting the innocent from wolves. It’s not fun and it’s certainly not easy.

But when we do, we honor Christ and his church. We give a voice back to those whose voices have been stolen. When we stand up for the innocent and vulnerable we demonstrate that abuse won’t be tolerated and we pave the way for healing. We now have elders at my congregation who take abuse very seriously. We’ve made radical changes, have worked to train our members, and have a solid protection policy in place.

I close with this story that is one of the most powerful moments since this all happened, and one that makes all of my efforts to speak up worth it. I conducted a local training on abuse a few years ago and the father of some of my dad’s young victims came as a speaker. I showed up early to get things set up and the father arrived with his children whom I’d never met–a group of young sisters who were all victims of my father. He introduced me to them this way: “Kids, this is Jimmy. . . . (long pause and deep breath). . . Hinton. This is the man who stopped his dad from doing all those horrible things to you.”

They all looked up at me, came over, and hugged me. The oldest daughter, through tears, looked up at me and said, “Thank you.” Those two words are words that I cherish and will hold close to my heart until I die. Fellow leaders, we won’t get everything right. None of us ever do. But we need to be humble and honest with ourselves and others. When we don’t know the best avenue for handling allegations of abuse, we better pick up the phone and call someone who does.

July 11, 2018August 9, 2018

#ChurchToo and why leaders respond so poorly

Over the last few weeks, I found myself struggling to keep up with the ever growing inbox of messages asking for help. They weren’t from church leaders but from church members. In each of the messages, a few members found out that a registered sex offender was attending the congregation. Some of the offenders had been there well over a decade. Some were loitering near children’s areas and others were actually volunteering with minor children. In every case the church leaders were not only aware, but they chose not to inform the congregation. I looked up records for each of the offenders. Some were bad enough, but some were really bad. I’ve personally seen this scenario hundreds of times now. Churches almost never respond to abuse well. When they do respond well, we should celebrate and let them know that they’ve done a good job. In about 98% of the cases I’ve seen, however, the churches failed to inform their congregations when a sex offender is attending.

I was lamenting this to a good friend of mine and I told him that the leaders are consistently making decisions that are the complete opposite of how they should actually be responding. They care for, protect, and nurture the wolf while the sheep are left out to fend for themselves unaware that a wolf is in the sheep pen eyeing the ewe lambs. I shared with my friend that I was driving down our one way main street in town the other day and a car was coming towards me in the wrong direction. We all slowed down but she kept barreling down the street even though a line of cars was facing her. She finally stopped just feet from my car but her face showed that she was visibly agitated with me. For a second I was pretty sure she was going to start ramming my car! She finally pulled off to the side to let us past but she made it known that we were the jerks for not letting her continue through in the wrong direction.

I was describing my analogy to him. “It’s like the leaders consistently drive the wrong way down Decision Avenue and get agitated when anyone confronts them. And all we’re trying to do is turn them around and minimize casualties,” I said. My friend reminded me of the scene in the 1987 John Candy and Steve Martin movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. The clip is a silly way to demonstrate a very real problem–many leaders are making uninformed decisions and doing it with complete confidence. They routinely shut down people who try to warn them that they are making dangerous decisions.

My purpose is not to poke fun at these leaders, but to plead with them to have the humility to listen to people who are warning them that their decisions are dangerous to the flock. When I reported my father I surrounded myself with wise counsel. My wife and I selected church members whom we felt had common sense, wisdom, and could help us make informed decisions. When we shut out the voices of our congregations we no longer have leadership–we have dictatorship.

Here is a sampling of the most common statements concerned members hear from the leaders regarding registered sex offenders in their churches:

He (or she) did his time
We don’t want to bring shame on this brother
It’s not fair to publicize his past sins
He poses no threat to children
We’re keeping an eye on him
He’s not allowed near the children’s wing
We met with him and he’s very remorseful and repentant
We need to encourage him and his family and shining a light on his past sins will greatly discourage him
You’re not to tell anyone about this because you’ll be undermining the leadership

Perhaps I should use another analogy to describe why it’s unwise to fail to inform the congregation. Suppose a person comes into a congregation who was recently released from prison. She tells them that she spent some time in prison but it mostly was a “misunderstanding.” She says they are free to look up her record if they want to know more (knowing full well that they won’t take the time to do so) and she assures them that she has learned from her dumb mistakes. Two years later, and with their blessing, she volunteers to drive the church van on an overnight annual camping trip. The parents load their kids up in the church van, snap some pictures, and wish their kids farewell.

The reality is that this volunteer had 5 D.U.I. charges and the final one that landed her in prison was a vehicular homicide charge for killing a teenage girl when she crossed into oncoming traffic. My questions–Whose responsibility was it to actually look up her records before allowing her to drive a van full of kids? Why did the elders take her word that she was in prison for a “misunderstanding” and that she has learned her lesson? Did the parents have the right to know of this woman’s past criminal charges before packing their kids into a van with her behind the wheel? And would it have been unfair to the woman for the elders to inform the parents of her charges or is it more unfair to the parents of the kids for their failure to inform?

Nobody in their right mind would allow someone convicted of 5 D.U.I.s and vehicular homicide to volunteer to drive a van full of kids, no matter how long ago the crimes happened. Yet, surprisingly, with child rapists they consistently and intentionally hide their charges from the congregation. Why?

I offer my opinion for why this is so:

Their theology is very bad. There are loads of passages that speak to warning people of dangerous/violent people. Consider Ezekiel 33:6: “But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any one of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand.” They also believe that the oppressors, not the oppressed, are the ones who need time and attention. This is the polar opposite of what the Bible teaches.
They lack humility. Church members are routinely warned not to “usurp authority,” are not believed, are told that they are being overreactive, and told that it is at the leaders’ discretion as to whether the church is informed or not about an abuser’s record(in other words, church members are “not allowed” to inform other church members). In many cases, members are dismissed from their churches and told not to come back. This is exactly the abusive kind of leadership God warns about in Ezekiel 34.
They are not aware of their blind spots. All of us have blind spots. We have to be aware that abusers are incredibly skilled at finding them, exploiting them, and residing within those blind spots. Abusers prey on the naivety and busyness of church leaders. Never take an abuser’s word that there were “misunderstandings.” Records are public for a reason. Always look them up. Know who you are dealing with, what their crimes were, and what their restrictions are as part of their probation or parole.
Facades are more powerful than reality itself. When I hear leaders say that an abuser no longer poses a threat, I ask them whose professional assessment that is and if they are willing to put it into writing. Abusers know that putting up a clean, pure facade is powerfully effective in winning the hearts of whomever is standing in front of them. Humans have a bad habit of resisting or ignoring facts when someone is likable.
They believe warning a church is unfair. They not only believe it is unfair to the abuser, but they wrongly believe that warning a church will upset the church or create unnecessary drama. The reality is that parents will appreciate being warned that a serial pedophile, rapist, or violent person is in their midst. They will appreciate it more if the leaders are proactive in developing a plan to protect the vulnerable and innocent from that person. My advice–enlist the help of survivors to come up with a plan that both protects the flock and ministers to other survivors within the church.

One thing I would caution–sometimes it is the church who protects abusers. I highly recommend reading the following article: Us Too: Why the Problem of Church Abuse is Much Deeper than Church Leadership.

What would you add to the above list?

June 8, 2018

#MeToo, #ChurchToo have sparked huge changes

Next month will mark seven years since I first heard from a victim that she had been sexually abused by my father. I was just barely two years in to my full time role at the church and that fateful day–July 29th, 2011, changed my family forever. Rather than defend my dad or come up with a myriad of excuses for how his victim sitting across from me could have been mistaken, I instinctively told her, “I believe you.” Little did I know how rare those words are when survivors get the courage to tell. It’s hard to believe that just seven years ago, few people were talking about sexual abuse, especially in the church.

I know that few were talking about it because I searched and searched for resources back then to help me navigate my family and church through the aftermath of my dad’s abuse. There was virtually nothing written at the time. There were almost no online support groups. There were only a small hand full of blogs. Jerry Sandusky’s trial had not taken place yet, the public hadn’t heard anything negative about Larry Nassar, Jared Fogle, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, or Bill Cosby, and the Catholic church was living in quiet streams after the 2001 investigation by the Boston Globe had run its course.

Fast forward seven years and the #MeToo, #ChurchToo movements are sweeping the globe. We are not quite half way through 2018 and already we’ve seen Larry Nassar’s public sentencing, Andy Savage resigned from Highpoint, Paige Patterson fired by Southwestern Baptist Seminary, Bill Hybles and Willow Creek being investigated because of alleged sexual misconduct, Jordan Baird, former youth leader of a megachurch in Virginia, sentenced for indecent liberties with a minor by a custodian, megachurch (Highlands Church) founder Les Hughey admitted to having “consensual” sex with multiple women, including a minor, when he was a youth pastor. And all 34 Chilean bishops resigned in May because of a sex abuse scandal there. Pennsylvania is releasing an 884 page grand jury investigation into 6 dioceses this month. This investigation was sparked after the Altoona-Johnstown diocese, just a few miles north of me, was investigated and a damning grand jury report was released of a massive cover up of sexual abuse of minors. The list goes on.

The point is that survivors are coming forward in spite of the push back, and abusers and their protectors are being exposed. Survivors are fed up with being silenced and they are being empowered by other brave survivors who share their stories. It certainly helps that we have some incredible investigators across the nation who are validating survivors and working hard to seek justice.

But is the exposure of abusers enough to bring about meaningful and lasting change? I would argue that, while it’s a huge step in the right direction, there is more that we can do. Fortunately, survivors of abuse have gotten the attention of lawmakers. In a recent article by Hogan Injury, they note that “The movement has prompted the state of California to consider passing a bill that bans secret sexual harassment settlements. According to Sen. Connie M. Leyva (D-Chino), the senator who plans to introduce the bill, these secret settlements puts the public in jeopardy, especially potential future victims. These secret settlements also enable perpetrators to escape justice just because they have the money to pay for the cost of settlements.” Other states are passing laws that allow victims of abuse who fall outside of the statute of limitations to open new investigations. Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, has made it clear that he is listening to survivors of abuse and will make laws that improve the way our state handles allegations of abuse.

Hogan Injury goes on to say that “companies should also train their employees, supervisors, and managers about sexual harassment. For employee training, you aim to educate your employees what sexual harassment is. Take the opportunity to review your complaint procedure, and encourage your employees to use it to report sexual harassment.” I encourage churches and other organizations that do not have policies in place to make concrete policies that spell out clear boundaries for their employees and volunteers, and to also spell out the consequences for violating those boundaries. Someone who is being sexually, physically, or emotionally harassed, regardless of their age, should have an appropriate person or group of persons to report it to. They need to know that they can tell.

Our systems cannot keep failing victims. Ann Curry reported Matt Lauer in 2012, but her report fell on deaf ears. If we are going to protect vulnerable children and adults from predators, we need to have a written policy that spells out the reporting procedure and the policy cannot create a hierarchy where one person can override the policy. Nobody should be above the law. Nobody should have the authority to override other peoples’ decision to report an alleged crime. I think the tides are turning and as long as survivors keep speaking up, organizations will have no choice but to develop policies and training that actually protect the people who are in their care.

January 31, 2018

Why sexual abuse goes unnoticed

Nobody wants to think they would ignore the signs of abuse. But they do. I did. Some always will. Abusers do not always isolate children to molest them. The world was shocked as survivor after survivor explained that Larry Nassar would penetrate their vaginas without gloves, for up to 40 minutes at a time, while their parents were in the same room just feet away. He would whisper in their ears, “How does this feel?” As I listened to an army of brave survivors describe how Nassar abused them in front of adults, I was not shocked in the least. My father is a pedophile. I wrote him a letter a couple years ago asking if there was anything that consistently surprised him all of the times he successfully molested children. He wrote back from prison, “The one thing that always surprised me is how easy it was to fool adults. Oftentimes, after abusing kids right in front of them, I had to pinch myself and ask, ‘Are these adults really this stupid?'” I’ve personally listened to countless survivors tell me how often their abusers would molest them in front of adults. All of them have wondered, “Why did nobody protect me from my abuser?”

All of my research began to focus on what techniques abusers use to molest children in open spaces. As the son of a pedophile, I obsessed over the fact that we all missed it with my father. I was one of those adults who didn’t protect kids from their abuser–my father. But I genuinely did not recount a single time where I remembered him abusing them either. I learned that pedophiles are not just manipulative. They are literally using the same techniques magicians use to keep adults blind to the abuse. I was fascinated with this finding. I learned that, in order to see the abuse from pedophiles in real time, we need to stop looking for them and instead start looking for us! As Nassar molested his hundreds of victims and my father his dozens, how did they see those of us who were standing in the same room? How did they know that we were not catching on to them as they groped, caressed, and violated these children while looking at us? What were their exact techniques? I began growing increasingly frustrated with the “red flag behavior” that experts share about abusers. These signs are so generic that it tells us nothing about how abusers abuse and get away with it. By the time anyone notices “red flag behavior” it’s too late. Children have already been abused.

Should we assume, then, that parents and adults are just naive? Or that they don’t care? Rachael Denhollander gave a heart-stopping statement where she named victim after victim who told adults that they felt uncomfortable around Larry Nassar. Each and every time, the adults, including investigators, excused the abuse away. It’s inconceivable for most untrained people to believe that a child can be molested in the same room as an adult–especially a parent–and that adult not see it. So when children tell their stories, they are told that they must have “misunderstood” what really happened. Children who are molested, especially when their parents are nearby, have no understanding that the abuser is using very specific techniques to fool the adults into believing they’re not seeing the abuse. Rachael described brilliantly what every little child experiences when adults fail to protect: “As Larry was abusing me each time, I assured myself that it must be fine because I thought I could trust the adults around me.” Nassar knew that every one of these little girls was thinking this, and this is one of the reasons why it’s important for the pedophile to molest a child with their parent just feet away.

But again, should we assume that the adults don’t care? Kyle Stephen’s parents, who radically defended Nassar for years and repeatedly made Kyle apologize to Nassar, certainly cared. When Nassar had charges brought against him, Kyle’s father did what he could to make amends for not believing her. He was so riddled with guilt and shame for not believing his little girl that, in 2016, he committed suicide.

So why did hundreds, if not thousands, of adults fail these children, including their own parents who were in the same room as they were penetrated? While there certainly were some adults who didn’t care, we cannot assume that the majority of them just didn’t care. We’ve got to stop assuming that all adults don’t care and instead look at the techniques abusers use to keep us blind. I recently discovered a brilliant book by the husband-wife team of neuroscientists Macknik & Martinez-Conde called Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions. This book was my “aha!” moment. They say, “The spooky truth is that your brain constructs reality, visual or otherwise. What you see, hear, feel, and think is based on what you expect to see, hear, feel, and think. In turn, your expectations are based on all your prior experiences and memories.” Every word inside of this book juxtaposed with the hundreds of letters from prison by my father began to reveal a very clear picture. We are all incredibly “hackable” and abusers intuitively know it. I glossed over the apostle Paul’s words for years and now they jump off the page at me: “. . .evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).

Magicians make a living off of hacking our belief system. They are masters at deception. They know what the audience expects to see, hear, feel and think. They hack our “want to believe system” and show us exactly what our brains expect to see, hear, feel, and think based on past experiences. Kyle Stephens’ parents wanted to believe the best in Nassar. Put another way, they didn’t want to believe that their 12 year old daughter had be sexually violated for 6 years by Nassar. He was a family friend. Larry Nassar knew this, hacked their belief system, and made it their new reality. When confronted by Kyle’s parents, Nassar was not nervous because he already knew exactly what conclusion they expected to hear from him. And he delivered the rehearsed response with eloquence. Kyle recounted what Nassar said in that meeting: “I listened to you tell me, ‘No one should ever do that. And if they do, you should tell someone.'” Nassar knew that making it appear as a “misunderstanding,” combined with the fact that the Stephens’ wanted to believe that “no one should ever do that” was a guarantee that his audience would latch on to this expectation and make it their new reality. The power of this technique can’t be overstated.

I see this happen over and over and over again. Church leaders, when presented with the facts, will choose to believe that the person they love and respect is not capable of abuse. Or that he is remorseful and repentant and will never do it again. It’s not that they don’t believe the child. It’s that they don’t want to believe the child. Abusers hack this belief system and make that a new reality for the church leaders. Leaders almost always soften their approach to the abuser when face to face with him in a confrontation. I’ve studied this phenomenon for the past 7 years. I began to get increasingly angry with church leaders who defended abusers at the expense of their victims. As a minister, I wanted to get into the minds of people like me from the perspective of an abuser. The abuser knows exactly what church leaders expect to see, hear, think, and feel–what they want to believe–and so he delivers. Every single time.

Until we start teaching people the specific techniques abusers use to keep others blind, we will never be able to prevent abuse effectively. When I train people, I do demonstrations. Seeing is believing and is way more powerful than another lecture on abuse. It’s a way to “pull someone up on stage” with the abuser–to allow my audience to see us the way abusers see us. A couple years ago I started doing a facility walk through where I demonstrate just how easy it is to exploit people, their belief systems, and their buildings. Last year I was asked to train staff at a Christian camp. I had 5 volunteers–none of whom were abuse survivors–and I asked if I could touch them in benign ways throughout the day to see if others on staff noticed the behavior. What stunned me was how blatantly I could touch them (hugs, petting hair, breaking them off from the rest of the group, etc.) and at first nobody noticed. The first encounter was an exaggerated hug with a volunteer. We counted 9 people who made eye contact with us. I later asked the group how many people saw me hug this male staff member. Only 2 said they saw anything and neither of them thought it odd that I was embracing one of their staff members right in front of them.

These techniques aren’t a checklist that I can put down into a blog. It’s something that people need to experience. And what I’m seeing is that once others know the techniques pedophiles use to abuse kids in front of us, they can see things in real time and intervene before the abuse happens. There is no reason why Nassar, or my father, or any other pedophile who uses sleights of mind, shouldn’t be intercepted and stopped before they can carry out these egregious and horrific crimes. The following video is one that forever changed the way I understand pedophiles. When I first watched this, I shouted at my computer, “That’s it!” Apollo Robbins’ question at the end is more prophetic than he knows: “If you could control someone’s attention, what would you do with it?”