Child Abuse and the Church tagged: ,

Child Abuse and the Church

Posted by in Uncategorized

The Email. I received an email from a student at Southeastern seminary asking about churches and child abuse. His questions and observations were thought provoking; below are some of my thoughts about the problem of child abuse. (Michael, I’ll respond to your email in a more specific manner this weekend; in the mean time…) Michael wrote:

I am currently getting my M.Div in Biblical Counseling at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. I wondered how the S.B.C was reacting to the problem of sexual abuse in the church. I think that I have seen 3 cases of sexual abuse in my local Raleigh area in three years. This is the ones that are read about in the paper. …when I typed “sexual abuse” and “S.B.C” google was flooded with information. I was surprised by all of the attention and no action. I have emailed you to ask your opinion and input into my research and also my thoughts on this ministry.

Some Facts. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) divides child maltreatment into four parts:

Neglect is failure to provide for a child’s basic needs (physical, educational, medical, and emotional).

Physical abuse is physical injury due to punching, beating, kicking, biting, burning, shaking, or otherwise harming a child. Even if the parent or caretaker did not intend to harm the child, such acts are considered abuse when done purposefully.

Sexual abuse includes fondling a child’s genitals, incest, penetration, rape, sodomy, indecent exposure, and commercial exploitation through prostitution or the production of pornographic materials.

Emotional abuse is any pattern of behavior that harms a child’s emotional development or sense of self-worth. It includes frequent belittling, rejection, threats, and withholding of love and support.

906,000 children in the United States were confirmed by child protective service agencies as being maltreated.

Among children confirmed by child protective service agencies as being maltreated, 61% experienced neglect; 19% were physically abused; 10% were sexually abused; and 5% were emotionally or psychologically abused.

An estimated 1,500 children were confirmed to have died from maltreatment; 36% of these deaths were from neglect, 28% from physical abuse, and 29% from multiple maltreatment types.

Overall girls (51%) were at slightly higher risk than boys (47%) for all forms of child maltreatment.

More women (58%) than men (42%) are perpetrators of all forms of child maltreatment.

Female perpetrators, mostly mothers, are typically younger than male perpetrators, mostly fathers.

My pet peeve. I suspect that many readers saw the title of this post and immediately thought of SBC ministers who are child predators. As Michael observed in his email, these are the cases that garner media attention and create debates throughout the denomination. They are also the smallest part of child maltreatment we face in our society. While I have no desire to minimize the horrific nature of pedophile predators masquerading as shepherds in God’s church, I think it is important we understand the bigger problem is in our families. Even child sexual abuse is a family problem. According to a 2003 Department of Justice report, “of all men in prison for a sex crime… in almost half of the child-victim cases, the child was the prisoner’s own son or daughter or other relative.”

Sexual abuse accounts for only 10% of all child maltreatment (abuse) and half of those kids were molested by a family member. In other words, 95% of all child abuse occurs within the family. To put all our energies into the small part of the 5% of perpetrators who are ministers seems inappropriate. The danger is we eventually put into place some means of tracking convicted or accused ministers and feel good about dealing with “the problem” while the 95% of maltreated children drop off our radar.

The biggest child abuse problem I see in my practice is not molestation from a minister who moves from one church to another. The biggest problem I see is children who are physically and emotionally abused by parents who are ministers, deacons, teachers and other leaders in the church who have not learned to manage their anger. (No, I’m not some bleeding heart who thinks all corporal punishment is abuse; I’m referring to hitting, screaming, cussing, out of control anger.) These are parents who rationalize and justify their sin by quoting scripture and complimenting themselves for caring enough to discipline their children. These are parents who feel genuinely contrite and tearfully ask forgiveness while perpetuating the pattern again and again.

And these are the children I see in counseling years later who want a relationship with God but are convinced all Christians are hypocrites and have little or no use for “church”.

Solutions? The question I’m most often asked is “how do we protect our children”. Further discussion almost always leads to the questioner asking “how do we eliminate child abusers from our churches”. The answer to that question is: we can’t eliminate the risk of abuse. The best we can do is manage the risk. And virtually nobody likes that answer. While I don’t know how to eliminate child maltreatment, I do have several ideas for managing risk:

Expand our definition of abuse. Stop thinking solely of the 5% of children sexually molested by people outside of the family and start thinking about all of the ways in which children are maltreated.

Make marriage and parenting skills an important part of our discipleship ministries. I’m convinced we now have an entire generation of young adults who have no parenting skills. We need to assess – and periodically reassess – how our leadership are managing their own families (e.g. create an atmosphere within the church where education, prevention, and intervention are all accepted strategies.)

Most congregations now realize they need some kind of policy for every person who works with minors. (Here is one example of some things churches can do.) For reasons that escape me, many churches either do not have a policy or do not follow the policy they have. We need to provide a financial incentive to encourage the adoption and exercise of good policy. Surely there is some way to tie this to a church’s liability insurance. The SBC and the state conventions could work with different carriers to provide significant discounts to those congregations able to demonstrate they take child protection seriously.

Let’s flex some of that political clout we claim to have as the largest denomination in the country to lobby state legislators to do a much better job of tracking convicted offenders. When the Governors present a unified front to the Fed’s, then we’ll be able to track offenders across state lines.

What ideas would you suggest to reasonably and rationally manage the risks of child maltreatment?

(Note: I won’t be able to follow any comments today. I will be in Oklahoma City attending my first meeting as a Trustee of the Oklahoma Baptist Homes for Children. Play nice; be creative; help Michael out with his project.)