What are churches doing to stop predators in the church?

[Soloist]

Theres some creative ways to deal with these issues, one of the obvious patterns in these cases is that its all men doing the assaults. Conservative anabaptists have another good perspective where women are primarily doing the teaching and child raising, so any man alone with a child is automatically suspicious.

It’s this sort of mentality that makes it difficult for men to work in the medical profession because there’s an automatic mistrust of a male who is caring or likes to take care of children.
Or even work in nursing homes in general, the more conservative you are, the less likely you will hire a male for your nursing homes and you’d rather a female take care of your 90 year-old grandfather.

I do home health, pediatric patients have some advantages that maybe wouldn’t appear obvious at first but I certainly don’t work with females.
Things like TV often are a problem with adult men, likely females too, but I don’t work with females.

[Judas Maccabeus]

I have almost always seen a positive outcome from mandated reporting. The negative outcomes come from the degredation of the community in overzealous attempts to stop future sexual assault. Examples like were listed in previous comments, 2 adults in a room, mandated locked rooms, open door meetings. I would imagine enforcing these rules makes the church feel like a prison.

Not so much as you think. We do, in fact, lock our supply closets, but do you want children with access to them anyway. Our doors are all with glass windows. We have an “at least two children in a class or it gets combined” rule. There are cameras in each classroom, but all of our space is a day school as well. We do not find any of these policies burdening, we insist that children remain in the main room during activities, or are with their parents.

One misconception that seems to be expressed here is that Child Protective Services WANTS to remove children. They do not. They are understaffed and under resourced. Offering help in a family context is preferable, more cost effective and less traumatic to the children. Moving them out is a last resort.

Some here seem to portray them as monsters. They are people who try to do the right thing. There are, of course, exceptions.

[Judas Maccabeus]

A difference is I have not entered into an agreement with the state to be obligated to do so.

When one becomes a minister, one agrees to the state to be an agent of the state who will conduct limited investigations for them.

(Or on PA. When one becomes Sunday school superintendent, trustee/janitor…)

No such agreement exists in Maryland. I have a meeting with our bishop on Friday, but I have my doubts if we have agreed to anything except to follow the law like everyone else. I personally have never agreed to become an agent of the state, as you call it.

If Holdenan churches decline to report abusers, they are unsafe, full stop. Haven’t you all learned anything?

You can’t be a minister without agreeing to be a mandated reporter. So, pretty much every minister at this point is agreeing to do so. (A handful are breaking the law, I’m sure.)

The point is that every minister in compliance is also an agent of the state who has to make judgment calls of when to proceed with an investigation and then when to report the results of that investigation per the mandated reporter law.

So how do you all have ministers? By your logic, you cannot.

[Anthony]

I have almost always seen a positive outcome from mandated reporting. The negative outcomes come from the degredation of the community in overzealous attempts to stop future sexual assault. Examples like were listed in previous comments, 2 adults in a room, mandated locked rooms, open door meetings. I would imagine enforcing these rules makes the church feel like a prison.

Not so much as you think. We do, in fact, lock our supply closets, but do you want children with access to them anyway. Our doors are all with glass windows. We have an “at least two children in a class or it gets combined” rule. There are cameras in each classroom, but all of our space is a day school as well. We do not find any of these policies burdening, we insist that children remain in the main room during activities, or are with their parents.

One misconception that seems to be expressed here is that Child Protective Services WANTS to remove children. They do not. They are understaffed and under resourced. Offering help in a family context is preferable, more cost effective and less traumatic to the children. Moving them out is a last resort.

Some here seem to portray them as monsters. They are people who try to do the right thing. There are, of course, exceptions.

The glass windowed doors, policing of childrens movements, and locked doors give the feeling of a low-trust society unable to keep basic social norms and coherence without force. Similar to a gas station in a high crime area locking the products you can buy behind bulletproof doors.

I went to school in a public school with these policies, i assume most public schools are like this. These policies “work” but they reflect a deeper lack of fundamental trust and alienation that id rather not copy in an Anabaptist setting

[barnhart]

One misconception that seems to be expressed here is that Child Protective Services WANTS to remove children. They do not. They are understaffed and under resourced. Offering help in a family context is preferable, more cost effective and less traumatic to the children. Moving them out is a last resort.

Some here seem to portray them as monsters. They are people who try to do the right thing. There are, of course, exceptions.

This aligns with the times I have seen them in action. I have wondered if they return children to families pre- maturely or if the institutional bias to too strong in that direction, but I'm glad I don't have to make those judgements.

My brother in-law's family were foster parents for years who mentally adopted the four children in their care. The child and family services literally considered every possible family member, investigating and giving many, many opportunities and a lot time for each to meet standards. As I recall that process took about ten years until it was determined to leave them permanently but not open for adoption.

I have also seen their personnel be respectful and law abiding during inspections, surprisingly so, such as rescheduling an inspection because the mother said it was not a good time.

They are really stressed and overwhelmed with a lot of staff turnover so each case as it drags on gets assigned to new people on a regular basis.

I'm sure there are cases of overreach and fast relocation of the children but I haven't seen that.

[Ernie]

Now let's have a hypothetical.

Suppose a family has parents who are struggling with discovering some inappropriate conduct between their two young children, which is estimated to have happened to about 6.5% of people in the United States where it would hit the threshold of what is mandated to be reported.

The parents seek counsel from ministers in the church how to resolve this situation. Perhaps the ministers refer them to an appropriate licenced family counsellor.

However, now the minister has to immediately report this to the authorities as soon as he's out of the meeting, which means it's likely the entire family's children will be tossed into foster care.

Now the children have ended up in an environment where abuse is actually far more likely to happen, estimated to be 25%-40% based on surveys of self-reports. Generally speaking, foster homes are expected to be about 3 times as more likely to have children mistreated or abused compared to children who are never in foster care.

(This kind of abuse between young siblings is by far the most common kind of sexual abuse that happens within a family, so this is also the most likely scenario.)

The law is the law, but I would think that a minister being able to use discretion and help the family access appropriate resources would often be better than simply having the children swept up and dumped into foster care 30 minutes after the parents meet with the ministers.

The thing with these numbers is that you are moving a kid from a known abusive environment to a potentially non-abusive environment. So its more like a 90% chance of abuse being dropped to 25-40%.

Christians as well as churches have been known to intervene in situations like JohnH described and provide a non-abusive environment for the children. (some have been known to do the opposite as well)
If the State puts the children in foster care, there is a good chance for further abuse. If the children are cared for by morally upright relatives and church community members, there is a really good chance the children will not experience further abuse. I think that is what I am understanding JohnH to be saying.

[PeterG]

The glass windowed doors, policing of childrens movements, and locked doors give the feeling of a low-trust society unable to keep basic social norms and coherence without force.

I think of these things as helping to establish a high-accountability, high-transparency environment. It inspires greater trust.

[JohnH]

The glass windowed doors, policing of childrens movements, and locked doors give the feeling of a low-trust society unable to keep basic social norms and coherence without force.

I think of these things as helping to establish a high-accountability, high-transparency environment. It inspires greater trust.

Locked doors do not inspire greater trust.

[JohnH]

Wife: as far as it goes, none of the actual cases people are complaining about on this thread in regards to ministry not reporting are about children just being too curious. All listed here (at least as far as I can tell) are adults or teens taking advantage of someone who is younger and more vulnerable (like their own child or a student or possibly younger sibling) in regards to rape or pretty straightforward molestation. Implies they are old enough to know better and lacking in self control to prevent it from happening again.

Wrong. I know of an exact case for that very thing.

Same old story - children grabbed and place in two different foster homes. Naive Amish-type ministers who are very afraid of not doing mandatory reporting so they just report anything remotely suspicious.

Combine that with a county level CPS that is hostile towards plain peope and the children were placed in different homes far away, and necessitating a driver, which some communities do not regularly use. The attitude of the social worker was “the Amish should get a car if they want to see their children”.

I am baffled how anyone can defend that kind of thing.

[JohnH]

So how do you all have ministers? By your logic, you cannot.

You do realise I’m speaking my own opinions, am not ordained, and am not speaking official policy on behalf of my church, right?