Life sentence for Stanley Gerald Champ

[TruthSeeker]

Rape is violence. No matter age of victims . . .

. . . Or the role of the perpetrator in the church hierarchy!

Thanks, temporal1, for turning our thoughts to the victims!

?? But we established this perpetrator didn’t have a role in the church hierarchy beyond the ones basically every person who goes to church has.

Likely this is a matter of semantics. Accurately or inaccurately I think of lay members as part of the "church hierarchy"--ground level--if you will.

Also, to clarify, I don't disagree that the media may have gotten Champ's church status incorrect. However, from my perspective, the heart of this matter is the tragedy that so many lives have been ruined!

[Josh]

. . . Or the role of the perpetrator in the church hierarchy!

Thanks, temporal1, for turning our thoughts to the victims!

?? But we established this perpetrator didn’t have a role in the church hierarchy beyond the ones basically every person who goes to church has.

Likely this is a matter of semantics. Accurately or inaccurately I think of lay members as part of the "church hierarchy"--ground level--if you will.

Also, to clarify, I don't disagree that the media may have gotten Champ's church status incorrect. However, from my perspective, the heart of this matter is the tragedy that so many lives have been ruined!

One of the most important things to me is that victims and victim advocates are able to maintain credibility with the rest of the community. I have a very uphill road to climb in this department.

Unfortunately, a lot of advocates and now the news media seem to be just fine with embellishment or flat out making things up. This make everything so much harder.

I am quite eager to hold leaders accountable. Part of that includes identifying who leaders actually are. In Eastern circles this is not ambiguous at all.

There is a trend to act as if every church member is somehow “leadership” yet this only applies to plain people. It’s a direct attack on plain people for a problem - sexual abuse - that they have less trouble with the mainstream world and their neighbours who aren’t plain. Instead of targeting them, they should be commended, and encouraged to become even better.

[ken_sylvania]

It is my understanding, though I may be wrong, that if you’re there in support of the defendant you sit on his side of the courtroom. Those in support of the victim will sit behind the prosecutor.

I would have a similar understanding, although I'm not at all sure how "in support of" is defined. I would expect that family or close friends of a defendant would sit on the defendant's side of the courtroom regardless of whether they believed him innocent or guilty.

Consider a case where a victim has made allegations against a church member, who denies those allegations. Where should other church members sit in the courtroom if all they care about is the truth? Until they actually see the evidence, how can they be "for" one or the other?

I don't know whether the local church people all sat on one side of the courtroom in the Champ case. But assuming they did, would the victims have felt pressured or uncomfortable if the church people had all decided to set on the victims side? I would have been concerned they might have.

[Ken]

Then in that case, the news media is being misleading to call him a "church leader".

Cases like this happen all the time, and the person's religious affiliation is usually left out of it. We don't hear specific details about what parish or mosque someone attended, nor is there some expectation that their priests or jammah or whomever is somehow accountable for them.

Mennonites have a tendency of making these cases about religion which more or less forces the media to report it that way. Here is a screen shot from the trial video on the original news web site



I don't know if those women were there in support of the victim or perpetrator. But I have seen news photos of other trials of Menno or Amish sex offenders in which the courtroom was packed to standing room only with folks in Menno or Amish plain clothes in solidarity or support of the accused. I don't know if that was actually the case here. But any reporter walking into such a courtroom is going to immediately conclude that the trial has something to do with religion.

What are you saying?

Are you saying Mennonites shouldn’t sit and observe open courtrooms?

Or are you saying they should wear worldly clothes when they do?

I am saying none of those things.

What I am saying is that when ordinary reporters who cover the courthouse beat day in and day out show up for a trial and the audience is full of people in plain dress they are going to jump to the immediate conclusion that the trial has something to do with religion since there are all those overtly religious Menno or Amish people sitting there which is highly unusual. You wouldn't usually ever see them in the courtroom. And the reporter's interest will perk up and the resulting story will most likely have some sort of Menno or Amish angle. That is Journalism 101. The religious angle becomes the article's "hook" whether you think it is justified or fair or not.

They would jump to the same conclusion if the courtroom were full of Hasidic Jews in their black coats and hats, or full of Muslim folks in headscarves and such. However if it was just some generic Southern Baptist or Methodist congregant the audience would not be dressed in any distinctive religious way and the reporter would not necessarily draw any connections to the perpetrator or victim's church unless that was central to the trial. Apparently it was central to this trial if the perpetrator was using a position of religious authority to find and groom victims.

In effect, by packing into the courtroom in plain dress Mennonites or Amish make the trial about their faith because it becomes such an obvious and easy "hook" or angle for the reporter to spin off of. I'm not making any judgement one way or the other, just explaining why it happens. And that is why a trial of a plain Menno is more likely to be covered from a religious angle than a trail of someone who attends a mainstream church.

[Josh]

Then journalists need to do a better job.

[Ernie]

It is quite likely he would have been asked by other congregations to come and give a topic, teach adult Sunday School class, or teach a youth or adult Bible School class. He was not ordained.

I’ve been asked to do the same things. It would be extremely inaccurate to paint me as a “church leader”. Virtually all of the brethren in my church end up Sunday school teacher at some point.

In the Washington/Franklin conference, the Dicscipline reads that Sunday School teachers are to be "strictly in order."

[Ernie]

In cases here the perpetrator is/was a church member, don't you think sometimes the other church people are attending the court sessions so that they can see for themselves what is happening as well as get accurate information directly?
I think if someone I knew was going to be in court for something like this I would likely attend - not in hopes of influencing anything one way or the other, but just to find out the facts truly are. So that I wouldn't be at the mercy of people saying "he never did this" when in fact the person had, for instance, confessed to the facts in court.

Does attendance at the trial necessarily denote support for one party or the other?

In the instant case, suppose the church people believed that Gerald was guilty and deserved punishment (I have no information whether they did or didn't). How should they indicate this by their court attendance practices so as not to be mistaken for "supporting him" or "hoping he gets a lighter sentence"?

Good questions. I should think about this more...

[Josh]

It is quite likely he would have been asked by other congregations to come and give a topic, teach adult Sunday School class, or teach a youth or adult Bible School class. He was not ordained.

I’ve been asked to do the same things. It would be extremely inaccurate to paint me as a “church leader”. Virtually all of the brethren in my church end up Sunday school teacher at some point.

In the Washington/Franklin conference, the Dicscipline reads that Sunday School teachers are to be "strictly in order."

But that doesn’t make them “church leaders” to the outside world, does it?

Let’s say you find out that, for example, somehow I got mixed up in some illegal act - perhaps selling raw milk across interstate lines. I would hope my religious affiliation would be irrelevant to the case. (Particularly in light that multiple members in my congregation have conventional dairies and won’t sell raw milk, even legally within state lines.) And it would be quite improper to say “powerful church leader caught in illegal food scandal”.

[TruthSeeker]

Mennonites have a tendency of making these cases about religion which more or less forces the media to report it that way. Here is a screen shot from the trial video on the original news web site



I don't know if those women were there in support of the victim or perpetrator. But I have seen news photos of other trials of Menno or Amish sex offenders in which the courtroom was packed to standing room only with folks in Menno or Amish plain clothes in solidarity or support of the accused. I don't know if that was actually the case here. But any reporter walking into such a courtroom is going to immediately conclude that the trial has something to do with religion.

What are you saying?

Are you saying Mennonites shouldn’t sit and observe open courtrooms?

Or are you saying they should wear worldly clothes when they do?

I am saying none of those things.

What I am saying is that when ordinary reporters who cover the courthouse beat day in and day out show up for a trial and the audience is full of people in plain dress they are going to jump to the immediate conclusion that the trial has something to do with religion since there are all those overtly religious Menno or Amish people sitting there which is highly unusual. You wouldn't usually ever see them in the courtroom. And the reporter's interest will perk up and the resulting story will most likely have some sort of Menno or Amish angle. That is Journalism 101. The religious angle becomes the article's "hook" whether you think it is justified or fair or not.

They would jump to the same conclusion if the courtroom were full of Hasidic Jews in their black coats and hats, or full of Muslim folks in headscarves and such. However if it was just some generic Southern Baptist or Methodist congregant the audience would not be dressed in any distinctive religious way and the reporter would not necessarily draw any connections to the perpetrator or victim's church unless that was central to the trial. Apparently it was central to this trial if the perpetrator was using a position of religious authority to find and groom victims.

In effect, by packing into the courtroom in plain dress Mennonites or Amish make the trial about their faith because it becomes such an obvious and easy "hook" or angle for the reporter to spin off of. I'm not making any judgement one way or the other, just explaining why it happens. And that is why a trial of a plain Menno is more likely to be covered from a religious angle than a trail of someone who attends a mainstream church.

In addition to the above principles, I just noted for the first time that in this screenshot Champ is wearing his plain suit. Might reporters have taken it to be a sort of clerical collar?

[Sliceitup]

I’ve been asked to do the same things. It would be extremely inaccurate to paint me as a “church leader”. Virtually all of the brethren in my church end up Sunday school teacher at some point.

In the Washington/Franklin conference, the Dicscipline reads that Sunday School teachers are to be "strictly in order."

But that doesn’t make them “church leaders” to the outside world, does it?

Let’s say you find out that, for example, somehow I got mixed up in some illegal act - perhaps selling raw milk across interstate lines. I would hope my religious affiliation would be irrelevant to the case. (Particularly in light that multiple members in my congregation have conventional dairies and won’t sell raw milk, even legally within state lines.) And it would be quite improper to say “powerful church leader caught in illegal food scandal”.

I suspect one of the reasons his church is frequently mentioned is because the one victim names them in her statement. She met him through the church, and if I remember correctly, he also met other victims through church. And when she told the church about it they accused her of lying.