It's a good idea. The problem is how to get Anabaptist churches and organizations to put this into practice. Is is something that a lot of Anabaptists would voluntarily do or is it going to take more exposing of sex crimes before people take action?Ken wrote:The problem with watch lists and this sort of thing is that they are reactive. In this day and age with the national and international attention on sex crimes within church institutions (Catholic, Baptist, Evangelical, Anabaptist, etc.) church and secular instutions need to be proactive. What does that mean?
At a minimum, all church and church related institutions that come into contact with and have responsibility over children should have well established written standards for dealing with sex crimes and sinful behavior that may fall short of crime. This means all schools, preschools, summer camps, youth ministries, volunteer organizations, and international missions.
All employees and volunteers that come into contact with youth should answer detailed questionaires about their past history. Public school teachers currently do this as part of their employement contracts. When I was hired as a public school teacher I answered a long questionaire about this and other topics knowing that if I answered falsely on any question it would be grounds for dismissal should that ever come to light. If JM had done this in 2012 when he was re-hired and returned to Haiti he would have had to blatantly lie or else make his new supervisors aware of his entire past history. Would that have prevented him from returning? I don't know. But would certainly have provided grounds for sending him home or else making sure he was not in any job that involved contact with children.
All employees and volunteers in organizations that come into contact with children should undergo professional training on indentifying and combating abuse and other related issues. There are a lot of organizations that provide this sort of thing. You discuss it. You talk about scenarios and what-ifs. What do you do if you suspect a co-worker or supervisor? What are the warning signs to be aware of? What are the legal and ethical reporting requirements? What are the requirements of the organization (if different). And so forth. This should be mandatory for new employees and existing employees/volunteers.
Each organization should have written standards for how these issues are dealth with. How are they dealth with in the hiring process? What kinds of records are kept and how are they shared among affiliated organizations? What is the procedure for investigating reports? What are the obligations for supervisors? If a future employer calls with questions, what information is shared? There should be written policies for all of this. This is how organizations like CAM and other church affiliated organizations like schools and universities protect themselves and their employees. Because then you don't put supervisors and leaders in the difficult situation of having to make difficult decisions about problem employees on the fly based on their gut instinct and what they think "might be for the best" at that time. They simply follow the written policy and if they don't do so then they are putting themselves and their own careers in jeopardy.
Other organizations like schools have already gone a long way in developing these sorts of standards and procedures. So it isn't something that CAM and other anabaptist organizations would need to invent out of thin air. I'm sure there are lots of off-the-shelf examples and plenty of experts available to assist. For that matter, CAM and other anabaptist organizations may already be doing this. I don't really know. But it is clear in the case of JM that whatever was done was inadequate.
This is how you regain trust. You become proactive not reactive. You lay out strict new standard and procedures for the future, make them public for all to see, and then hold to them. And that is how you protect the reputations and safety of all the huge majority of church workers and volunteers who are not sexual predators and who are now being tainted and even endangered by the actions of a few.
What do you suggest doing about people who have already committed or are still committing sex crimes? Anyone who has committed sex crimes against minors should be reported to the law. I don't mean turning offenders into the law and completely washing your hands of them. Ideally the person who offends would repent and receive intensive and long term counseling focused both on what the "secular world" has learned about sex offenders and what the Bible says on how to be free from sin. The counseling of course would go hand in hand with any legal consequences the offender receives and not take the place of legal consequences.