God’s Kiddie Rapers
May 14, 2007 by Katherine Coble
There will be strong language and strong thoughts ahead, so only jump into this if you’re so inclined.
Via NiT I read that Southern Baptist Churches are now targeted for investigation into child molestation claims. There are not words for how much this upsets me. But not for the reasons you may think.
Pedophilia has been a part of my life for a long time. No, I’m not a pedophile, but a relative of mine was. He, along with two other men, was arrested for participating in a child-sex ring in my hometown that videotaped the molestation of dozens of boys. None of the three men were priests or ministers. I’ve known ministers who raped their own children or the children of other people. I’ve also known soccer coaches, Little League coaches and gym teachers with the same bent for prepubescent penises.
If you want to look at tired women who have fake tits you go to a strip joint. If you want to look at porn you go to the Internet. For consensual sex all you need is a willing partner and occasionally a bottle of lube. HOWEVER, If you want to have sex with little kids you need two things: a proximity to little kids and a way for their parents to trust you. I’ve been long convinced that part of the “fun” of pedophilia is the hunt, the chase, the wooing. Vanilla sex with consenting adults is far too easy to come by. But the shorteyes LOVE their rituals. They bask in the purchase of just the right comic book or video game. (You should have seen my male relative’s comic book collection. Is it any wonder that I subconsciously associate Spider-Man with Aqualung?)
You have to woo at least two people if you’re a kiddie raper. You’ve got to convince the kid and you’ve got to convince whoever is guarding the kid. What better way to work your magic than to become a Man (or woman) of the Cloth? With God on your side, who can say no to little Jimmy or Susie joining you on the camping trip.
The first story I ever read about parishioner molestation was in Catherine Marshall’s Christy. It was a heartbreaking narrative about a charismatic minister, a naive parishioner and inappropriate touching with eventual intercourse. The characters were Quaker.
I think it’s a good idea to educate everyone about the real dangers of childsex and those who crave it. The problem I have with groups like SNAP is that they too narrowly target their ire in such a way as to make it look like a problem solely within Catholocism and, now, Southern Baptists. The “Gotcha’ tone of their message, the ‘we’re taking down the Big Boys of Organised Religion’ theme plays false with me. I can’t tell if they’re really concerned about the fact that grown people want to violate children sexually or if they’re mad at the church. In all fairness it’s probably both. But I’d sure like it if they’d quit acting as though this problem exists only in The Big Churches. It doesn’t. It’s everywhere that a shorteyes can gain the trust of mommies and daddies and the access to their prey.
[...] Katherine Coble weighs in: The problem I have with groups like SNAP is that they too narrowly target their ire in such a way [...]
I don’t know anything about SNAP, but I would assume that their ’cause’ is whatever organizations/institutions/hierarchies are protecting pedophiles in the name of not stirring up religious controversy. The one thing pedophiles of the cloth have helping them out that other pedophiles don’t is that institutional backing (and the sanctity it bestows).
From Jamey’s post, “individual churches generally do a good job of policing themselves and completing background checks before ministers are hired.”
Does anyone else see the problem with that statement? All the background checks in the world are not going to turn up something that hasn’t already happened.
I know two men, one was a volunteer, one was paid minister who found themselves in situations that escalated into very inappropriate behavior. One of those two, is now in jail. Neither had ever, ever done anything like that before so there was no way that background checks could have “saved” anyone.
They go after the big organized churches because while pedophiles can be anywhere, the big organized churches are where the money is.
Well, yeah, it could be about the money, but if so, then they really are in trouble, because the Baptist church doesn’t work like the Catholic church. The Southern Baptist Convention doesn’t place ministers. They don’t move ministers who don’t work out. Unlike going after the Catholic church, they’ll have to go after individual Baptist churches. With the Catholic church, it was easy to prove that the Church hierarchy knew priests were molesting kids and were moving them to new churches without telling those churches in order to keep the priests in the priesthood.
It’s not going to be possible, I don’t think (unless I’m completely misunderstanding how the Baptists work) to prove some kind of top to bottom corruption like there was with the Catholic abuse scandal.
You’re not misunderstanding. The SBC is basically a “life-raft” of churches, with everyone banding together for the purposes of seeming to be part of a larger group than they really are.
The actual differences between various SBC churches are huge. And there may be money in the SBC if they were to target the LifeWay organisation, but LifeWay has not one thing to do with ministerial placement.
The only damage SNAP can cause is PR-based at this point.
Aunt B - I am sure the people who hired the pastor will be held responsible and in turn so will whatever legal entity represents that particular congregation. Some Baptist Churches (I mean the individual congregations), have more capital assets than the whole local Catholic Diocese. At least a couple of the ones in Memphis come to mind. I can actually see this causing fatal injury to Baptist communities.
Kat - That PR damage can sometimes be worse than the monetary damage of a lawsuit. I know of one priest who after what was obviously a false accusation left the priesthood because SNAP would not leave him alone. I understand that anyone in a ministerial role should be relieved of his or her duties if they commit this horrible crime. But we also have to be careful not to let things get out of hand and turn into a witch hunt.
Malia - Sort of the “ESP check”, I’m not sure what you are asking for. I went through the background check when I taught a class at my Parish in Memphis since there were kids in the class. It was very comprehensive and included a sworn statement that I had not been involved in certain activities in the past. It could not however have guess the future. The Book of Revelation has a lot in it, but it doesn’t a list of people who “will be” pedophiles. So I’m not really sure what you’re asking for.
we also have to be careful not to let things get out of hand and turn into a witch hunt
I was very troubled by the tenor of the book Our Fathers, which seems to be the flagship chronicle of the Catholic Pedophile Takedown.
In fact, I’m very troubled by the entire Pedophile Crucifixion movement. I think Pedophilia is a serious crime and a serious aberration.
But I still think that we’ve got too much an atmosphere of witch-huntery about the whole thing, what with unproven allegations being stated repeatedly as fact, etc.
I’m also very tired of the accusation that “religion makes pedophiles”–that was one of the overarching themes of the Our Fathers book.
Frankly, I think it’s much more a matter of pedophiles being drawn to a religious environment because it furthers their own aims. But SNAP and I take opposite views on this.
Oh, Kat, half the time it’s a question of pedophiles being drawn to a religious environment because they think it will help them control themselves. Then they find that it does just the opposite, but having taken that one step to keep themselves safe, they can’t think of any others.
Mark, I’m not sure what you’re asking for. I pretty much said the same thing you did. Background checks are all fine and good but they can’t predict future behavior. Background checks would never have excluded my two friends from working in ministry because they had never committed any crimes before that time. We’re saying the same thing.
Malia - I guess I didn’t understand the point of your original comment. It sounded like you were saying that background checks wee useless and something better needed to be done. That’s what I took from “Does anyone else see the problem with that statement”.