Beth Swagman

Hello

You are a brave person and I am grateful for people like you who find the courage to challenge the evil.  I'm grateful, too, that the superintendent believed your story.  That first step is crucial and many church leaders fail at that point.  Still, the wait and hope for closure is painful and could be a long time yet. 

The other member of the church have not had the experience you had with the pastor, so it does not come on their radar.  Denial is much easier for people who have had no experience with a predator.  Some people are vengeful and out to hurt you; the majority are simply unwilling to acknowledge the presence of evil in their world.  When that happened and you could not receive the support you needed, you chose to leave.  That decision was difficult because it meant you would experience the loss of many relationships, but it also meant you were willing to protect your spiritual and emotional well-being.  Good for you!

If you continue to have a relationship with the superintendent, you might want to recommend to him the book Restoring the Soul of a Church, edited by Nancy Hopkins and Mark Laaser.  The book provides wonderful insights into the impact of church leader misconduct on the congregation and the long but necessary steps toward health and healing.

I wish you all the best as you continue your journey for healing.  Thank you for writing and sharing your story.  It is an inspiration to those who face a similar situation.  Your words speak to the difficulty, but also the freedom. 

Beth

Hi Rebecca,

Here are some suggestions for an agenda with the ministry leaders.

First, I would talk about the reality (not the possibility) of abuse of children in the church setting.  Do you have an article from the newspaper where such a story was reported on?  There are many of them...  Some denominations have stories or statistics you can use.

Second, I would talk about how abuse occurs in the church.  Talk about the grooming steps.

Next, I would talk about who abusers are in the context of the church.  There are wanderers, predators, and pedophiles. 

Fourth, I would discuss the signs and symptoms that children are being or have been abuse. 

Then, I would talk about reporting and make sure all the ministry leaders know what the reporting requirements are in your community.

Other topics you could raise include: how will we discipline the children in our care; why is screening important; looking at abuse in segments like neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse. 

The video "Bless our Children" and "Hear their Cries" from the Faith Trust Institute are good resources and can lead to wonderful discussions.

I hope this is helpful or contact me and I'd be happy to plan something more specific for your church.

Beth

Mark's post about Dick Clark reminded me of a statistic from the Calvin Collge research on abuse completed back in 1990.  Persons with a disability were 2-3 times more likely to be victimized by abuse than were persons without a disability.  Then last night, I was reading an article on bullying and it said as many as "one in four US students are bullied with some frequency, with verbal bullying being the most common form..."  The article went on to say that children with disabilities may be "at highest risk of being bullied". 

We've all read with concern the increasing number of suicides related to bullying.  And we are more aware today of the power of cyber-bullying (the bully doesn't have to be anywhere near a person to bully him or her electronically). 

Children need our protection - sometimes because of a disability and sometimes not.  Whether our unique calling is a ministry to abused persons or to persons with a disability, this is an issue where we can join hands, join voices, join hearts, join passions to bring about safer and healthy places for children to worship and to attend school.

Thanks for letting me share my voice.   Beth A. Swagman, Director of Safe Church Ministry for the CRCNA

Hello Ken.  "What's next"?  In the third blog in this series, I will look at what the Bible says or doesn't say about the concept of "consent".  I'm sorry I wasn't clearer about my intentions.

You caught me bare-handed about my lack of FB experience.  If people want to change their pics to cartoon figures for the purposeof raising awareness of abuse, I say bring it on.  Do you know if anything else is coming out of this initiative to help raise the profile of child abuse?  

Hello Angela. If I had a nickel for every time that issue was raised.... Child safety policies are a two-sided coin or nickel. On one side, we need to protect children because they are too young, small, vulnerable, or naive to be able to protect themselves from an older teenager or adult who thinks and talks above the level of the child's comprehension. On the other side, we need to protect teens and adults who volunteer in our church's programs. Our volunteers could quite innocently put themselves in a place where someone could accuse them of wrongdoing. The accuser isn't always a child; sometimes another adult raises suspicions of a volunteer's conduct and the volunteer has only his or her word that something didn't happen. Why take that unnecessary risk? If volunteers would be willing to be screened, accept some training, and follow some basic, common-sense rules, and that would add a measure of safety to their relationships with youth, I would hope people would be less inclined to protest.

Child safety policies are really about reducing the risk of abuse occuring or an allegation being made. Because almost every volunteer qualifies to be a volunteer, the policy has very little to do with trust and almost everything to do with setting a standard for reducing the risk.

You can't purchase a home with insurance and can't purchase a car or register a vehicle in most communities without a protection policy. We need to think about prevention more than just the perception that policies are a hassle.Churches without a policy that have gone through the tragedy of a child abuse complaint would likely wish that they had a policy that would have protected them or guided them through the process from complaint to resolution.

I know other people have faced Angela's situation - shout out some support and advice to her.

Thank you! The reunions are a comfort, but so is the knowledge that people throughout the denomination are praying for this ministry and for the delegates of synod who will seriously consider the Victim's Task Force Report.