Pastor's two sons: 1 transgernder & 1 w/child attraction

I have made like a dozen posts similar to this on the board, so I apologize for being repetitive, but the whole narrative out there about child molestation makes the problem so much worse. We have this image that people who molest children are strangers driving around in vans looking for kids walking alone or leaping out from the bushes at them. When — rarely — that happens, people want that person locked up forever, call them a monster, want them on a registry, publicize where they live.

However, almost all of the actual incidents involve people in a position of trust over the child who are known to the child. Relatives, step-relatives, coaches, etc. And since those people aren’t trolls living under bridges, you would be *amazed* the lengths people will go to provide those individuals excuse and cover. I had a number of child molestation cases when I was in practice. Almost all of them involved relatives, and all involved people the parent or parents trusted. Only one of the defendants ended up with any prison time (that person was trusted but not related); the families rarely cooperated, and often held the child to be partially to blame.

this church used to be a presbyterian usa church.. over several years, they left the church.. all sorts of reasons..but basically because the pcusa church welcomes all to be pastors, leaders and accepts all people in all roles.
the church was using lots of expensive buildings/land, so they paid $15 million or so to "take "their property with them.. pcusa owns the buildings and lands in which their congregations worship.

menlo church then joined a more conservation presbyterian denomination... but I wonder in all this chaos, there was less monitoring on the part of a larger regulating body.. pcusa has strict child protection rules, and even made them more extensive recently.

it is a sad situation.

I think there is still the belief that if you know the person through church, school, sports or wherever, you report any "concerns" to them and not the police.  When a child, especially very young children, bring this up the only person you should report it to is law enforcement.  Why give the church, school or whatever a chance to cover it up, say they will take care of it or just relocate the offender some where else. 

I grew up Catholic and I never understood reporting to any one other than law enforcement.  The person needs to be arrested, plain and simple.  

There was a child molestation case, actually involving 4 children at my church several years ago.  The molester was a married man, about 33 years old, married and had 3 of his own children.

He grew up in the church and volunteered as a youth.  He then had a position of authority as a public servant working with kids.  

Not sure of everything, but I believe there was an incident at his workplace, involving a child and then a child at the church ended up making a comment to their parent about this person's behaviour towards him. These parents then went to the pastor and then the church administration decided to have the police handle everything.  This man was charged, convicted of his offences and is serving time in jail.  

No one is perfect and it is hard to realize that people are imperfect and that sometimes trust is betrayed.  

i am wary of churches that are "independent" and have no governing body to provide oversight to. Especially churches were the main people in charge are all related in some way.  In Canada, there is The Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada.  Accountability is so very important in churches and charities.  

I know this story won't be a surprise to many but it is local to me and totally shows how when people did report to law enforcement they were totally ignored. Even worse, the only police officer who took it seriously was forced out of the police force.

www.brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/67 

Or rape victims.  Reason #1 that I do not trust police. Too much exposure to what they really think of the most vulnerable and abused members of our society. 

Having worked with faith based organizations and seeing, how even in the face of overwhelming evidence of the need to protect children, how they do the opposite...over and over and over... There is something just as rotten at the core as there is in police departments.

The fact that this church never even talked with the parents or kids tells you everything you need to know. Cover up started immediately, first instinct was to protect the corporate entity not to the kids. And Jesus wept.