What to be done with this sexual abuser

[William Thornton]

[Kaye]

[Lamar Wadsworth]

Sexual predators usually don't change, particularly pedophiles. If there were incidents in the distant past, there is a high probability of more recent incidents with other victims.

Now, having said that, there is the issue of "the Baptist authorities" doing something. Every form of church polity has pluses and minuses. The SBC, a state convention, or a local association has no real governing authority over local churches. It is unfortunately true, given our polity, that the SBC or state conventions will never have any effective way of stopping the movement of predators from one church to another. Nobody but the Lord, sometimes nobody including the Lord, tells Baptist churches what to do. Even though all the state conventions have some sort of church-minister relations office that is available to advise search committees and ministers seeking places of service (likewise CBF and state/regional CBF fellowships) the overwhelming majority of ministerial placement happens through informal networking. Always has and always will. I'm no longer a Southern Baptist and abhor the present fundamentalist direction and secular political entanglements of the SBC, but in all fairness to the SBC and state conventions, there is not a blessed thing that the SBC or any state convention can do as long as individual preachers continue to put loyalty to a colleague who has gotten himself into a scrape above loyalty to the body of Christ by helping a buddy escape the heat and move to another place to continue the same behavior. There is not a blessed thing that the SBC or any state convention can do as long as pastor search committees fail to exercise due diligence and do their homework. The "Baptist authorities" are and will continue to be in local churches. Those in local churches who shield sexual predators from accountability and those who help predators move to other churches to do the same thing again will have much to answer for.

The bottom line is that there are churches that operate just like severely disfunctional families, in that the cardinal rule is "We don't talk about that." Of course, the list of things that "we don't talk about" is always growing. In an environment where people are not supposed to ask questions, a lot of stuff gets swept under the rug. Such churches are not a healthy environment for anybody to stay in. Such churches are fertile soil for sexual predators.

Now--as someone who is a mandated reporter for child maltreatment (DFCS employee), I am absolutely in favor of mandated reporting laws being expanded to include clergy. I considered myself to be mandated by a higher authority than the state when I was a pastor, and I did report child maltreatment cases to DFCS during my years as a pastor.[/i]

[jerryl]

[jerryl]

[Lamar Wadsworth]

Didn't mean to sound defeatist, just acknowledging the fact that most ministerial placements take place through the buddy system or informal networking. My "always has and always will" observation was not to say that there is no use in trying to do anything about the problem. I was simply saying that most ministerial placement in Baptist life comes about through informal networking. It has been that way from the beginning of Baptist history and will likely be so for the forseeable future. I'd like to see the SBC, state conventions, CBF, Alliance, ABCUSA or anybody else offer some resources for search committees to educate laypersons on how to stop the movement of predators from church to church. (There may be some good resources out there that I don't know about.) However, it will still be up to churches to avail themselves of whatever resources denominational sources offer. I simply mean to emphasize that, given Baptist polity, the onus will continue to rest upon local churches and individual preachers.

[Dave Roberts]

[William Thornton]

[Lamar Wadsworth]

[Christa Brown]

[jerryl]

[William Thornton]

[Reggie]

[Dee Ann Miller]

[Dee Ann Miller]

[Dee Ann Miller]