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Rebuilding Trust Churches Are Trying to Repair Damage Done by Sexual Misconduct By Bill Tammeus The Kansas City Star December 10, 2005 http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/13370479.htm From where Tom Farr sits, all the publicity about sexual abuse by Catholic priests has created a misleading picture of reality. Sexual misconduct "happens in every denomination," says Farr, senior vice president for claims at the GuideOne Insurance Co. in West Des Moines, Iowa, "though right now the Catholics are in the crosshairs, and that's not entirely fair." GuideOne insures about 50,000 churches, most of them Protestant. Patrick M. Moreland, marketing vice president of the Church Mutual Insurance Co. of Merrill, Wis., sees evidence of Farr's conclusion on a distressingly regular basis. Every week, Moreland says, his company, which insures about 95,000 churches, schools and other faith communities all over the United States, gets reports of three or four more cases of sexual misconduct or abuse charges against clergy or other faith group employees or volunteers. The total has reached about 4,000 claims since Church Mutual, which also mostly serves Protestant congregations, started offering insurance to cover such matters in 1986. Company files tell the painful tale: The priest abuse scandal that burst into the national spotlight in 2002 in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and spread from there has rocked the Catholic Church. What hasn't been as well reported is that it's not just a Catholic problem and that adherents of many faiths are working to prevent sexual misconduct and respond to it quickly when it happens. Adherents.com, an independent Web site with a reputation for accurate religion statistics, indicates that almost 25 percent of the U.S. population identifies itself as Catholic, by far the largest single faith group. The next nine groups combined (including Protestant churches, Jews, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses) make up not quite 40 percent of the American people. "I think the media has missed how much the faith groups are doing in this area," says Robert L. Sweezey, president of Adventist Risk Management Inc., which offers liability and other insurance to Seventh-day Adventist churches. "Even the Catholic Church has done a tremendous amount of work. There's screening for employees and for volunteers; there's quicker response to allegations and much more. There's not been credit given to the changes in the system." In fact, G. Lloyd Rediger, author of Beyond the Scandals: A Guide to Healthy Sexuality for Clergy, says that despite many lingering problems, he's "proud of organized religion because they are way ahead of the other professions on doing something very clear and consistent about this issue. In a growing number of Protestant congregations there is a heightened awareness and less naivete regarding the vulnerability of both children and adults in congregational activities and relationships. Though many are still reluctant to install all known safeguards and see early warning signs of misconduct, there is great improvement of the awareness level of moral misconduct." Nonetheless, as Stephen Drachler, director of the United Methodist Church's national Office of Public Information, acknowledges: "No one has been able to come up with a perfect solution." To which Rediger adds: "You bet there's evil in the church, though it's often masked by our talk about how we love each other." In some ways public attention to abuse by some Catholic priests — and the dismaying failure of some bishops to handle it properly — has led both to more charges of abuse in other faith communities and to efforts to stop the problem. "These kinds of incidents have been happening for years and years," says Kimberly G. W. Day-Lewis, a clergy-ethics consultant for the Faith Trust Institute, a Seattle-based organization that provides training and education to prevent abuse in faith communities. "As bad as the Catholic abuse scandal is, the blessing of it is that victims are more willing to come forward. And for some people, especially adults, they're realizing for the first time they were victimized." Farr says his analysis of cases handled by GuideOne confirms there has been no sudden upswing in new abuse cases but rather a willingness of victims from long ago to come forward. Sexual misconduct tends to come in two major categories: clergy or other employees sexually abusing children and pastors taking advantage of people they counsel or having affairs with church employees or leaders. "A fairly common case," Day-Lewis says, "would be one that would arise out of a counseling situation. … Within the context of that pastoral care, the minister essentially seduces the counselee and develops a sexual relationship with them. If it's a predatory-type person, they may have several people in the congregation they have these relationships with." Whether it's that or sexual abuse of minors, she says, "it's pretty ugly." A disturbing new trend, says Eric Spacek, senior risk manager for GuideOne, is "minor-on-minor incidents." He says that in recent years that type of sexual abuse allegation has made up 15 percent to 20 percent of the cases his company handles. And yet the total case numbers are relatively small. GuideOne handles about 30,000 claims of all kinds each year from its church policyholders and its 100,000 auto and homeowners policyholders. Of that total, GuideOne has about 200 currently active claims of a sexual abuse nature, officials say. Many instances of sexual misconduct in faith communities never come to the attention of insurance companies or even denominational leaders. Pastors having affairs with members, for instance, rarely result in court cases unless there's a charge of pastoral malpractice. As Rediger notes, "nobody is really paying attention to the sexual misconduct in congregations, to affairs and marital situations," despite divorce and marital problems being as prevalent in faith communities as elsewhere. A major reason for that, he says, is that "we've called sex a problem for so long it's hard to deal with it healthily. We need to get past regarding sex as a problem to be solved and regard it as God's great gift." Rediger also calls cybersex a growing problem for faith communities and says some are beginning to do regular checks of staff computers to make sure they aren't being used for pornographic or similar purposes. Despite ignoring some problems of sexuality, faith groups have heard the steady drumbeat of abuse of children and other sexual misconduct and are responding by adopting strict rules and training employees and volunteers to recognize signs of abuse. For instance, the Central Conference for American Rabbis, which represents leaders of Reform Jewish communities in the United States, has adopted a long and detailed section of its ethics code called "Ethics Guidelines Concerning Sexual Boundaries." It declares that "sexual misconduct by rabbis is a sin against human beings" and an offense against God. The document outlines a long list of rules for reporting and responding to allegations of sexual misconduct. Not all groups, however, have such detailed policy statements or rules. "We probably should have that because it's probably just going to get worse," says Nodell Dennis, executive director of missions for the Blue River-Kansas City Baptist Association, made up of Southern Baptist churches in this area. Baptist churches, however, are autonomous and not under the authority of area groups of such churches or even the Southern Baptist Convention. "All we can do," Dennis says, "is advise and counsel. I only get involved (in settling sexual misconduct cases) if I'm asked to get involved." But whether there are written policies or not, religious leaders say faith communities today are much more cognizant of potential sexual misconduct problems. "I think the awareness is substantially greater than it was 20 years ago," Farr says. Moreland agrees: "Each year more of our customers are doing something to prevent it." But religious communities remain especially vulnerable to this kind of problem because of their very nature, experts say. Moreland puts it this way: "In the religious community people are so trusting. In a small congregation there's a tendency to be even more trusting. So you get some reluctance in those situations to do much. But, in fact, they need to. The individuals who are molesting children are your more trusted people. That's why they get access to them. "These cases are nasty for the victim and for the church or school. And a false allegation can do you a lot of harm, too." Awareness of the problem through all the public attention to it "has really helped us address it over the last couple of decades," says the Rev. Stanley N. Olson, executive director for vocation and education at the 4.9-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. "One of the things that has changed," he says, "is that we've learned to do public disclosure. So instead of just removing a pastor from a congregation or the ministry, now there will always be disclosure to the congregation and to any prior congregations where that pastor worked." That encourages other victims to come forward, Olson says. Rediger says that despite many remaining problems, "I think there's quite a bit of hope. I keep running into people with healthy perspectives who say we need to get beyond" merely responding to the legal aspects of this area and begin to view responsible sexuality as a divine gift. But progress in such areas as Sunday school teaching materials is slow. He calls that area "a wasteland" and says that "the minute you raise the issue, you've got parents all over your back. Most of the curriculum writers at a national level are just dealing with the politics of sexuality." In the end, even well-prepared faith communities expect to face such problems in the future. As Olson puts it: "Theologically we know we will always be dealing with sin." Helpful Web sites To reach Bill Tammeus, call (816) 234-4437 or send e-mail to tammeus@kcstar.com . Visit his Web log at http://billtammeus. typepad.com |
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