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20/20 Airs " Preacher Predators"
Orthodox Reform [United States]
April 14, 2007
http://orthodoxreform.org/media-reports/2020-airs-preacher-predators/
On Friday, the ABC show "20/20" aired a report on sex abuse by Protestant clergy.
Abuse of power by clergy is not just an Orthodox or Catholic issue; it appears in any large system where sinful people have means to exploit their power to fulfill their deviant lusts.
One account tells of a Southern Baptist pastor who molested over 40 boys:
Ken Ward is a Southern Baptist pastor and teacher in East Texas, who has admitted to molesting more than 40 boys. He said that being a teacher and minister is the perfect job for a child molester, because it puts the molester in direct contact with young people. "I [was] attracted to a certain child, and in my case, it was primarily prepubescent boys," he said.
Ward is now under house arrest, after serving five years in state prison. He wears a GPS monitor so that he can be tracked by the sheriff's department, and he cannot be around children anywhere, even in public. |
Unlike the Orthodox and Catholic churches, the Southern Baptist's lack a central authority to track and monitor such issues:
| There is no way of knowing how many Ken Wards are out there. The Southern Baptist Convention does not keep records, and local churches often seem to be in denial - such as one church in Denton, Texas, where the minister publicly confessed to "making a terrible mistake" last November after a woman sued, claiming she'd been raped as a teen.
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| Church members responded by throwing the minister a retirement party and raised $50,000 as a "love offering." To this day, he has a church building named after him. |
One victim is taking action:
| Brown, abused herself when she was 16, went on to form an organization called Stop Baptist Predators, because in her search for justice, she found that the Southern Baptist Convention had no central office, no readily available list of preachers under investigation or even convicted, and no one to help investigate allegations like hers. |
How big is this problem? Bigger than some would like to admit:
| The Southern Baptist Convention said the problem is neither widespread nor systemic, despite a recent rash of cases. But just last week, a pastor of a Florida church - Lyle Whittaker - committed suicide after he was charged with sexually abusing an 11-year-old-girl. |
A commentary from EthicsDaily on this report says:
| Avila's reporting finds that the SBC-an organization of 43,000 independent churches and 16.3 million members-Chas an overall structure that makes it difficult to police preacher predators. One example includes a profile of an SBC pastor who abused kids in Kentucky and then moved on to do the same to eight boys in Missouri before he was finally sent to prison. |
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