Sexual Abuse in the Church: Characteristics of Abusers,and Protecting the Flock

By Mark Webster
BeyondOpinion.com:: Christian Apologetics Ministry
September 28, 2012

http://beyondopinion.com/

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

(1 John 2:1-6 ESV)

Here are excerpts and links to some very important articles dealing with sexual abuse in churches. If you attend a church please read and see if any of the advice can be implemented where you attend. It is discouraging to see how sexual predators get away with multiple offenses when fellow church members,deacons,and elders should be spotting their aberrant behavior. Ignorance is not bliss.

Here is an excerpt to an article dealing with the profile of a religious leader who is a predator -

What are the characteristics of the ministers, pastors, priests, rabbis and other clergy responsible for sexually abusing just over three percent of women who regularly attend religious services?

The perpetrators of this pervasive adult sexual abuse are likely to be charming, even charismatic and apparently self-assured while actually driven by an unquenchable need for attention, affection, admiration and control.

Taylor University’s Diana R. Garland and Christen Argueta summarized

Offenders were male and had functioned in ministry for at least 25 years. Based on this sample [of 25 who had been reported for sexual misconduct] , [Mark] Laaser and [Nils] Friberg conclude that the most common offender is a man who is reasonably successful and has a combination of narcissism, sexual compulsion, and need for affirmation.

In their book, Before the fall: preventing pastoral sexual abuse, Friberg and Laaser explain that six were identified as having full-blown personality disorders. 15 others had “patterns of personality problems not strong enough to be considered a full-blown disorder,” with narcissism as the primary issue. Add “coexisting anxiety disorders and dependent personalities.”

The result, they explain, is someone who is in fact brutally unconcerned about others;

This creates a need for affirmation and validation on the one hand, but an exterior appearance of not needing anyone, even to the extent of being blatantly unconcerned about what others think of them.

Base studies reveal a process of seduction is as ruthlessly exploitative as descriptions of the narcissistic personality type imply. Clerical sexual abusers first avail themselves of the emotional environment of the church. There is a carefully cultivated trust in the sanctuary of the church, and as a result the target trusts her (or in rare cases his) religious leader. The predator exploits that trust and the power of his position as her religious leader, and sometimes his dual role as religious leader/counselor, carefully grooming his victim

Rest of the article

[here]

An example of the language that a predator is apt to use as he grooms and attempts to maintain his control over his victim -

Christa Brown parsed the verbal signatures of a clerical sexual predator from the testimony about Southern Baptist pastor Matt Baker in his Waco, Texas, murder trial.

Excerpting from Erin Quinn’s trial blog, Brown creates a hair-raising dictionary of sexually predatory grooming and controlling intimidation by a pastor who is systematically misusing his occupational authority. For example, Baker’s former mistress, Vanessa Bulls, testified that:

He told her to “just date your pastor.” [isolation]

Matt Baker took the divorce counseling to a new level. He started saying she was beautiful and asked her to come over. [abuse of a dual, pastor/counselor role]

He told her “that God is such a forgiving God. I don’t think that God believes that a person can be with just one person for the rest of their life.”

He told her that no one would believe her if she told anyone what he did because he was a preacher. [use of pastor role to intimidate | the jury believed her]

Bulls told Baker to turn himself in [for murdering his wife Kari] and he told her “God has forgiven me.”

Rest of the article

[here]

Great article – every church member should read this. Are our churches wise in this area ?

Remember the names Ted Haggard, Eddie Long, and Jack Schaap? Scandal among evangelical pastors has been so steady that wikipedia has a list of evangelical scandals.

While working on a chapter for an upcoming book, I had the blessing of researching the moral failures of several prominent church pastors. I say “blessing” because it was enlightening to observe some common dynamics and failures in the scandals. In most cases, men who should have been disqualified were back in their pulpits or establishing new ministries within months. In most cases, churches were seriously injured by the transgressions and hurt further by the inadequate efforts at redress. In all the cases, the offending pastor received more attention and support than the victims of his abuse or deceit. It was a sobering exercise.

The effects are devastating. Two researchers at Baylor University have summarized the social and psychological effects of clergy sexual misconduct on congregations . Studies:

suggest that the results for the offended include self-blame; shame; loss of community and friends if forced to relocate either to escape the community’s judgment or to escape an angry offender who has been discovered or reported; spiritual crisis and loss of faith; family crisis and divorce; psychological distress, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder; physiological illness; and failed or successful suicide attempts.[1]

All of this carnage begins with a process researchers call “grooming.”

Grooming includes expressions of admiration and concern, affectionate gestures and touching, talking about a shared project, and sharing of personal information (Carnes, 1997; see also Garland, 2006). Grooming may be gradual and subtle, desensitizing the congregant to increasingly inappropriate behavior while rewarding her for tolerance of that behavior. Offenders may use religious language to frame the relationship, such as “You are an answer to my prayer; I asked God for someone who can share my deepest thoughts, prayers, and needs and he sent me you” (Liberty, 2001, p. 85). Grooming is essentially seduction in a relationship in which a religious leader holds spiritual power over the congregant.[2]

A lot more

[here]

The Roman Catholic Church is back in the news. Theologically,structurally,and spiritually they have their own set of problems that lead to tremendous amounts of abuse. If past history is any indicator,this is just the tip of the iceberg.