Youth Pastor Arrested for Abuse; What about His Church?

SNAP
September 16, 2014

http://www.snapnetwork.org/tx_what-about-his-church

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 503 0003, SNAPdorris@gmail.com)

A youth pastor has been arrested for alleged child sex crimes and the question now is what will his congregants to now? Will they actively help police and prosecutors? Or will they sit passively back and force the brave victim to carry the burden of pursuing a predator alone?

[myfoxdfw.com]

We beg current and former staff and members of the Lord's House of Prayer in Crandall to aggressively seek out others who may have seen, suspected or suffered child sex crimes by Steven Gray.

That's the best way to protect kids. That's the responsible course of action. That's what Jesus would do, we believe.

But in most cases, colleagues and congregants of credibly accused child molesting clerics do little or nothing. They leave it up to a wounded victim and overworked police and overwhelmed prosecutor to keep a predator away from kids. Then they express shock and horror when the predator's shrewd lawyer gets him or her off on a technicality or gets a short sentence and later re-offends.

So we beg every person associated with the Lord's House of Prayer to show courage and try hard to find and console others with information about or suspicisions about Gray's crimes. That's the right thing to do.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 25 years and have more than 18,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)