Raising Awareness at the Village Church to Protect Kids

Watch keep
June 2, 2015

http://watchkeep.blogspot.com/2015/06/raising-awareness-at-village-church-to.html?m=1

Yesterday, several members of the DFW chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests gathered outside The Village Church Dallas Northway campus. We stood for the protection of kids. We are very concerned that confessed pedophile Jordan Root, a member of TVC & a licensed professional counselor, may have victims in the DFW area and elsewhere, given his volunteer and work history involving vulnerable children.

WHY

A missionary from The Village Church (TVC) admitted viewing and having sexual images of children. In February, a church group corroborated this.

[scribd.com]

[scribd.com]

But, in a move that has created a firestorm of protest in Christian circles and on the Internet, church officials embraced him and disciplined his wife for moving to have their marriage annulled.

[christiantoday.com]

The offender is Jordan Root who did church work in East Asia. SNAP worries that Root may have hurt kids in there. His wife is Karen Hinkley. On Sunday, TVC pastor Matt Chandler has said he will apologize to her.

But SNAP says that an apology “does nothing to protect the vulnerable or heal those already hurt because of the crimes of Root and the actions of TVC staff.” The group believes “that kids are at risk now because Root walks free, living and working among unsuspecting families (and) that there are kids he has hurt who are suffering in silence, shame and self-blame.”

TVC staff should use their vast resources to alert parents, police, prosecutors and the public about Root’s crimes, SNAP says, and to aggressively seek out youngsters he has assaulted. The church has a moral and civic duty to help law enforcement investigation and prosecute Root, so that other kids may be spared devastating harm, the organization maintains.

The victims’ group is also urging anyone “who may have seen, suspected or suffered crimes by Root or cover ups by TVC to call police, expose wrongdoing, protect kids and start healing.”

SNAP is also deeply skeptical of claims by TVC officials that they have “without exception” reported suspicions and knowledge of child sex crimes to law enforcement.” The group is also “deeply grateful to Karen Hinkley, the brave woman who is exposing possible child sex crimes in the church.”

From 2011 until 2014, according to Internet sources, Jordan Root was a therapist at Timberlawn Mental Health System is at 4600 Samuell Blvd in Dallas (214-381-7181).

As best SNAP can tell, he remains a licensed professional counselor in TX.

[zoominfo.com]

Root also worked at the First Baptist Church’s summer camp (May-August 2008), Dolfin Swim School, (September 2008-July 2010), In Class Learning Differences Aid (September-December 2010), a practicum counselor at Dallas Life (with families and children; January-August 2011), as a private children's swim instructor (June-September 2011), a mental health technician at Timberlawn Mental Health Services, (November 2011-March 2012), and as a therapist on the child and adolescent unit at Timberlawn Mental Health Services (March 2012-May 2014).

Between roughly 2003 and 2007, he also did babysitting work and volunteer youth ministry in Cedarville OH, Albany NY and Dallas. From 2008-2011, he did informal children's ministry work with refugee children in at Vickery Meadows and lived in the Santa Fe Trails apartment complex, both in Dallas.

TVC’s public relations director is Kent Rabalais and its Campus Pastor is Steve Hardin.

[thewartburgwatch.com]

The Daily Beast covered this story.

In a blog post, Karen writes, “The discovery of Jordan’s pedophilia and use of child pornography triggered a thorough upheaval of every aspect of my life… What is even more disturbing than his use of child pornography is that throughout the duration of these years, Jordan sought and gained access to a large number of children, many of whom represent some of the most vulnerable populations of children in our society… [TVC’s] treatment of Jordan as the victim and me as the perpetrator is an appalling reversal that evidences its priorities are not in line…”

Though she hopes that she’s wrong, Karen says she does fear that Jordan hasn’t confessed the “full story.” That said, the FBI did do an investigation of Jordan and found no evidence of child pornography on Jordan’s computer. Still, when she considers how many times she remembers Jordan interacting with children, sometimes in situations in which he was alone with children, Karen becomes sick to her stomach.

...

Amy Smith, a blogger and co-leader of Dallas’s SNAPNetwork, a survivors network for those abused by priests, has, for months, been following Karen’s story and writing about it at her WatchKeep blog. Regarding the church’s response yesterday, she says it was their mention of repentance in regards to Karen that stood out to her. “What does that mean for Karen in this specific situation?” she wrote in an email to The Daily Beast. “What do they think Karen needs to repent for? Seeking an annulment? Failure to submit to the authority of the elders’ counsel on the annulment?”

To anyone who approached us outside The Village Church yesterday and asked for more information about why we were there, we handed them a leaflet.