UNTIED STATES
Religion News Service – Rhymes with Religion
Boz Tchividjian | Jul 25, 2015
Many churches are faced with a terribly difficult dilemma of what to do when a sex offender wants to become part of the church community. In my experience, most churches have little to no understanding of the many complex issues related to such a decision. As a result, churches often make decisions that result in great harm to the children and abuse survivors in the congregation.
Simon Bass is a dear friend and colleague who spends his life protecting children on the other side of the pond. He is the Chief Officer of the Churches’ Child Protection Advisory Service (CCPAS), which is an amazing organization that is transforming churches in the United Kingdom into much safer places for children and survivors. I am thankful to God for introducing me to Simon and believe that his thought provoking guest post will help spark a much needed dialogue in this country on a topic many would prefer to ignore. – Boz
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For many years, I have worked with churches, advising them on how to receive sexual offenders into their congregations. I have also met and worked with many sexual offenders. In 1999, a church contacted me to help them with an offender who had downloaded child pornography (i.e. child abuse images). The offender had been convicted as part of Operation Ore, the UK response to Operation Avalanche in the United States. At the time, we were only beginning to understand the Internet’s harmful impact and could never have anticipated the proliferation of such images. Since then, barely a week goes by without a church contacting me about a sex offender in its congregation. Whenever I help a church, I urge them to extend a careful grace to sex offenders, including those convicted of online offences.
Child pornography is nothing less than the recording of the sexual abuse of children – each picture is a crime scene, a depiction of real children’s molestation. Sadly, such images show extreme, sadistic, and violent abuse against children. Viewing child abuse images is not a victimless crime; thousands of victims of sexual abuse continue to be re-victimized when perpetrators share those images. People who view such images demonstrate that they have a sexual interest in children, and they often have convictions for similar sexual offences. Unfortunately, a significant number of offenders will also have held positions of trust in churches, giving them access to children.
Recently, I learned about a pastor of a large church in the United States who publicly praised a church volunteer who is also a convicted sex offender for possessing child pornography. This church’s myopic understanding of care for the sex offender struck me. The church seems to have focused upon caring for the sex offender without considering how doing so impacts survivors or poses risks to children in the church. This church honored a sex offender in such a way that lessened the impact of his crime. This behaviour insults all survivors of sexual abuse who demonstrate real heroism in overcoming their abuse.
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