Prevention and Healing: Part 2 (9 of 10)

Prevention After Abuse Has Happened
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How can families and churches protect from further abuse after it has been discovered? Hopefully there will be a report, an investigation and a criminal prosecution that will rightly incarcerate a sexual offender. But that does not deal with the wounds that are now bleeding within the hearts of the victims and their families. We will consider a few different concepts in this section: creating safe environments for victims and setting boundaries for known offenders.
Some abusers, while known, may not be prosecuted. Others may serve their time and be released. Eventually, the known sexual abuser or predator may return to church.

How are we supposed to handle this situation? 2 Corinthians 2:6-8 shows us that when someone repents and asks forgiveness, it's the responsibility of the church to restore him to fellowship. This Scripture creates several questions for the specific scenario of sexual abuse. How do we restore a sexual offender without invalidating the victims at the church? Does forgiveness and restoration of fellowship mean that the offender ought also to be restored to a place of service? And should such a person ever be restored to ministering with children? I cannot make this decision for your congregation. I can, however, highlight a few options that can help your leadership team make an informed decision about how to proceed.

First, some churches may determine that a known abuser is simply not allowed to return to their congregation. Jimmy Hinton uses the example of the TSA to show that a total ban is necessary for sexual offenders:

Do you know what the TSA does to people who pose even a mild threat of terrorism? They refuse to allow them to board aircraft. Can you imagine if the TSA adopted a corrupt Christian theology? Imagine how foolish it would be to say, “all are welcome here in the name of grace and love. Come on aboard; we will keep your terrorism between you and me.” Very few people would ever get on a plane again if they knew that the TSA operated this way because none of us would feel safe knowing that they were welcoming terrorists on board plane. It is not unfair for TSA to refuse known or potential terrorists to board an airplane, even if the terrorist doesn't currently have a plan in place to take that particularly plane down. Neither is it unfair for churches to refuse entrance to known predators to have a patterned history of raping and molesting children, even if they don't currently have a plan in place to molest a child that particular day (Hinton, 2021).

Second, some churches may determine that a known abuser is allowed to return, but with clearly communicated boundaries. This may mean that the offender sits in the back and only interacts with select members. It may mean that a church member acts as an accountability partner who sits with the offender during services and keeps an eye on him afterwards. It may mean that he is not allowed to communicate in any way, shape or form with children. Nothing is to be done in secret, and all adult members ought to be notified and informed of the plan of action.

Third, some churches may feel compelled to “fully restore” a sexual offender. The noble intent behind this approach is that the gospel is a message of hope and if God has forgiven someone we ought not go beyond this. This line of thinking would suggest that setting boundaries or denying membership is unloving, un-Christian, and unbiblical. (I have attempted to address this faulty line of reasoning in an earlier section entitled How to Respond to the Opposition.) To this I simply suggest this: inform your insurance company that you have permitted a registered sex offender to attend services. Notify your members with the information from the public sex offender registry and the court docket sheet that lists all the original charges. (Many plea deals will waive most of the criminal charges. A docket sheet will list every charge, whether they were waived or not). Allow your members to make a fully informed decision on whether they want their children to be around such a person. They deserve the right to make that decision.
These are three options for how churches to consider, but they certainly are not the only ones. As churches determine the course of action, I simply wish to remind us of where our priorities ought to be:

Psalm 82:3 | Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

Is your leadership team considering the helpless in the decisions that you make for the sexual offender? Are you ensuring their protection or are you invalidating the fear and discomfort that they will live with if the offender returns to the congregation. I urge you, if you are a church leader, not to get bogged down in the theology of “what’s the best thing we can do for the offender” and remember the clarion call of the Scriptures to defend the helpless. Our first priority ought to be the provision of a safe and welcoming place where abuse survivors, especially those whose cases cannot be criminally prosecuted, can heal without a weekly reminder that their abuser has escaped justice.

Healing Through Active Listening

While we are commanded to be slow to speak and quick to hear (James 1:19), this discipline does not come easy. It is far more likely that we have something to say. Consider the three “friends” of Job:

Job 2:11b-13 | They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him. And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

The best thing that these three men did was to grieve with Job. While we won’t go into great detail about what happened once they started talking, suffice to say, they should have just kept quiet. Sometimes, we can be guilty of something similar. When someone we care about endures tragedy, we feel compelled to swoop in and make them feel better. Even though the Scriptures tell us to weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15), that just feels to uncomfortable. One writer encapsulates the frustration of those in pain this way:

Maybe the church needs to teach people just how to listen and how not to panic when someone falls apart in their presence…the struggle is…if someone would talk to me about what I was experiencing during the church service, someone who observed that I was falling apart, their first reaction might be to panic, and maybe the message that the church needs to send is, teach the people not to panic (Annis et al., 2001).

Please read this carefully. Not every sorrow requires you to solve it. Not every heartache needs your mending. I encourage you to remember that Jesus is the wonderful counselor and the great physician…and you are not. "Not knowing what to say” is the other side of this coin. Sometimes we don’t need to know what to say. We don’t have to have the perfect advice. Sometimes we simply need to listen.

“[A survivor’s] story is a tender piece of a soul and is not given without a price. They need to be assured that their words are sacred words that will be held with care. Even lay councilors, small group leaders, or friends need to understand what an honor it is to hear about an abuse survivor’s story, which may have been under lock and key for decades.

“When survivors finally disclose, the first words they hear and the first reaction they encounter carried power to affect them deeply. That power, which can be used to encourage and uplift with the ability to help set them on a journey toward healing and hope, is all too often used to heap on more guilt and shame, potentially pushing them into a pit of hopelessness,” (Ingraham, et al, 2017).

Here’s a final piece of insight: How you listen may change over time. Survivors may not want to talk about it all. After a while, they may want to talk of nothing else. The process isn’t black and white. It may not make sense to you. But it’s not yours to make sense of. It may be through a non-linear, chaotic, even illogical series of conversations that the story begins to unfold before you. It is, however, an honor to be the recipient of this story. Cherish that honor and respect the fact that they feel safe with you.

Counseling and Support Groups

The main goal of counseling is to get the abuse survivor to express feelings and thoughts about the abuse. Issues such as fear, mistrust, anger, guilt, shame, disgust, rage and depression can be brought into the open. The victim and the family members can be taught how to deal with these issues as well as the general dynamics of abuse as they come up in the larger context of home, school and church…. Parents and those close to the abuse child will have strong emotional reactions to descriptions of deviant sex acts. A child who is sensitive to the emotional response of parents may keep feelings inside rather than cause this reaction in his or her parents. Counselors, on the other hand, have been trained to be supportive without projecting horror, revulsion, or other negative emotions to the child (Anderson, 1992).

At one church where we spoke, the pastor already had a plan in place to help those who have been sexually abused. Godly and knowledgeable Christian women who had gone through sexual abuse or were familiar with the issue were ready to walk the journey of healing with those who had experienced the trauma of sexual assault. These ladies would help the guide wounded women through the process of sharing their stories and getting counseling and any other help that was needed (Ingraham, et al, 2017).

Although a support group should not be considered a substitute for personal, biblical counseling, it can be a valuable supplement to it. Subjects such as the righteous use of anger and how to work toward forgiveness can be dealt with very effectively in personal counseling. What isn't so easy to impart in personal counseling is a sense of togetherness that a larger group can give. Parents can see that their problems aren't peculiar to themselves and that there is nothing strange about their struggles. They can share their practical difficulties or emotional ups and downs in a safe atmosphere free from the threat of misunderstanding. Those who are further along in the healing process can encourage others to hang in there. Knowing that others care and understand because they have had the same personal experience can be a steadying influence for parents trying to regain their equilibrium (Anderson, 1992).

A group of this type serves several useful purposes: it relieves the pastor or other staff members of an impossible counseling load; it reduces, but not necessarily eliminates, the need for professional counseling; It alleviates the feeling of isolation so many families experience: it helps meet two primary needs of abused families dash confidentiality and encouragement. Healing is a process, and families and victims need time to work through all the physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual issues of abuse (Anderson, 1992).

Works Cited:
Anderson, B. (1992). When child abuse comes to church: Recognizing Its Occurrence and what to Do about it. Bethany House Pub.
Annis, A. W., Loyd-Paige, M., PhD, & Rice, R. R. (2001). Set us free: What the Church Needs to Know from Survivors of Abuse. University Press of Amer.
ESV Study Bible. (2008). Crossway Books.
Hinton, J. (2021). The devil inside: How My Minister Father Molested Kids In Our Home And Church For Decades And How I Finally Stopped Him.
Ingraham, D., Davis, A. P. O. E. R., & Davis, R. (2017). Tear down this wall of silence: Dealing with Sexual Abuse in Our Churches (an Introduction for Those Who Will Hear).
Salter, A. (2003). Predators. Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders. Who They Are, How They Operate, and How We Can Protect Ourselves and Our Children. Basic Books, New York, NY.